Synthesis of incidental detail as composable components in a functional language

Imaginary objects in games and movies must include small-scale details in order to appear plausible. Often the overall character of this `incidental' detail matters, but the exact shape and placement of each feature is unimportant. The creation of these details often consumes artist time when pattern generation techniques could automate the process instead, but many current pattern generation processes just shift the effort from manual modeling to custom per-object programming. Machine learning approaches to pattern synthesis are promising, but successful efforts have been mainly restricted to stochastic patterns. In this paper we show how detail patterns may be generated using techniques from functional programming, and contribute a domain-specific language (DSL) for describing and composing these details. By allowing patterns to be fluidly composed to create larger ones, we produce a high-level process for inventing structured detail.