Rule
Rule
Rule format survive / born / states / neighbourhood. A live cell stays alive when the number of live neighbours is on the first list; an empty cell is born when it is on the second. With more than 2 states a dying cell fades through the extra states before it disappears (and cannot be reborn meanwhile). M - Moore, 26 neighbours (the whole 3×3×3 cube), VN - von Neumann, 6 neighbours (faces only).
Simulation
Speed (gen/s)
Grid
Seed
Seed size
Density
Look
Style
Material
Glass tint
Smoke density
Glow
Colour by
Palette
Colour
Cube size
Rounding
Background
Light
Light height
Exposure
Studio render
Studio mode stops the simulation and renders the current generation with a path tracer: soft key light with real shadows, light bouncing between cubes, glossy coat and depth of field. The image gets cleaner with every sample - wait a moment. Glass refracts light (index 1.5) and tints it inside; smoke is rendered as a real scattering volume, and with Glow it emits light like fire.
Bounces
Light size
Gloss
Roughness
Depth of field
Samples
Export
Saves the current view. In Studio mode the image is rendered again at full size with the chosen number of samples - at 4K it can take a minute.
Size
About
A cellular automaton is a grid of cells that all change at once, each following the same simple rule based on its neighbours. Conway’s Game of Life is the famous 2D one; in 3D every cell has 26 neighbours and the shapes become crystals, corals, clouds and shells. The simulation runs on the graphics card (WebGL2), up to 256 × 256 × 256 cells. The picture is ray traced through the voxel grid - in Live mode with fast lighting, in Studio mode with a progressive path tracer. Rule notation as in Softology’s Visions of Chaos; the 3D Life rules are by Carter Bays.