Reminds me of Dawkins' biomorphs: http://www.emergentmind.com/biomorphs
Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
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Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#12I thought it was now basically the law that this must be named thisbeetledoesnotexist.com
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#13This is a beautiful write-up. And I don't wish to detract from the author's work. Nature's result side-by-side with that of the Machine. Makes one feel as though we've taken a step backwards from Alan Turing's "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis". Consider the "morphogenetic puzzle" of a bi-valved seashell that shuts with perfect water-tight seal. There is a constraint to this design: survival! https://twitter.com/A…
Reminds me of video game art: every game has two sets of art, the “real” art which is part of the mechanics of the game world, and the “pretty bits” which dangle off the game objects and try to trick you into believing there’s more to the game world than there is.
A lot of gameplay involves testing for this boundary... Trying to figure out whether you can actually do things that are implied by the art.
Are there any modern games where 100% of the art exists inside the game world?
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#14What I never understand about these things is ... what actually does the drawing? The AI decides what the beetle looks like, at what level of abstraction? When/how does it go from beetle idea to pixels? Does this network "know" what the beetle's "leg" is, or does it just "know" "this pixel here should be this color"?
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#15What a clever idea! By the way, there are over 400,000 naturally occurring species of beetles. Beetles make up 25% of all animal forms according to Wikipedia.
There's been some new work that throws that percentage into doubt: https://www.insidescience.org/news/move-over-beetles-new-cha...
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#16What I never understand about these things is ... what actually does the drawing? The AI decides what the beetle looks like, at what level of abstraction? When/how does it go from beetle idea to pixels? Does this network "know" what the beetle's "leg" is, or does it just "know" "this pixel here should be this color"?
Much closer to the latter. I haven’t read this yet, but it sounds like an encoder model.
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#17To the creator: since most (all?) of the beetles are symmetrical, couldn’t you generate left halves and then reflect it to create the right half? This could help you prevent asymmetric generations
Most of the images have lighting which isn’t symmetrical and I think that makes it pretty obvious when an image is made by mirroring half a beetle. But maybe there’s some way to deal with that.
Naively, you could train another network to correct the lighting on a mirrored beetle.
Although I’m sure there’s a smarter way.
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#18This is a beautiful write-up. And I don't wish to detract from the author's work. Nature's result side-by-side with that of the Machine. Makes one feel as though we've taken a step backwards from Alan Turing's "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis". Consider the "morphogenetic puzzle" of a bi-valved seashell that shuts with perfect water-tight seal. There is a constraint to this design: survival! https://twitter.com/A…
Reminds me of video game art: every game has two sets of art, the “real” art which is part of the mechanics of the game world, and the “pretty bits” which dangle off the game objects and try to trick you into believing there’s more to the game world than there is. A lot of gameplay involves testing for this boundary... Trying to figure out whether you can actually do things that are implied by the art. Are there any…
I'd argue that that's definitely the case for Dwarf Fortress.
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#19Very clever. Do you know if a machine does the drawing? Wasn't totally clear on that bit.
Re: Show HN: A beetle generator made by machine-learning zoological illustrations
#20This is a beautiful write-up. And I don't wish to detract from the author's work. Nature's result side-by-side with that of the Machine. Makes one feel as though we've taken a step backwards from Alan Turing's "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis". Consider the "morphogenetic puzzle" of a bi-valved seashell that shuts with perfect water-tight seal. There is a constraint to this design: survival! https://twitter.com/A…
Reminds me of video game art: every game has two sets of art, the “real” art which is part of the mechanics of the game world, and the “pretty bits” which dangle off the game objects and try to trick you into believing there’s more to the game world than there is. A lot of gameplay involves testing for this boundary... Trying to figure out whether you can actually do things that are implied by the art. Are there any…
Check out Noita -- it's a pixel-art-style game where every pixel is subject to the physics engine. Leads to some cool emergent gameplay.