Families
We decided to design seven unique “species” of butterflies for the piece. For each species, we created a unique algorithm for the structure and patterns of the wings. To make the Butterflies, the Barbarians started tossing about different ideas for generative wing design.
Voronoi
First up is Voronoi. The Voronoi was decided upon because the vein structure of butterflies resembles Voronoi cells. This algorithm is stretched into two solutions, Angular Voronoi and B-spline Voronoi. The angular version has thin straight Voronoi boundaries and the B-spline version has curves fitted to the negative spaces created from the angular version.
Flow Lines
Next up is Flow Lines. It is essentially a fluid simulation that shows the direction of the fluid movement not as a grid of vectors but as a solid curved line. This algorithm was also stretched into two versions. The second version mapped circles along the curved lines.
Intersecting Lines
Intersecting lines was probably the easiest to work out. Several lines are thrown into the butterfly wing outline and several can share the same intersection point. These points are augmented with a larger circular shape. The end result was surprising and extremely delicate once laser cut because only the lines were left behind and the solid negative spaces were cut away.
Cracking
Cracking! The general rule for this piece is to take the wing shape and find its centroid. From here, several line segments are drawn. The resulting shapes are also analyzed to find their centroids. This is repeated for several iterations and then retrofitted with B-spline curves.
Circle Packing
And finally, we have Circle Packing. Randomly sized circles are randomly placed into the butterfly wing shape. If there is any overlap, that circle is tossed. This is run for a few thousand generations and the result is quite satisfying to see, especially the laser cut paper version.