Lenia - Artificial Life from Algorithms

I quite like to mess about with systems called "Cellular Automata", so I wanted to share a Rust library I have been working on to simulate the Lenia system. And on the way, I also describe the steps it took to get to Lenia, as well as how the Conway's Game of Life, SmoothLife and Lenia cellular automata work in a quick way.

I, unfortunately have misled you in the video just a tiny bit... Namely, Already the SmoothLife system of cellular automata technically introduced the "integration step"... indeed, it would be impossible to simulate some of the shown SmoothLife systems without the integration step part. Some would perhaps even say that SmoothLife is more powerful and more general and a more faithful generalization of Conway's Game of Life than Lenia. And, well, if we allow for all of the experimentation and little upgrades that people have made over time to SmoothLife, then it ends up not being dissimilar from Lenia in general indeed.

This will most likely not be the last video about Lenia you will see from this channel, for I have some upgrades in mind for the Lenia system myself... ones that should allow Lenia to truly be the most general type of Life-Like system of cellular automata. As well as something that should make it more... "physics-like", shall we say. But when will I get to all that, only time will tell.


=|Links|=

=|Featured videos|=

=|Music|=
Creative Commons CC-BY
744 Music - "untitled" (0.00 - 1.41 & 8.45 - 10.56)

Ecco - Timeless Ocean:
Fredrik Häthén - "Ecco the Dolphin - Medusa Bay" (1.40 - 2.57)
Ruclefia - "Ecco The Tides of Time - Title Theme" (5.09 - 8.43 & 10.57 - 11.52)

Youtube Audio Library:
Wayne Jones - "Resolution" (2.58 - 5.07)

Pixabay:
Lexin_Music - "Interstellar Space" (11.58 - 13.15)

=|Chapters|=
0:00 - Conway's Game of Life
1:39 - SmoothLife
5:02 - Lenia
7:26 - The Spectacle of Lenia
8:42 - How Lenia works
10:55 - Why make Cellular automata
11:55 - Project code
12:51 - Outro

[BirdbrainEngineer]

I hope you liked the video, make sure to discuss below, or if you have any ideas or questions about these cellular automata then comment away below! I read all comments that I receive :) And feel free to share the video around!
Make sure to also check the description of the video for the links to all the code, papers and featured videos, as well as discussion on a few extra nuances on these cellular automata!
Also don't worry, there will be mechanical engineering content in the future - I simply want to work on some of my other hobbies as well!

[bluebunnexyt]

truly a production quality video, gives me nature documentary vibes, and made the content readily understandable imo. very well done!!

[simplifyitofficial]

This video gave me goosebumps about what a computer is capable of with a simple set of rules. I don't know why no one talks about it. You gave me a very big inspiration. Thank you

[Alayric]

Nice. I've been interested in Lenia for a few years but never really dug into it or made my own. I'm learning Rust and I intended to develop my own to practice, and saw yours is in Rust! 👍
Kudos for crediting everything (borrowed videos and music) in the description, not everyone does that.

[PunmasterSTP]

This was incredible! I've always been a fan of artificial life, though ultimately I haven't delved too deeply into it. This video was one of the best introductions to Conway's Game of Life and cellular automata in general, and I hope it gains a lot more exposure. Keep up the fantastic work!

[samuelthecamel]

This is such an underrated video. It's super high quality, it explains everything you need to know from the basics, and it shows just how cool these simulations are!

[ekkekrosing]

I used to be really interested in lenia and artificial life simulations.
At that time there barelt was any videos about the topic
This video is a godsend for anyone who is interested in Lenia, keep up the good work!

[graydhd]

Holy moly this is so amazing!!!! This was utterly fascinating, and the way you presented the math, with little footnotes saying what things are, I didn't tune out at the symbols lol- I actually was able to understand what they were! I wish 'complicated' math were presented that way more often. With footnotes of their use. I'm good with following logical operations, I just have no logical operations for the calc symbols in my noggin.

[cpxztge]

I think I went through my own mental computational evolution through this video. Even more reason to continue learnings more areas of math. My brain is exploding with ideas now thank you.

[qedas]

I'm very glad I stumbled on this video because YouTube is recommendeding everything related to Conway's game of life, your channel seems to be very interesting

[SnowmansApartment]

this is really cool. Wasn‘t aware there was much beyond the game of life. This makes me want to give this a try :)

[Briskbreeze]

This is gonna blow up I'm sure. This video is fantastic!!

[PLeonTube]

Jajajah! You are the first programmer I see confessing you write spaghetti code! Kudos for your hard work. Beautiful contribution, indeed!

[Tanvir]

This is one of the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. And the most beautiful thing I've seen in this year so far.

[superjerkk]

i watched all your videos, you;re doing really cool stuff!

[teacupanimates]

im happy to see a lenia video that isnt 2 years old! thank you!

[EnriquePage]

I am super stoked to see this new video on my latest obsesion - Lenia. What I am not so happy about is the fact that I was planning on making my own video on the GLSL code I’ve been working on, and you’ve clearly beaten me to it… DARN!!! Hahaha anyway. Cheers. About to press play - can’t wait to see what you come up with and I’m sure we can both agree, Bert Chan is incredible. And so is Lenia.

[TonyTheTrain]

I've been familiar with game of life for a while now and it didn't really "hook" me. I see why its so cool. This video was great.

Given input constraints and a feed back loop on the "rules" based on the outcome, this could become the basis for a type of nueral network.

[echtertill]

Totally underrated video... I LOVE it ❤

[puffdaslvmpy]

I'd like to see this simulation scaled up to a degree similar to the scale between single biological cells in the real world and large multicellular organisms or even small animals. I wonder what kind of larger more complex organisms this simulation could produce?