LifeBrush: Painting interactive agent-based simulations

Abstract

Building and interacting with 3D agent-based simulations that contain a large number of agents is a significant challenge. What if we want to create an intricate new arrangement of agents, or reconfigure a large number of agents? We present LifeBrush, a cyberworld for interactively painting large and elaborate multi-agent simulations with commodity virtual reality systems that we can then simulate and explore. Our main methodology uses sketch-based discrete element texture synthesis to paint agent arrangements. We define a map to convert agents to elements in this framework when we paint and back to agents when we simulate. Like creating new colors on a paint palette, we create example agent arrangements and configurations in an example palette. We paint new agents into a scene with sketch-based generative brushes. We also use those brushes to reconfigure agents to match examples created in the …