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 suppressed.  [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)