Grotto Architecture

Overview

This project is a study on the architecture of grottos and cave structures, and more generally organic structure. Organic structure contains many contradictions - it is rules-based but not rigid. There is a logic to it even when it appears totally chaotic. It is the original type of structure found in nature compared to our rigid, mechanical world of constructed forms.

Part of the inspiration for this project is my experience as a kid going on summer road trips to camp in the redrock badlands of the American southwest, where millions of years of earth, water and air colliding generated massive alien structures of rock. Often these processes formed natural caves which were used by Native American tribes for shelter and adapted into dwellings.

Gallery

Scene

A city of grotto structures.

Individual structures

Each structure has modified parameters for radius and height. Most of the rest of the differences are driven by a global seed affecting the number of floors kept or removed, the noise offsets, the internal structure etc. More info in the breakdown below.

Breakdown

The workflow is not too complex. It starts with a profile (in this case a circle) swept along a line divided into segments. Each segment represents one floor. Each floor is voronoi subdivided to create a series of rooms, and each room is connected to one or more other rooms. Then, the inner structure is subtracted from the outer surface. Throughout the process, the geometry is unified by VDB conversion and displaced with different noise patterns to deform the overall form and the surface.

Inner structure

The inner structures is a series of connected caves. Each floor is divided into a different number of rooms with different voronoi source points.

Outer surface

The outer surface is simply a sweep operation, with several levels of distortion and displacement.

Cutout

The final result is the outer surface minus the cave structure. Then, additional noise displacement is applied.