cgen-dlang: Community Generated Design Language

An Evolutionary Approach to Design Collaboration

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Introduction

cgen-dlang is a collaborative design system developed for small communities (5 – 50 people) who want to generate a collection of the team specific computer aided structures, which are likely to be optimal reflections of a team’s aesthetic values: These visual structures capture the full transmission history of aesthetics and are used to form design language systems.

Software Architecture

cgen-dlang infrastructure relies on a cocktail of programming languages for front-end and back-end specification and implementation.

Application Architecture

cgen-dlang system architecture. Users interface with the cgen-dlang interface to design structures (seed design) that are functions of the underlying component library and associated grammar. Users also have the option of voting() on other user-generated structures and genetically generated structures.

Components

The structure (system architecture) of cgen-dlang is composed of the following components: component library, component grammars, voting models, and evolutionary processes.

Definitions

• component library - collection of pre-defined assets

• component grammars - set of rules that define acceptable operations on and between components to form structures

• voting models - schema outlining the method by which breeding candidates are selected

• evolutionary processes

  • The solution space
  • A random population of genotypes (possible solutions)
  • Fitness function(s)
  • Virtual variational operators: compare(), mutate(), cross()

Install

# Start here
cd cgen_server

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# And go...
python server.py

# Congifgure front-end
docker run -p 5432:5432 --name cgendlangpostgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=cgendlangpostgres -d postgres

# Navigate to server and install
cd server
npm install

# Create the database structure
node_modules/knex/bin/cli.js migrate:latest

# Generate the first examples
node make_randoms.js

# Generate a cache of image keys for the front page (do it every time you want to update the front page)
node updatecache.js

# And go...
node server.js

Use

from cgen.dlang import cgen.example
import cgen.dlang as cgen
import ganbreeder as gan
import tensorflow as tf
import pytorch as torch
import numpy as np

# Generate structure
cgen.Gen_STRUCT(cgen.example.components, ..., cgen.example.operations)

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Support or Contact

Looking for help or wanting to contribute to the arts and ai? Check out our documentation or contact team and we’ll help you sort it out.

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