So I am going to preface my question with the fact that I am a newb. Right, to the point. So ESRI Cityengine as you know is a modeling software specialized for creating urban 3D environments. However I can’t afford the price. I have just been informed on a Facebook modeling group that “It isn’t about the kind of software you use but how YOU use it! remember, it isn’t the software that does the art, its the imagination and ability of the artist.” which makes total sense, i agree 100%. However, a dedicated software interface would make life a lot easier and speed up time. Right so to the question. Are there any software packages like Sketchup (in addition to Sketchup) that you can refer me to? If you were to do this blender how would you approach this? Are there any sites where i can learn about creating cities, best practices, common pitfalls, etc etc? I am willing to pay for these sites if this a required. The way I learned blender was by buying a ton of classes on udemy and just hibernating for a while. Thank for reading this very long post!
People make their entire careers off of ESRI GIS software, but it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to do some kind of science or engineering on real data? Then ESRI applications will be one of the possible softwares you will need. If you just want to do VFX or Architectural visualization than Blender will work for what you need to do.
I just picked up this SceneCity plugin:
Which looks to be pretty good, but I haven’t had time to really get into it yet.
I am trying to model the environment for a game. I was aiming for a Japanese feel, nothing close to a city as big as GTA. Something vastly smaller like Deuce Ex: mankind undivided, i don’t know if you are familiar. I know this will still take a lot of work. I have experience in blender but not enough to wrap my head around on where to start or how to tackle such a challenge. do you know of any tutorials, or online classes in city/architecture modeling? or any advice?
CG Geek has some well made Tutorials on generating roads for example.
My advice is to start small by building assets you can reuse or easy modify like roads, road signs, sidewalks etc. Try to Map photos on a Building for example. You can achive some nice results with that.
use Google Maps and try to rebuild a specific area. You get used to use assets, what additional models/materials are needed an so on.
I have to rebuild a lot of infrastructure for our projects and collected a lot of assets with different levels of detail. After some projects you will start to get a clue where detail is needed and where you can save time and memory.