NEAT Particles
NEAT Particles is an interactive evolutionary computation program that enables users to evolve particle systems intended for use as special effects in video games or movie graphics. Rather than being hand-coded like typical particle systems, the behaviors of NEAT Particle effects are evolved by user preference. Therefore, non-programmer, non-artist users may evolve complex and unique special effects in real time. NEAT Particles is meant to augment and assist the time-consuming computer graphics content generation process. NEAT is short for Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies.
Method
In NEAT Particles, each
Benefit
The main benefit of NEAT Particles is to decouple particle system creation from programming, allowing unique and interesting effects to be quickly evolved by users without programming or artistic skill. Additionally, it provides a way for content developers to explore the range of possible effects. And finally, it can act as a concept art tool or idea generator, in which novel and useful effects are easily discovered.
Implications
The methodology of NEAT Particles can be applied to generation of other types of content, such as
Bibliography
- Erin Hastings; Ratan Guha & Kenneth O. Stanley (2007). "NEAT Particles: Design, Representation, and Animation of Particle System Effects" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'07).
See also
- Particle system
- NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies
- Interactive evolutionary computation
- Evolutionary art
External links
- "Evolutionary Complexity Research Group at UCF" - home of NEAT Particles and other evolutionary complexity research projects
- "NEAT Particles" - latest source code and executable