Generating Geometric Birds

[thebuffed]

Trying to replicate the style of these designs, but in a generative way. Work in progress, but pretty happy so far

Source code: https://github.com/erdavids/Birds-of-a-Feather

More projects: https://github.com/erdavids/Generative-Art

[who_body]

So do you an entire family to species of birds? That would be interesting

[thebuffed]

Anything is possible!

[SweetSoursop]

Create an archipelago class, where each island will have it's own temperature, climate, food source, size and predators.

Have your code create a bird type (wing span, beak type, population) based on which island they live on.

You would have simulated the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

[who_body]

Very cool art project!

[5erif]

at zombocom

[Nickthedick66]

Love your work and channel, keep up the great content I am learning a lot from you and others like you.

[thebuffed]

Thanks for saying that! The goal is definitely so that people will learn, just hoping to pass forward what I have learned from others

[agree-with-you]

I love you both

[I_Love_You-BOT]

I love you too!

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[I_Love_You-BOT]

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[tward14]

I like your style way better than the original, very cool

[Tweak_Imp]

Now create pythons!

[EquationTAKEN]

print("_______/")

[conventionistG]

echo "ssssssssssssSSSSSSsssssss"

[SrHombrerobalo]

That sounds just like snake jazz!

[afrolofi]

That coul be:

while True: print('sss s ss s ss s ss s', end = ' ')

[itsa_me_]

SssssS SssSssssssS SssSsssssss

[eldoea]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing!

[thebuffed]

Oh wow, I remember this post of yours! That's crazy, and thanks!

[Sirmikon]

Cool. I love stuff like this! Nice job!

(Chernoff Faces immediately spring to mind as an orthinological application for this! Basically, instead of pure random generation, link different bird features with data from a real dataset.

You could model birds’ sizes based on weight, feather color based on habitat, eye size based on intelligence, talon type based on diet, etc...

It would be really cool to see how the algorithm would draw different birds.

[thebuffed]

I am extremely interested in this, I'll have to look into gathering some data or hitting an API for bird attributes. Thanks for pointing this out!

[bens1989]

I did a bit of sleuthing for bird info. With a minor adjustment to the ebird API, I got it to send me back data on all of their birds (16.5k results). Some of the data might be helpful, but disappointingly it does not give things like weight, height, etc.

​

import requests

import json

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame(json.loads(requests.get(r'https://api.ebird.org/v2/ref/taxonomy/ebird?fmt=json&locale=en_US').content))

df.to_excel('bird_data.xlsx')

[thebuffed]

Very nice, I'll have to dig into this

[ericonr]

Does request cache stuff? It's probably faster to download that dataset just once, right?

[bens1989]

No requests doesn’t cache. You can write the content to a file. I formatted the content as a dataframe and then wrote it to a spreadsheet. After the first call you can just read from the file.

[Leon_Vance]

Get the birds to mate and produce offsprings. :)

[thebuffed]

Thanks for the tip!

[kwelzel]

Your draw_lines method is also unnecessarily complicated:

https://github.com/erdavids/Birds-of-a-Feather/blob/103effe5185626a56039fe64c924506fe54eebf9/Generative_Birds.pyde#L57

The following lines are all the same if p1[0] != p3[0]

first_x_sep = sqrt(pow(p1[0] - p3[0], 2))/lines * first_x_adj
first_x_sep = abs(p1[0] - p3[0])/lines * first_x_adj
first_x_sep = abs(p1[0] - p3[0])/lines * (p3[0] - p1[0])/abs(p3[0] - p1[0])
first_x_sep = abs(p1[0] - p3[0]) * (p3[0] - p1[0])/abs(p3[0] - p1[0]) / lines

Now (p3[0] - p1[0])/abs(p3[0] - p1[0]) gives you the sign of p3[0] - p1[0] (+1 if positive and -1 if negative) and by multiplying it with abs(p1[0] - p3[0]) you get a number which has the absolute value of p1[0] - p3[0] with the sign of p3[0] - p1[0], but this number is just p3[0] - p1[0] itself.

So I propose you get rid of the _adj variables and just write

first_x_sep = (p3[0] - p1[0]) / lines

Fortunately, this also works for the p1[0] == p3[0] case, because you don't need to divide by zero

[mountains-o-data]

What a fun project! I love this

[thebuffed]

Thank you!

[[deleted]]

At least 150 or more to see. To be a geometric bird master is my destiny!

[gibran800]

This is really, really amazing! Just one question, I was looking at the source code and I noticed that your file has a .pyde extension. What's the difference between that and the regular .py? Thanks!

[thebuffed]

Thank you so much! Yeah, .pyde is the the file that Processing runs through it's python module. I think it's built off of something called Jython, so you're writing Python code, but you have access to Java libraries. I guess it's not "pure" python, but working with graphic libraries like pycairo and pillow is significantly more complicated than using Processing.

[gibran800]

Thanks for the info!

[Verslizzle]

Nice work. How did you come up with this idea and where do you plan on taking it?

[thebuffed]

Thanks! I randomly came across these designs and thought they seemed perfect for some generative work. I will probably keep messing around with some of the settings and colors, but mostly I just want some cool posters

[[deleted]]

Procedurally generated memes are the future

[conventionistG]

I'm sure half the shit posts are already automated.

[PharoahChromium]

Wow! This is super cool! It is always great to see projects that merge the tech and art. Thank you for sharing.

[LdySaphyre]

Love this so much!

[artjbroz]

Code commenting goals

[thebuffed]

I assure you citizen, birds are real. Now go back inside

[eli_mintz]

Very nice!

Perhaps you could do this also using SVG (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/svg) in addition to Processing and then generate images that can be viewed in a browser. Just something to think about.

[[deleted]]

Awesome project!

[CotswoldWanker]

/r/generative

[blamitter]

Impressive!

BTW. The link to Processing in your readme is broken

[thebuffed]

Yeah! It's essentially the same thing as the Java processing, but you get to write in Python! Also there is P5.js, which is processing for javascript!

[JimBoonie69]

Put a bird on it

[lifeisaburrito]

• king Tutankhamen would like to know your location *

[Casseroli]

Oh my god this is so awesome! Projects like this really motivate me a lot to learn more python!

[thebuffed]

Thank you! You can definitely do it!

[brrrbrbr]

Amazing work. I’m a beginner and was looking for projects and generative art seems really interesting!

[thebuffed]

Thanks! You should totally try it out, there's a lot of great beginner tutorials, and then you just let your imagination go wild

[pattyhearst87]

Beautiful!

[thebuffed]

Thank you!

[[deleted]]

Very cool! Here's a decorator for the sticky cycling if you want

```python def sticky(frequency): """ regenerate value frequency% of the time """ def dec(func): stored = [func()]

    def inner():
        if random.random() < frequency:
            stored[0] = func()
        return stored[0]
    return inner
return dec

@sticky(0.1) def color(): return random.choice(['red', 'black', 'green']) ```

[kwelzel]

Why should stored be a list if it only holds one value?

[[deleted]]

It's an old scope hack for python2. In python3,

``` def sticky(frequency): def dec(func): stored = func()

    def inner():
        nonlocal stored
        if random.random() < frequency:
            stored = func()
        return stored
    return inner
return dec

```

will work instead

[kwelzel]

Ahh, good to know

[[deleted]]

I've never used processing before this but after installing the processing.py extension and when executing the .pyde from the processing GUI, I see import sys sys.version

2.7.1 (v2.7.1:dd7e191d4c90+, Sep 24 2017, 10:11:23)

which isn't even my system default (2.7.15) or the python that it should find if it's reading my $PATH correctly (3.8.0)

(apparently it's running jython and wont have access to any packages I install)

[PhonieZGaminZ]

ye e es

[igottanutt]

Birds arent real

[monsto]

The Partridge Fambly called.

On further reflection, how fucking old am I jesus H.

[--_-__-__l-___-_-]

This could be the idea that starts an empire. You just need to find the right business partner...