Fit and diverse: Set evolution for inspiring 3D shape galleries

We introduce set evolution as a means for creative 3D shape modeling, where an initial population of 3D models is evolved to produce generations of novel shapes. Part of the evolving set is presented to a user as a shape gallery to offer modeling suggestions. User preferences define the fitness for the evolution so that over time, the shape population will mainly consist of individuals with good fitness. However, to inspire the user's creativity, we must also keep the evolving set diverse. Hence the evolution is "fit and diverse", drawing motivation from evolution theory. We introduce a novel part crossover operator which works at the finer-level part structures of the shapes, leading to significant variations and thus increased diversity in the evolved shape structures. Diversity is also achieved by explicitly compromising the fitness scores on a portion of the evolving population. We demonstrate the effectiveness of set evolution on man-made shapes. We show that selecting only models with high fitness leads to an elite population with low diversity. By keeping the population fit and diverse, the evolution can generate inspiring, and sometimes unexpected, shapes.