evolvotron - Creates generative art by an interactive evolutionary
process.
evolvotron [Qt options] [options]
evolvotron is interactive "generative art"
software to evolve images/textures/patterns through an iterative process of
random mutation and user-selection driven evolution. Basically it displays a
grid of random images; you click on one you like and the rest of the grid is
refilled with variants of the one you picked.
This man page describes only the command line options. A more
complete manual fully describing usage via the application's GUI is
accessible from the application's "Help" menu once it is
running.
- -a, --autocool
- Enable autocooling by default.
- -F, --fullscreen
- Start in "fullscreen" mode (window manager permitting). [Press
"Esc" key to revert to normal windowed mode].
- -g, --grid
- colsxrows Number of columns in image display grid (defaults to
5x6).
- -h, --help
- Display a summary of command-line options and exit.
- -j, --jitter
- Enable sample jittering.
- -m, --multisample
- multisample Enables antialiased rendering. Valid values are
1,2,3,4. This specifies the size of the sub-pixel sampling grid, so 1
provides the default one-sample-per-pixel behaviour, while 4 provides 16
samples per pixel on a 4x4 grid.
- -M, --menuhide
- Start with menu and status bars suppressed. [Press "Esc" key to
display them].
- -p, -spheremap
- Create spheremaps instead of planar textures. NB The middle-mouse
adjustments will not behave as expected in this mode.
- -S, --startup
- filename Specify a function file to be loaded on startup. This
option can be used multiple times, and any positional arguments will also
be interpreted as such. Loaded functions are placed on the grid from left
to right, top to bottom; if multiple functions in excess of what is needed
to fill the grid cells are provided, the extras will be ignored. If the
grid is not fully filled with startup functions, the remaining cells are
filled at random normally. Note that resetting the application will reload
the specified function files again. Also note that using this option
multiple times has the potential to generate a lot of loading error
dialogs if e.g the path to all the files is wrong.
- -U, --shuffle
- Use in conjunction with -S / --startup options, randomly shuffles the
order the specified startup images are displayed in. A fresh shuffle will
be also be used when the application is reset.
- -f, --frames
- frames Number of frames to animate (defaults to 1 i.e no animaton)
- -l, --linear
- Vary z linearly with time rather than sinusoidally over animation period.
- -s, --fps
- framerate Specify rate at which animations are displayed (as an
integer number of frames per second). Defaults to 8.
- -D, --debug
- Debug mode. Currently simply sets function weightings so virtually all
function nodes are FunctionNoiseOneChannel. This is really only useful to
developers in conjunction with the -F/-u options.
- -E,
--enlarement-threadpool
- Use a separate thread pool for computing enlargements. Using this option
ensures computation of enlargements continue to make some progress even
while the main grid is being actively worked on. However, this will be at
the expense of main grid rendering performance. Without this option,
enlargements' final high-resolution renderings are invariably lower
priority than computation for images in the main grid. See also the -N
option to control the priority of threads in this pool.
- -n, --nice
- niceness Niceness of compute threads relative to the main
application thread (defaults to 4).
- -N, --Nice
- niceness Niceness (relative to the main application thread) of
compute threads dealing with enlargements (defaults to 8). Only effective
in conjunction with a separate enlargement threadool (--E option).
- QtOptions
- The Qt GUI system recognizes an number of additional options (for example,
standard X11 things like -geometry <width>x<height>; consult
the Qt documentation for more information). Note that these don't use the
Gnu "double minus" option style used for evolvotron options.
- -t, --threads
- threads Number of compute threads in a thread pool (defaults to
number of CPUs)
- -u, --unwrapped
- Use with the -F option to stop the specified function from being wrapped
by a random colouring and spatial transform node.
- -v, --verbose
- Verbose mode. Probably most useful for getting a list of supported
function names for use with the --F option.
- -x, --favourite
- functionname Force a specific function type to be used at the top
level of all new image function trees (wrapped by random colour and
spatial transforms, unless the --unwrapped option is also specified). This
can also be controlled from the "Favourite" dialog.
evolvotron -F FunctionSpiralLinear
evolvotron -F FunctionKaleidoscope -u
evolvotron was written by Tim Day (www.timday.com) and is
released under the conditions of the GNU General Public License. For further
details see the application's "About" dialog (accessible from the
"Help" menu), or the file LICENSE supplied with the source
code.