The Non-Cow - Evolved Virtual Creature

This is animation footage I generated in order to snip short clips for making a creature evolution video for my presentation at the TAM6 conference in June 2008 in Las Vegas.

The processing time to evolve this creature was kindly donated by Dan Schutzner and Rudolf Penninkhof.

The project web page is:
http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• 3D
• virtual
• creature
• evolution
• genetic
• algorithm

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

I wish the water wouldn't have such problems.

I've always wanted to evolve a bird.

"low water viscosity"

[kjlg74]

One of my users has been trying to tweak the physics settings to see if he can get the water to cooperate. We'll see, maybe something will come of it.

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

Yeah, I've noticed that making the muscle strength weaker seams to decrease the chance of the "explosions" occurring.

This creature reminded me of a bird.

(Don't ask me why)(BIRD-COW)(TWOOT)

[kjlg74]

One flap on the side does look a bit like a wing, I suppose.

[kjlg74]

@scotlandloose Also, you can press G to pull up a display that shows you which generation you're currently on and which creature you're currently on in that generation (as well as some other info). Creature zero is always a copy of the best creature from the previous generation (i.e. that's the one to pay attention to since the others, being mutants and hybrids, might not perform as well)

[kjlg74]

@scotlandloose I think I can help. The program has a population of creatures. What it does is evaluate each creature in turn in order to measure its performance. That's what you're seeing - each creature in the first generation having a go. They all look different because, in that first generation, their genes are totally random. Once they're all evaluated, it will produce & evaluate a whole new generation of offspring, over and over again. It will take days before you notice real improvement

[JunkerJames]

I'm just discovering this amazing program, but on this note, I saw a TED talk which suggested that flight evolved out of gliding from trees. Maybe you need to start each creature ontop of a pillar, and once some "gliding"/fluid dynamics simulation is in there for air, and you do a distance fitness, maybe you'll get something?

[DKKD666]

It's probably becouse of it's hopping motion...