Well, we currently have procedural trees, plants, and grass (or ways to generate them, like arbaro, bantam 3d, xfrog, onyx tree, etc). Now we could possibly have procedural buildings, and cities:
http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~pmueller/wiki/CityEngine/Documents
I was checking out the Siggraph website, and found this link from 2006. Pretty interesting stuff. I didn't see any links to a usable application, but it atleast shows this stuff is in existance. This would be great for some of those big city scenes...
I'll be going to the Siggraph Convention this year since they are having it here in San Diego. I'll definitely be looking for stuff like this. Of course, I've never been before, so we'll see how it works out.
Looks promising! I would love to be able to import the buildings, or, better yet, the entire city as objects. Oh, and does anyone know if they plan on holding Siggraph anywhere in the Midwest in the relatively near future?
Wasn't there already a plugin of this sort for C4D? I'm probably wrong :P Well,it looks very nice,but the copyright says something about 2004,hasn't been updated for a while...
WOW! I have been looking for something like this. It's to hard to model every single building for massive metropolis' ala Blade Runner. I hate it when these University guys come up with some nice innovative software and never finish it and release it to the open public. The project just sits there with some research papers to read only. ???
XSI just came out with a pretty cool script - http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=29;action=display;threadid=31380;start=37 (http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=29;action=display;threadid=31380;start=37), it works quite well. Here is a down a dirty export (obj) into Terragen 2, no textures.
(//)
Here are a couple other links off XSI Base-
http://www.photogrammetry.ethz.ch/tarasp_workshop/papers/ulm.pdf (http://www.photogrammetry.ethz.ch/tarasp_workshop/papers/ulm.pdf)
http://www.cmivfx.com/product_houdini_cities.asp (http://www.cmivfx.com/product_houdini_cities.asp)
Here are one's that I came across-
http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/citygen/ (http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/citygen/) it out puts to VRML 2.0 which I can translate through Rhino (4.0) - I have not brought this into Terragen 2 yet.
http://www.vterrain.org/Culture/BldCity/Proc/index.html (http://www.vterrain.org/Culture/BldCity/Proc/index.html) a page on Procedural Buildings and Cities
http://pcity.sourceforge.net/ (http://pcity.sourceforge.net/) I haven't checked into this one yet...
http://www.geocities.com/ccolefax/citygen.html (http://www.geocities.com/ccolefax/citygen.html) POV-Ray, it's listed from the above link but I thought it might be worth pointing out. Maybe PoseRay can get some geometry for Terragen 2.
HTH,
Glen
Don't have access to XSI so that will have to pass.
The houdini cities look promising and i have houdini 9 apprentice.
CityGen top me looks mediocre.
PCity looks like it's worth a look.
Citygen looks semi-promising but it's outdated. :(
CityEngine looks the best.
Quote from: Sethren on July 14, 2007, 11:47:15 PM
The houdini cities look promising and i have houdini 9 apprentice.
I have this DVD and really it's top-class - lots of nice little tips and tricks... incase you were scouting for a recommendation, that is :). Though it's worth noting it's for H8 not 9, but if you're already au fait with 8 transposing to 9 won't be a prob, otherwise the recent UI changes may make this a tad more challenging(??). Additionally, Chris offers a glimmer of encouragement in this post - http://cmi.myfastforum.org/sutra505.php&highlight=houdini#505.
Concerning the actual DVD content... although it does provide you with a finished 'make-city-now-tool' of sorts, it's far more valuable in the knowledge it imparts wrt building your own custom tool(s) tailored to your own requirements.
P.S - (off topic) if you're interested in learning Houdini, David Gary (CMI instructor) posted a free teaser to a DVD he's developing covering noise creation for fractal terrain and water modelling - http://www.cmivfx.com/tutorials.asp - (Tutorial 57: Creating Noise Spectrums in VEX) if you weren't already aware...
:)
I found the c4d plugin: http://plugins3d.com/plugsc4d/006.htm Dont know if its procedural although
Quote from: Sethren on July 14, 2007, 06:39:39 PM
WOW! I have been looking for something like this. It's to hard to model every single building for massive metropolis' ala Blade Runner. I hate it when these University guys come up with some nice innovative software and never finish it and release it to the open public. The project just sits there with some research papers to read only. ???
I agree 100%!
If you checkout the Siggraph papers, you'll see some amazing stuff, and it either never finishes, or they try to sell it out to some major graphics company (which I don't blame them, but then the hobbyists don't get to use it).
If you've got Lightwave theres a plugin called Citygen (not the povray one) by Eki that makes procedural cities based on a ground plan. The results can be good, also can be well er not so good
Richard
Quote from: cyphyr on July 15, 2007, 12:54:14 PM
If you've got Lightwave theres a plugin called Citygen (not the povray one) by Eki that makes procedural cities based on a ground plan. The results can be good, also can be well er not so good
Richard
Isnt that the same plugin as the c4d one? i remember it was made for a lot of programs.
Thanks for the links glen!
City Engine appears to be the best by far. That guy should be at Siggraph in a few weeks and I'll go over and check it out. I'll be bringing my flash drive just in case he's generous (though I won't push the issue) ;-)
I just dug up an old unfinished image I was working on in Bryce, that featured a huge city I had created using image maps as height fields.
I took those image maps (originally created in Photoshop), converted them to 3ds objects in Bryce, then used PoseRay to make .obj files. Then imported them into TGTP.
Though there are no texture maps (yet), the results came out nicely. And it was really easy to make (though the original .obj file was over 500 MB!).
I agree that City Engine looks the best, hope it does make it's way down to us little guy's but ILM or something of that category will probably get there hands on it.
As far as the XSI plugin goes you can get the full working version of XSI 6 Foundation for 30 days. I believe there are no limitations on the software, it would give you a chance to get some obj's out of it.
http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx (http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx)
Glen
Quote from: moodflow on July 15, 2007, 01:00:21 PM
City Engine appears to be the best by far. That guy should be at Siggraph in a few weeks and I'll go over and check it out. I'll be bringing my flash drive just in case he's generous (though I won't push the issue) ;-)
Good idea. I would love to go and i am only 100 miles away but no $ this year. Perhaps next year.
Quote from: glen5700 on July 15, 2007, 04:43:08 PM
As far as the XSI plugin goes you can get the full working version of XSI 6 Foundation for 30 days. I believe there are no limitations on the software, it would give you a chance to get some obj's out of it.
http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx (http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx)
Glen
I know but i'd rather buy it. The work i need to do would go way beyond the 30 days. Honestly though i really have no use for XSI. Houdini looks more interesting at the moment even though it's a more pricey application.
Quote from: Moose on July 15, 2007, 07:07:44 AM
I have this DVD and really it's top-class - lots of nice little tips and tricks... incase you were scouting for a recommendation, that is :). Though it's worth noting it's for H8 not 9, but if you're already au fait with 8 transposing to 9 won't be a prob, otherwise the recent UI changes may make this a tad more challenging(??). Additionally, Chris offers a glimmer of encouragement in this post - http://cmi.myfastforum.org/sutra505.php&highlight=houdini#505.
Concerning the actual DVD content... although it does provide you with a finished 'make-city-now-tool' of sorts, it's far more valuable in the knowledge it imparts wrt building your own custom tool(s) tailored to your own requirements.
P.S - (off topic) if you're interested in learning Houdini, David Gary (CMI instructor) posted a free teaser to a DVD he's developing covering noise creation for fractal terrain and water modelling - http://www.cmivfx.com/tutorials.asp - (Tutorial 57: Creating Noise Spectrums in VEX) if you weren't already aware...
:)
I am downloading that Creating Noise Spectrums in VEX right now and i am going to take a looky at it. :)
Sethern, have you tried Silo? http://www.nevercenter.com It's amazing and inexpensive.
Modo is less than Houdini and is pretty cool as well, but more expensive than Silo. What's nice about both of these applications (Silo and Modo) is that they are both on the verge of a new release and are offering the next major release for the price of the present version.
Quote from: Sethren on July 15, 2007, 05:22:27 PM
Quote from: glen5700 on July 15, 2007, 04:43:08 PM
As far as the XSI plugin goes you can get the full working version of XSI 6 Foundation for 30 days. I believe there are no limitations on the software, it would give you a chance to get some obj's out of it.
http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx (http://www.softimage.com/downloads/XSI_Trial/default.aspx)
Glen
I know but i'd rather buy it. The work i need to do would go way beyond the 30 days. Honestly though i really have no use for XSI. Houdini looks more interesting at the moment even though it's a more pricey application.
Quote from: calico on July 16, 2007, 08:45:36 AM
Sethern, have you tried Silo? http://www.nevercenter.com It's amazing and inexpensive.
Modo is less than Houdini and is pretty cool as well, but more expensive than Silo. What's nice about both of these applications (Silo and Modo) is that they are both on the verge of a new release and are offering the next major release for the price of the present version.
Yes, i have used Silo on some small occasions and i like it a lot for a modeler. Modo i looked into as well but just a bit to many modeling tools for me to memorize but i like what it does with it's shader tree and having a fast render system. Modo has some very innovative technology behind it's tool pipe i think.
You guys ever try mudbox? Their demo is fully functional and I was shaping out alien heads, castles, and even dried logs within a few hours. They can then be exported as .obj files.
Its pretty neat.
I downloaded the demo for Mudbox and haven't really tried it.
QuoteI hate it when these University guys come up with some nice innovative software and never finish it and release it to the open public. The project just sits there with some research papers to read only
don't you just? ;D ..so who's going to contact the author?... :D
I was aware of research in this field. I came across some stuff last year-some guy reconstructing oriental buildings using wavelets from aerial photos- that's extremely difficult, have you seen those buildings? :P
Some day we'll be able to explore a Blade Runner like universe- heaven!
-great find!
monks
Quote from: monks on July 17, 2007, 05:57:48 PM
don't you just? ;D ..so who's going to contact the author?... :D
monks
I might if i have time. I am still busy with GeoControl 2 alpha, working for Spiral Graphics. Trying to get off my butt to learn photography. I have some electrical jobs coming up as well. If i could expand time i would. ;D
Yea, so many things to do, and that's not including the things I'd like to do! ;)
monks