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Author Topic: Procedural Glyph Generation?  (Read 3537 times)

Bauglir

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Procedural Glyph Generation?
« on: February 27, 2014, 07:12:20 pm »
Anybody know of a resource that can produce new glyphs, whether randomly or from some kind of seed? The closest I can find is some of the links on this page, but all relevant things are dead links, contain dead links to vital components, or are incomprehensible to me for one reason or another. The best I've found is Inkscape's Alphabet Soup extension, which is based on this project. The problem with Inkscape is that it insists on making recognizable versions of an input string, when I want unrecognizable strings. The original code on the project allegedly does this, but I can't figure out how to actually do anything with the source.

Google is unhelpful, since most results have to do with creating fonts from pre-existing image files, editing existing fonts, or otherwise converting existing data from one form to another. It's very hard to phrase what I'm looking for unambiguously, but I refuse to believe this is something nobody's actually done before.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

LeoLeonardoIII

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2014, 07:33:29 pm »
Journey-style glyph generation from random dictionary words

I think I can see what you're trying to get. Ideally you'd have a starting glyph that looks cool and you want to use it as a theme for say six similar glyphs. With 3-4 starting glyphs you could create a nice similar-looking glyph set to use as an alphabet.
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freeformschooler

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2014, 07:34:04 pm »
Why not make your own? It doesn't sound too hard. Look at, for example, the way digital clocks form letters and numbers:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Left to right, top to bottom, the number four would be: Off On On On Off On Of. If you made a simple drawing program that took this sort of input - with even more states per letter - it would be very simple to generate random alphabetic glyphs. If you want to go more complex, just generate an array of random points according to "alphabet-y" rules and draw lines between each one. Any graphical api would work: html canvas, processing, flash... high level apis listed in case you aren't "a programmer."

Quote from: LeoLeonardoIII on February 27, 2014, 07:33:29 pm
Journey-style glyph generation from random dictionary words

I think I can see what you're trying to get. Ideally you'd have a starting glyph that looks cool and you want to use it as a theme for say six similar glyphs. With 3-4 starting glyphs you could create a nice similar-looking glyph set to use as an alphabet.

This is cool.
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Bauglir

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #3 on: February 27, 2014, 07:49:56 pm »
Quote from: LeoLeonardoIII on February 27, 2014, 07:33:29 pm
Journey-style glyph generation from random dictionary words

I think I can see what you're trying to get. Ideally you'd have a starting glyph that looks cool and you want to use it as a theme for say six similar glyphs. With 3-4 starting glyphs you could create a nice similar-looking glyph set to use as an alphabet.
I did find that. It's pretty great, but it's very limited - one glyph at a time, I have no input ability at all (which I'd like to have if I can't generate large strings at once), and you only get an image file, which is far too blocky to use as the basis for text that's supposed to look writeable.

What I'd like to do is generate entire fictional alphabets. They don't have to look terrifically cohesive, if I can get large outputs at once that I can sift through for what I want. If I have to make one myself, I may, but it seems like such an obvious tool for anyone doing fantasy or sci-fi artwork that I'm really surprised there isn't an option out there.

EDIT: Fucking around with Alphabet Soup's source code has led me to conclude it's too deprecated for me to fix. I don't really know what I'm doing here.

EDIT: In an ideal world, I'd love for it to be something I can output to an actual font when I'm satisfied. Failing that, I at least need some kind of vector graphics output.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2014, 08:04:23 pm by Bauglir »
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Skyrunner

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2014, 02:23:46 am »
The only thing you can do is find an algorithm that does what you want, then write a program that exports it how you want. :/
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Bauglir

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2014, 11:59:31 am »
Yeah, that's the conclusion I've come to. Oh well, I suppose I'll at least learn a lot.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

LeoLeonardoIII

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Re: Procedural Glyph Generation?
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2014, 03:56:29 pm »
It sounds like the kind of thing that a whole lot of geeks would really love to see and isn't terribly monetizable on its own. I'd be excited to see you share your work, but I get the feeling that this will end up being actually a whole lot of work for you to do :/
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