It's alive!

April 11, 2007 9:16 AM

Gary Stasiuk's beautiful Digital Creatures pulls the curtains on the kinematics of geometric objects, after which he plays with the mathematics and user interactivity of generative art and shows how to build the appearance of AI behaviors into Flash objects.
posted by Blazecock Pileon (14 comments total)

This looks really, really interesting. I can't wait for a usable UI for reading it.
posted by DU at 9:29 AM on April 11, 2007

warning - resizes browser
posted by evilgenius at 9:29 AM on April 11, 2007

Reminds me of the old Praystation.
posted by gwint at 9:33 AM on April 11, 2007

I realize First Person Shooters have a lot of other overhead, but damn, I want a big Nostromo level with just me, a weak flame thrower and a single Alien that can do all of these things and we just play cat-and-mouse for hours while I try and set the self destruct.
posted by Brainy at 9:51 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Also, I want to know flash well enough to be able to create one of these things now and put this code into action. Anybody know this sort of stuff well enough to point me to appropriate tutorials on how to set this up?
posted by Brainy at 9:53 AM on April 11, 2007

That is hot! Thanks.
posted by Mister_A at 9:54 AM on April 11, 2007

neat!
posted by TechnoLustLuddite at 9:57 AM on April 11, 2007

The resizing is pretty friggin annoying considering I'm at 2560x1600.
posted by autodidact at 10:07 AM on April 11, 2007

Sublime first page. ahhh. Thanks for the visual bliss.
posted by nickyskye at 10:15 AM on April 11, 2007

This is cool, but all the generated objects move like kites, not creatures. I understand that reverse kinematics is all about pulling chains of masses to simulate motion, but I'd really love to see a way to animate creatures based on (say) feet pushing off the ground, and muscles pushing off the skeletal structure and each other.
posted by growli at 11:34 AM on April 11, 2007

That site has some very cool visuals! wow.
posted by nickyskye at 11:40 AM on April 11, 2007

Brainy, you may want to look at Jared Tarbell's Evolving Computational Creatures.
posted by indigoskynet at 12:14 PM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

Growl, go halfway through the second row of his Digital Creatures presentation (that's why its such a bad interface, its actually a presentation)
posted by Brainy at 12:20 PM on April 11, 2007

This is excellent. I love organic programming, evolutionary algorithms, and emergent complexity.
posted by lostburner at 12:17 AM on April 12, 2007