Procedural Creature Generator

Inspiration

• Genetic algorithms/mutations
• Procedural generation

What it does

• Generates a unique creature with multiple limbs, body parts and goofy eyes
• View your creature in a stylistic 3D viewer (orthographic camera written from scratch)
• Uses a random seed to entirely procedurally generate the creature (with adjustable parameters)
• Googly eyes that look at your mouse!

How we built it

• Using python and numpy
• One of us worked on the rendering/projection etc. while the other worked on the generation
• Started with the basics of a body, added in limbs, added the ability to have limbs and bodies grow off each other, then added eyes

Challenges we ran into

• Merge conflicts
• Forgetting to clone things before modifying them (they were referenced)
• Projecting 3D into the middle of a 2D screen
• Parameters are very sensitive - hard to find good ones
• Depth of the rendering - everything was projected to 2D, where it was rendered as 2D polygons and lines. Getting them rending in the correct order was tricky
• Rendering objects relative to their parents
• Creating the datastructure for the creature

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• It generates things that look like creatures
• Fun controls
• Made to be easy to mutate the creature, or combine it with another one (all parameterised)
• Refactoring the very messy code and cutting out lots of unnecessary and confusing parts

What we learned

• Refreshed linear algebra
• Orthogonal projection + painters method
• Hard to make something believable from randomness

What's next for Procedural Creature Generator

• Combine different creatures' genes together to create a new creature
• Mutate creatures
• Find out how to pick good parameters
• Allow user to have control of parameters
• Mouths, horns, etc.
• Symmetry

Built With

• numpy
• pygame
• python