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Mutating Animations

Posted by michael on from the learning-to-fly-but-i-ain't-got-wings dept.

Weird_one writes "Discover magazine's current issue has an intriguing article involving using genetic algorithims to evolve an animation of a walking individual."

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Just wait for the game with this feature... by anttik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When CPU's will become fast enough to use this level of learning on the fly, it will be great for gamers. Maybe the enemies don't have to learn walking, but learning strategy is a different thing. If they learn strategy by themselves and not by pre-programmed AI, I bet they will be more creative and a tougher opponent.

    But I think I'll still have to wait like 20 years for that.

    1. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "When CPU's will become fast enough to use this level of learning on the fly"

      This does not have to be done real time to work. Most likly you would just need to compile the AI once for an enviroment and just record the results of the last generation to a file to be used later.

    2. Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... by fo0bar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Download the E3 demo of Half-Life 2. In it there is a section where people are fighting alongside Gordon. This didn't look too spectacular until the presenter announced that these characters were NOT moving according to a script. The characters were given an objective (help Gordon get to point X), but were not given a path to take or any knowledge about the obstacles in the way. At that point my eyes opened wide, watching these people duck behind debris, covering fellow fighters, shoot-move-shoot-move... the movement and logic that they possessed looked either preprogrammed (which again, they say is not the case), or very human-like.

  2. If you liked that.... by Great_Jehovah · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Check this out: http://q12.org/phd-movies.html

    Not quite as slick but a lot more amusing.

  3. Re:sceptical by dustman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How would this be any easier than doing keyframed animation with inverse kinematics?

    I read something about this idea a few years ago. I'm pretty sure it was by the guy that did BMRT... a thesis paper of his or something.

    Basically, the redid the animation of "Luxo" in pixar's animation short. "Luxo" is the bouncing desktop lamp. Making animated characters (even those that aren't human) move "nicely" is quite hard. It takes a lot of work.

    For their project, the specified the constraint: That Luxo must move from point A to point B, and that's all. The only input the model had was "how much force to use on each joint at each particular time". So, they were animating its "muscles" with a genetic algorithm, and also running a physics simulation on the system. (They assigned mass to the individual components, etc).

    It evolved several techniques of locomotion: The "standard" bouncing hop (which the "real" luxo does), dragging itself across the table, somersaulting, etc...

    In short, they came up with good looking animation, without requiring much user input. And in the end, they had a genetic algorithm which could make Luxo walk any distance, without requiring the work of an animator.

    This is important, because although its relatively easy to just loop an animation, it looks rather unnatural.

  4. Coolest Java applet ever: BioBloc by FleaPlus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The other day I stumbled upon what could quite possibly be the coolest Java applet ever. Once you start the applet, you assemble "bioblocs," which are 3D creatures assembled from connected blocks. Once you've assembled your creature, you can have it use genetic algorithms to try to learn how to most effectively walk, run, jump, and turn around using the blocks you've given it. I assembled a snake-like creature the other day, and was intrigued to see that it evolved a walking movement very similar to that of a sidewinder's.

    In addition to assembling your own creatures, you can also load creatures that others have previously assembled, as well as enter your creatures into contests. A lot of the previously assembled creatures are -very- impressive, with movements quite similar to those evolved in nature.

  5. Don't get too excited by SystematicPsycho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Genetic algorithms work by minimizing the amount of searching needed in a search space by "evolving" candidate solutions and only evolving new ones from the best of the old ones. A candidate solution is evaluated against a fitness (of objective) function that assigns a fitness to a candidate solution.

    Don't get to excited about the walking man - the difficulty and also art in Genetic Algorithms is finding a way to represent a candidate solution. The walking man isn't difficult to represent. To make it simple, pretend that the representation is like, work out a way to order the numbers 1..10 - where 1 == man crawling and 10 == man walking and the rest of the numbers in between are ordered to represent a certain posture. The genetic algorithm then searches through all the combinations and permutations of the numbers 1..10 until they are ordered - btw, instead of drawing numbers let's associate a number with a posture.

    Now with this problem - think of a pool of numbers, each number associated with a posture and the Genetic Algorithm searches through the pool (of 100) until it finds the numbers 1..10 in order all standing next to each other.
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    Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold