PlantStudio Help: Breeding plants using the breeder

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Breeding plants using the breeder

Breeding creates new offspring plants from parents using random variation. About 150 of the over 200 parameters that make up a plant are numerical values. We realized early on that it might be fun to introduce random variation into these numerical parameters and see what happens. The result is a sort of pseudo-evolutionary process. In each breeding generation you can select the most interesting plant, then breed it further to produce strange, beautiful, or imaginative plants. The breeder isn't concerned much with botanical accuracy, but it produces some pretty amazing-looking plants.

Breeding works by
Mutation: Each parameter in a breeding offspring is randomly selected from a normal (bell-shaped) distribution around the mean parent value (from one or two parents). The higher the mutation, the greater the standard deviation of the normal distribution, so the higher the variation.

Blending: The mean of the mutation distribution is either the parameter value from one parent, or a weighted mean from two parents. You can combine the two parents in any weighting combination.

IMPORTANT: The plants in the breeder are NOT saved with the plant file and are lost when you leave the program. If you want to save a breeder plant, drag or copy it to the main window and save the plant file.

Tasks:

Breeding from one parent

Breeding from two parents

Taking a breeder plant out of the breeder

Replacing breeder plants

Randomizing breeder plants

Deleting breeder generations

Changing the age of breeder plants

Changing the size of the breeder