Image Produced by Evolver.
MiniBlur(Max(Particles(ColorGradient()), Hysteresis()))

  • artificial animator (evolver)
  • Art Gallery
  • A Paper on Evolver
  • Evolver Presentation Slides
  • Java Source Documentation
  • Download Evolver Source Code
  • How to Use Evolver

  • This is the web site for the Artificial Animator, a program for researching computer generated artwork. The program turns the relationship between human and computer on its head. We are accustomed to a user drawing shapes using a program like PhotoShop. When using the Artificial Animator, the program is the artist and the user plays the role of an the art critic! This project was renamed from "Evolver" to eliminate confusion with the Evolver compression project that succeeded it.

    Karl Sims first investigated the possibility of using genetic algorithms to let a human and computer collaborate to produce art. I read his paper in Nancy Pollard's CS229: Algorithmic Animation at Brown University and chose to implement it as my final project.

    The goal of the project was to extend Sim's work to produce animations, not just images. A secondary goal was to produce a reusable library of Java image processing routines for the graphics community.

    I hope that the source will be used by other graphics developers. It contains nice implementations of common effects like Gaussian blur, particle system, zoom, rotation, distortion, environment mapping, and edge filter, as well as an entire interpretted programming language framework and genetic algorithm implementation.

    For more algorithmically generated animations, look at Scott Draves' Fractal Flames and Electric Sheep.

    Evolver is implemented in Java 2 and can be compiled using Jikes or Sun's Java (1.3), both of which are freely available. The source code is all copyrighted to Morgan McGuire. Permission is hereby granted to use the Evolver source without fee in any application that contains the following user-visible statement:

    "Portions Copyright 2000, Morgan McGuire (matrix@alum.mit.edu). http://graphics3d.com/matrix"

    Morgan McGuire matrix@acm.org