Re: 'not an artist' article

[Joel Utting <joelu.geo@yahoo.com>]

Chris Purnell wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jul 03, 2000 at 07:26:37PM -0500, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> > Chris Purnell wrote:
> 
> > I spent some time today thinking about it - and I'm pretty sure it could
> > be done.
> 
> > The snag is to come up with a set of genes with the right 'powers' over
> > the mesh to come up with credible critters - without limiting the resulting
> > shapes arbitarily.
> 
> I've also spent some time thinking about it.  I think any thing limiting
> the results to human and anthropomorphic characters would help the time
> it takes to get a useful result and may also help programming it.
> 
> I liked your idea about evolving the bones.  I think fixing the number of
> bones and their conections is the way to go.  And having the genes control
> the length of the bones.  I'm not sure about constraints about the relative
> lengths of the upper and lower parts of the limbs.

I guess you'd need a physics model in the environment, and some idea
about muscles and joints. Muscles would control joints movements based
on the weight of the creature, and would have to expand in size if the
creature did. The muscles would also give you some idea of how to wrap
the flesh around the bones.

I'd like to evolve things like extra fingers, horns, spikes, and extra
limbs. That would be cool.

Anyway, you need some counterbalance to the size of bones/creatures, or
at least some randomness, or all creatures would evolve to be huge.

Bye - Joel.


> > It's tempting (for example) to think of 'symmetry' genes - but does that
> > overly-restrict or pre-judge the nature of the things you build?
> 
> I was thinking of enforcing left-right symmetry so we only have to
> generate half a character.

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