SceneCity 🏬

It may be because you’re using SCG 0.5.4, the latest is 0.5.5.

Shaba1,
what’s up?
your not using the right versions.
you need to use 0.5.5 with latest svn.
If your having trouble all the time with addons & versions, get the addon builds by myself or bat3a as we include all the working addons for each build.
I just tested with latest blender & latest city gen & no problems.

Egg-Salad! You and your associates are fore-sightful.

Been working hard on the main features for 0.6

  • 3d preview
  • non-overlapping buildings
  • easy export to game engines such as Unity

To that end, I had to rewrite (and learn) a lot of stuff, but I’m pretty confident the next version will be great :slight_smile:
This is all WIP, so still pretty crude.

SCG is standalone now, with 3d preview
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S0bI9NqVlVk/T_Fn4ZqwHYI/AAAAAAAAXe8/UYGy8lveA_I/s640/terrain%2520with%2520underwater.jpg

First Blender import of new cities
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-IRtqW9eV_og/T_Fn4UvXT7I/AAAAAAAAXe8/4NUkYmf9PM4/s640/first%2520textured%2520render%2520in%2520Blender.jpg

First Unity import

Long awaited feature now in the works: custom meshes for everything, buildings, street elements, road portions, etc…

In this render the first custom building mesh.

  • made in Blender
  • imported into SCG-
  • then exported back to Blender for rendering.

SCG will include a standard set of premade buildings, but user will be able to input his own.
Roads still missing.

https://p.twimg.com/Aw87169CEAIyW_j.jpg:large

Hey, it’s me from twitter, I asked yesterday about exporting generated cities to Autodesk Maya. I got as far as layering some of the materials on the buildings in Maya, but how do you map the roof and second materials on? Are some of the bars alpha masks for some of the material layer?

I’ve never used Maya, but I’m sure you can make a mesh have more than one material. In Blender, the buildings have several materials applied to them, then each face in the mesh is applied one of those materials.

Exporting the full materials can be a bit tricky, because they use the Blender node system, which I guess exists also in Maya, and can’t be exported/imported, but must be recreated by hand. But as you said, they’re just materials layered on top of each other, blended through gray-level masks.

Also, you can always bake materials into textures.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Bake

I simplified the generated materials in the next version (0.6) to work better with Maya, Unity and software other than Blender.

Road portions added.
I still have to take care of those crossings.

https://p.twimg.com/AyKESp2CMAEDRR6.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/CouturierArnaud/status/225888387322753025/photo/1/large

Thanks for the baking tutorial link. :slight_smile: You can assign different materials to different faces in Maya, but I haven’t figured how to do that automatically for roofs and some side faces yet. Selecting faces manually is out of the questsion…

Depending on the export format you choose, per-face materials are stored and should be used by the importing software. I know OBJ does store per face information.
Have you tried different export formats ?

Is there any expected release date on version 0.6?

I was planning a first release candidate in a week or two.
I need to bring 0.6 to where 0.5 is in terms of functionality. 0.6 is more than an evolution of 0.5, it is a new solid base (standalone app with 3d preview), on which future updates should be easier to implement, therefore faster to release. I hope to reach 1.0 at the end of this year !

Blockers left for 0.6:

  • roads crossings
  • terrain splatting textures (smooth transitions from a material to the other, eg grass to rock)
  • buildings other than cubes (pre-made meshes, or procedural or a mix of both, I’ll see which to support first for 0.6, probably procedural only)
  • GUI controls

I’ve also been doing a bit of research work on new Java technologies and contacted a core contributor of the OpenGL binding for java to bring SCG to the next level.
Planning also on renaming it to something shorter, easier to pronounce and remember. I will announce a proper name once 0.6 is released.

I moved the city generator’s blog to Blogger, where I’ll post stuff about my other projects as well.
http://blog.cgchan.com/

Drupal’s blogging capabilities are mediocre, and Blogger is so easy to use.

Thank you for the quick response.

Painted lines on roads can also be made of meshes instead of textures. While textures allow more possibilities, such as “washed” paint, meshes don’t suffer from image interpolation with close-ups.

Click the images for full size (2000 x 1500)




Roads are mostly done.

Concentrating on realistic procedural buildings now.
First basic result below
https://p.twimg.com/AzSpfe8CMAAjOyE.jpg:large

nice one :slight_smile:

This looks so sweet. Are there any example blender files available to download?

That’s a good idea!
I never thought about releasing example blend files of the generator’s output.
I may post one here in the next days. Thanks again for the idea :slight_smile:

Development news on the blog
blog.cgchan.com/2012/08/city-generator-06-update-4.html