Swap Evolving a Fixed MSG IO Routing Configuration

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Swap Evolving a Fixed MSG…

Today’s post started with the MSG preset we hand built in yesterday’s post that generated an abstract image based on combining together 3 1C Truchet FlipMod processors and a 3C Truchet Mod1 CP processor to build up an overlaid abstract patterning image. I then worked with the Evolution Editor, using the Swap control button in the top control bar of the Evolution Editor to evolve mutated variations of yesterday’s preset.

I continued my directed evolution session by continuing to generate a series of new swap evolved mutations of the original MSG preset until I ended up with the new abstract effect above. We’ll look at the IO (input-output) routing of the new MSG preset effect and show that although it’s individual processor have been swap evolved and are different than the original starting processors used in yesterday’s preset effect, the IO routing strategy we developed in yesterday’s preset is still being used in the our new evolved preset. So the underlying design strategy used to build the original effect is still maintained through the particular random directed evolution process we followed, and is actually quite important in terms of defining the range of potential effect styles that can be generated using it.The first gallery image below shows the Evolution Editor and the Swap evolution command button I used multiple times in my directed evolution session to build today’s new preset from yesterday’s starting point.

After pressing the Swap button, I get a new set of swap evolved mutated preset variants in the individual preview cells located in a grid in the Evolution Editor. Each preview cell contains an internal processor list that is different in some way from the ones used in the other preview cells. That’s the nature of swap evolution,random processors are swapped into random index positions in the processor list for each preview cell.

For each cycle of Swap evolution, I then click on the mutated preview cell I liked the best. This then generates a series of parameter mutated variations of the clicked preset (so all of the preview cells have the same processor chain after the preview cell mutation click). You continue the ‘Swap‘ – ‘click on swap preview output you like the best‘ cycle until you get to a new evolved effect you like enough to keep.

The rest of the images in the gallery above shows off the new set of processors that build up the new effect displayed at the top of the post, and their associated IO (input-output) routing connections. If you compare this new preset to the one we hand designed in yesterday’s post, you can see that the same overall routing strategy developed for yesterday’s abstract preset is still being used with today’s preset, even though almost all of the individual processors used are different at any given index position in the new effects’s processor list.

This is because swap evolution swaps in random processors to a given processor index position that match the original routing configuration for the original processor. If the processor has 2 inputs and 1 output, then the new swap mutated processor must also have 2 inputs and 1 output.

This means that the IO stream routing strategy hand generated yesterday of first generating an image stream that then gets propagated to the 3 output streams, processing each output stream with a processor with an additional modulation input, and then following that with 2 processors that process full color images with first a color palette and additional input stream and then 2 color palette streams is still replicated in today’s new evolved preset effect.

So if you just are working with Swap evolution, you aren’t really changing the fundamental routing strategy used in the range of potential effects you could possible evolve. You’re just exploiting the ability to plug additional random processors into specific index slots that match those initial processor routing ports, and of course exploiting the mutation properties of the various parameters associated with each of the new processors. So the potential range of new preset effects that can be developed via just swap evolution is constrained in some sense by the preset you started with, and how it’s stream signal routing flow was designed.

Other approached to evolving new preset effects, like using Add evolution commands (along with the different hot key variations associated with this command button), or working with the Inspire commands allow for changing both the number of processors as well as their potential IO stream routing strategies. So once you start using these other evolution commands, you can completely change the overall strategy used to build the effect. This can lead to more radical shifts in the kinds of effects that could be evolved, but you may also end up with radically different kinds of effects as a part of that process (which could be good or bad depending on what you are trying to achieve in your evolution session).

Being constrained to live withing a particular routing strategy, which was the case in the approach we took to evolve today’s new preset effect, has it’s advantages. Even though the results of the swap evolution process can lead to radically different effects depending on the nature of the random processor swap mutations, in some sense there’s an underlying internal logic to how all of the evolved effects work that tie them together in some coherent way.

Knowing which IO routing strategy to start with when beginning a MSG evolutions session can be important, depending on what kind of effect output or style you are trying to achieve. Even though today’s abstract effect output is very different than yesterday’s output image, there is an underlying similarity in the style of the 2 effects that is the same. The internal strategy they use to build up their 2 different output images is essentially the same in terms of how streams are processed and combined together to build the final effect, even though the individual processors used to build up that development strategy at any given point are vey different for the 2 presets.

We’ve talked about different approaches to evolving new effects here before. Here’s a series of posts on this topic associated with the evolution tag.

Category: MSG

Tags: Abstract evolution

Swap Evolving a Fixed MSG IO Routing Configuration

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