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by knutae 2377 days ago
I wrote an L-systems implementation in Common Lisp as part of a thesis around 2002. The software, thesis and some raytraced images are still available at my old university home page: http://www.ii.uib.no/~knute/lsystems/llisp.html

If anyone plans to test the software: I haven't run it in ages, and I suspect that the OpenGL bindings will be tricky to get working today. The rest of the code hopefully still works.
2 comments
mikorym 2377 days ago
Talking about OpenGL, there was something else released in 2002 that a resourceful fan [1] has modified to use OpenGL [2] and it works pretty well.

[1] https://verokster.blogspot.com/2019/03/disciples-i-ii-gl-wra...

[2] https://github.com/Verokster/DisciplesGL

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dr_kiszonka 2377 days ago
Very nice renders!

Since you are an expert, could you share whether L-systems have any practical applications?

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knutae 2376 days ago
Aristid Lindenmayer used it originally as a model to study the growth of algae, so it has some scientific applications. While computer graphics is the most common use case, L-systems have also been used for generating music.

http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/ has a list of papers and other related texts, including the classic book The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants.

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