I took inspiration from Wave Function Collapse (WFC) and Realtor's Cellular Automata (RCA, a past doodle) to do some really unoptimized texture synthesis. The goal is to create a bigger texture out of a small input image.
I reapproached my previous texture resynthesis program (see RWFC link) by making it more like cellular automata. Each pixel tries to figure out what it should be based on its surroundings and the input image. See the shader for a live version!
I came up with a cellular automata algorithm that answers the question "what if a realtor used an algorithm to sell optimal new locations to clients?" The question is vague, so the results vary! Tweaking the constraints and parameters creates beautiful structures and patterns!
This is cellular automata. Typically you use just two states for each cell (alive or dead), but I was inspired to use multiple states. The results are fascinating!