DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
EVOLVOTRON(1) Evolvotron EVOLVOTRON(1)
NAME
evolvotron - Creates generative art by an interactive evolutionary
process.
SYNOPSIS
evolvotron [Qt options] [options]
DESCRIPTION
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.
GENERAL OPTIONS
-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 supressed. [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.
ANIMATION OPTIONS
-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.
POWER-USER / DEBUG OPTIONS
-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.
EXAMPLES
evolvotron -F FunctionSpiralLinear
evolvotron -F FunctionKaleidoscope -u
AUTHOR
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.
SEE ALSO
evolvotron_mutate(1), evolvotron_render(1)
www.timday.com 16 Oct 2009 EVOLVOTRON(1)