The Blender City

[rewind81]

Hey everyone,

This a new game project called Blendopolis, and it's going to be a great one!

Blendopolis a huge city that is explorable, with interiors and thousands of great models ranging from stop signs to skyscrapers. All the models are made by people on these forums, as well as other Blender users. People like you are able to get their own land in the city, on which they are able to build a house, store, apartment, anything!

The goal of Blendopolis is to provide a free, open-source, virtual city for anyone and everyone who uses Blender. We want to showcase the talent of the Blender Community, as well as provide a large repository of free game models in .blend format. We are striving to make every model, from stop sign to skyscraper, well made and easily accessible. In the future, we hope to turn Blendopolis into a free massive multiplayer online world, but for now we are providing fun and resources for the Blender community in an interesting and entertaining way.

Right now, we are in the developing stage, and we will soon welcome anyone who wants to become a resident. Becoming a resident gives you land in the city which you are allowed to build on. But, to get land, you have to contribute by making models. Read more here!

Soon, we will have a full website with all the details of this project at www.blendopolis.org

We now how a forum: http://lvlseven.com/blendopolis/forum/

List of Supporters: (if you don't want your name to be here let me know)

- Cognis (one of the project leaders)
- YellowLambo
- Nat
- DevinArndt
- Horis
- Vitaliy
- kekeljevic
- arexma
- mythcat
- secundar
- excalleber
- JamBay
- Ave
- C. Wynn
- kbot
- Blade_Rain
- Andrew-101
- hovergo

[YellowLambo]

I like the idea! I'll see if I can make a decent building.

[rewind81]

I like the idea! I'll see if I can make a decent building.

Forgot to mention this, but keep it as low poly as possible

[Nat]

This actually sounds like a pretty cool idea!

If I get a chance I might model a building

[Horis]

I would like to help.

Just tell me what`s low poligon.

No details?

[vitaliy]

well i got 3 buildings that i can donate to this already, low poly and fairly good detail..... no interiors thou... ill post them up a little later as soon as i get my laptop out of my rack and get it in my owkr space where i have internet to upload it lol

[kekeljevic]

Here is some ideas for this project:
Create landscape and make parcels for Blender Citizens (something like building grounds for homes). Any Citizen can build on his parcel what ever building and garden he (she) likes.
Than make it all for online playing and add chat feature.
When City grows, you can put some banners on public buildings and streets to gain some money for servers, programming and maintaining of City...

[arexma]

Well tell me what you think of the idea, and if it's possible, because I think it would be awesome.

I am sure one can earn a lot of money with it... oh wait, Second Life already did that ^^
However its a nice _idea_ indeed. But before calling for artists you should get down to planning:

Choice of engine - which has to happen _before_ you call for models because you have no idea yet what low poly is... how many polygons can the engine handle? how many buildings will be shown at once... with LOD or horizon clipping...

And if you implement kekeljevic´s thoughts:
Object Oriented Analysis and Design of the System
Server infrastructure - Housing costs
Database system

there is a broad way from an idea to starting a project.
Nevertheless an idea is useless unless some uses it

I would also use some constraints... like making districts in the city... many artists, many styles... like gangstertown district, toontown district, morbidtown district whatever.
then i see a CG charakter in a walkthrough animation moving from one district to another, staying the same charakter, but adapting to the style. ^^
would be a nice reel.

[mythcat]

I thinking some 3d chat or google map ...

[AD-Edge]

Its a cool idea, ive thought about doing something similar before.

There was another guy who attempted to do this, cant remember who tho, was a year or so ago.

[stanmarsh]

hello,

can you also make a blender cloud rendering system which can connect to other people for faster renders.

[secundar]

Some cool ideas here.

You could organize the project similar to Apricot in that there is a level that loads buildings (.blends) from a folder (or folder per district as recommended above.) A modular approach would make sense. Buildings could further link to props such as furniture, lighting, etc.

You'll want to create templates, a basic blend file with a city block grid on it to establish scale.

[eye208]

I see two problems here:

1. You can't rebuild Second Life. It's huge. Its server farms are massive. And it took its users several years to build the content.
2. Anything less than Second Life will be boring. What's the point of exploring a static city model? People keep coming back to SL for social networking and ever-changing content. Both things will be missing here.

However, the other half of the idea is very good: A repository of CC-licensed game engine props (low-poly architecture, vehicles, trees, indoor sets, furniture, humans, animals etc.) would turn Blender into a great platform for machinima production. If you set up such a repository, I will contribute models too.

[sick]

Its a cool idea, ive thought about doing something similar before.

There was another guy who attempted to do this, cant remember who tho, was a year or so ago.

It took me a while to remember his name, but I've found the thread.

His name's Cognis.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=108496

[rewind81]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I never really thought of it to be online, because I have no idea how to do that. Should I start a new thread with all the details in the Game Engine section?

About Low Poly, I have no idea how many polygons, i just didn't want people going completely all out with the detail.

I am launching a website soon and all the .blend files could be hosted there, in a repository like eye208 said. This could just be a project to produce lots of free models for the game engine. (The website is going to have lots of other blender content too)

[rewind81]

Here is a .blend file of what one of the sections in the city could look like. A group of artists could request how ever many of these and then they would build their district on them. I could make a map showing where all the squares are so people could chose.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=a...6ae6278221cc71

[dronn]

I think it is a nice idea. Especially with different districts and styles (some fantasy, some futuristic). With every building being unique it would be interesting to explore the city, even if it was static at first.

[Cognis]

It took me a while to remember his name, but I've found the thread.

His name's Cognis.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=108496

Yeah, that's BlenderLife(tm). Man did we work on that. I am still 120% behind the idea, though nowadays the pressures of real life limit my time a lot.

Our problem was that the Blender Game Engine (BGE) cannot update the contents of a game; every time someone changes the content of a building, the entire 'game' or city has to be reassembled manually. It's not a big task to do, but it has to be done _every_ time someone adds or changes something. We wanted something like a mini Second Life that everyone could change and improve and upload whenever they wanted.

If someone has a solution, or if this project finds another way to handle the idea, I still think it would R-O-C-K! Of course, having high-poly buildings for a city that could be rendered would also be sweeee-eet!

I'll keep lurking on this thread

EDIT: I just looked through some of my old notes on the BlendLife project. While I still do not know how to push the 'game' angle, I think I have all the needed stuff to launch a virtual city that can be explored in the Blender editor, complete with updating buildings, apartments, parks and so on that can all be rendered (think city scenes, skyline renders, etc.), and even an actual city 'economy' to reward people who produce models for it! I will need to do some tests, but I think it would work. Your game version could then be developed from that framework. How does that sound to everyone?

UPDATE: Just had a long soak in the tub. I decided that if all goes well, I will probably 'found' a Blender City this Sunday. It will not be a game-functional city, but it will be many other things. Not only will such a city provide a lot of models (probably not low-poly, tho), materials, etc., but the experiences gained should make a game-functional city far, far easier to get right. I guess I'll start out as mayor for the non-game city, but I will probably need a deputy mayor . This should free you (rewind81) up to get ideas for how to do the game-functional city.

[rewind81]

Sounds great cognis. I think I am going to add a webpage to my site thats is the center for all this.

[rewind81]

i can be co mayor

The city needs a good name.

Are you going to use something like that blend file i posted for a city block? I think that would work well.