Picbreeder: Collaborative Interactive Evolution of Images

Neuroevolution of content layout in the PCG: Angry bots video game

“…A CPPN is an artificial neural network in which the activation function at each neuron can be selected from a variety of possible functions, rather than restricting every neuron to using the same function. This property can lead to patterns of output occurring, which can be seen visually in the Picbreeder application [6]. In PCG: Angry Bots, the inputs to a CPPN are a nodes depth and sibling coordinates in the Fixed N-ary Tree, as shown in Figure 3, as well as a bias of 1.0.…”

“…A population of CPPN candidates is optimized through Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) [4]. NEAT has been successfully utilized in numerous Searchbased Procedural Content Generation (SBPCG) applications [5], including the generation of art through the Picbreeder website [6], the calculation of the path of particle weapons in the game Galactic Arms Race [7], and the creation of flower designs in the social media game Petalz [8]. All of these applications also use a CPPN representation, which gives them all distinctive visual patterns.…”

Tone mapping by interactive evolution

“…Interactive evolutionary algorithms have previously been used for tasks ranging from the computer assisted evolution of coffee blends to the fitting of hearing aids. Applications of interactive evolution in image processing and computer graphics include algorithms for interactive lighting design [24], the computer assisted creation of art [40], and the interactive evolution of images [17,49,28,37,38]. Despite the significance of the task, no evolutionary approaches have been proposed for the problem of tone mapping high dynamic range images.…”

“…An interesting approach to circumventing the problem of user fatigue is the recent approach by Picbreeder [37,38] Lastly there are constraint handling techniques which allow for both feasible and non-feasible solutions to be considered as a solution. These methods are usually much more complex than those described above.…”

Promoting Creative Design in Interactive Evolutionary Computation

“…Indeed, arguably the first example of an IEA 1 was an art task, undertaken by hand rather than on computer: artist William Latham utilized a large piece of paper, a die, and a methodical drawing procedure to explore a generative space of sculptural forms, a precursor to his later machine-based work [37]. IEC has been intimately involved in the electronic arts (reviewed in [20]), and remains an active area of research [15], [29], [32].…”