Abstract

The simulated evolution of botanical trees and other plants is explored in this paper. We present a model to simplify the creation of plants by following the genotype/phenotype approach of Gene Expression Programming to generate L-Systems. Our model describes a specific organism (a plant) with a genotype that can be expressed as an L-System. This L-System, and subsequently it's interpreted graphical image, forms the phenotype, and is used to assess the fitness of the organism. The human eye is used as a fitness function, and a user assigns fitness ratings to the organisms in a population based on the aesthetic value of the images. The user is able to create a plant without knowledge of the underlying algorithms or specific botanical knowledge.

Preprint

plants2007.pdf

Screenshots

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{1294712,
   author = {Johannes Venter and Alexandre Hardy},
   title = {Generating plants with gene expression programming},
   booktitle = {AFRIGRAPH '07: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Computer graphics, virtual
      reality, visualisation and interaction in Africa},
   year = {2007},
   isbn = {978-1-59593-906-7},
   pages = {159--167},
   location = {Grahamstown, South Africa},
   doi = { http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1294685.1294712 },
   publisher = {ACM},
   address = {New York, NY, USA},
}