SceneCity 🏬

[Auuman_Anubis]

@Taamalus

3D models are can be ported into the CryEngine with either Collada or fbx.
Your site says that the software is actually a standalone product, but you need Blender somehow. What I want to know is, once I import the file into Blender, can I then export it (our rough levels) as either as a collada ( .dae) or FBX file? If yes, the levels could then imported it into the CryEngine.
Sure, making levels is a lot of work, but if we can safe some time, to generate buildings for the atmosphere, your software would be a tremendous help.

You’re question I think relates to blender more than it does Scene City. Whatever limitations exist for exporting collada or FBX from blender I would expect apply to Scene City since it’s sending the data to Blender first.

The question is really, “what can blender export in collada and FBX?”

[Taamalus]

@Auuman Anubis

You’re question I think relates to blender more than it does Scene City. Whatever limitations exist for exporting collada or FBX from blender I would expect apply to Scene City since it’s sending the data to Blender first.

The question is really, “what can blender export in collada and FBX?”

OK Sold. Downloading as we speak.
(If it is only a question of Blender - whatever it is, it will be solvable.)

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

@Smoother the scale is one Blender unit equals 10 meters. You’re free to scale the city up or down, as you need. Just scale the parent object, called “city”.

@Taamalus said in his reply, exporting from Blender has nothing to do with Scene City, it has to do with Blender’s export capabilities, and the export format. FBX is the format with wich you’ll have the best results I think. Exporting the geometry is usually easy, it’s the materials that pose problem. So my answer is: yes you can export the cities in FBX or Collada from Blender. How much manual work will be necessary to make those exports useable in CryEngine, I cannot say.

[fbar]

Hi

I’m a buyer of the previous version. I got your mail that:

@piiichan

it seems the download link is not working properly.
I’ll fix the issue ASAP, and give you further instructions pretty shortly.

Are you still working on it or did my spam-filter catch your next mail?

Thanks and regards, looks awesome, cannot wait to try it

[jeffmorris]

piichan, I’m thinking of buying Scene City. I tried City Engine but it costs $500. I wish to create 3D models of cities for games that will be created using Unreal Engine 4.X. Will Scene City create buildings, streets, and terrains from files imported from Open Street Maps or from USGS National Maps website?

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

@fbar you should have received an email titled “Download Instructions for Scene City 0.7” from BMT Micro the 13th of December. If not, let me know, I’ll send you another link.

@jeffmorris Not yet. It’s a feature I’d like to add in future versions though. Also, exporting entire cities from Blender to external game engines isn’t easy at the moment, that’s something I’m also seriously considering.

Happy new year full of 3d and cities to all reading this

[fbar]

@piiichan

@fbar you should have received an email titled “Download Instructions for Scene City 0.7” from BMT Micro the 13th of December. If not, let me know, I’ll send you another link.

Ah ok, I got it and downloading now (1.9GB, will take a while).
I did search for mails from your email-address so I did not see that mail.
Thanks

[Taamalus]

@piiichan

Happy new year full of 3d and cities to all reading this

Happy New Year to you too!
So far I can methodically export individual structures into the CryEngine. Hey, it’s better then doing this from scratch.
CryBlend may be ready in a view days, and then the export will be easier still. Once ready, if you like I’ll post images.

Thanks for your hard work so far, I love your software. Best wishes for 2015 and beyond.

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

Thanks Taalamus
If you have any result so far, I’m really interested to see !

[asmithey]

Hi,

I am considering buying Scene City. I have a project where the client wants an aerial shot for a new building. He needs the existing buildings to be shown in the distance. Most of the buildings are one to two story buildings. The just need to be descriptive not exact but have the same relative height.
Can you tell Scene city to only populate buildings with in a certain height range? Can I load a USGS map and place proxies where I would like the buildings to go so they are in a relatively accurate location? Does this work with Blender 2.71 or 2.73?
Thanks

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

@asmithey, I’m afraid what you’re asking is not implemented yet. The height range is something I already have on my todo list. As for the proxies, you can do whatever you like once the city is in Blender, you can remove individual buildings and replace them with your own, they’re all standard Blender objects in the scene. Scene City works with Blender 2.72 and 2.73

[chaad]

Hi.
Dont work for me in blender 2.73. After export, Just objet nul in scene . When i render, just black screen ? I dont anderstand.

[chaad]

Bravo Piiichan !

[seanser]

Hi Piichan, Is there any word of a trail version? I’m really interested in this release of Scene City but I’ll want to be using it with V-ray and Thea render and also find out how easy it is to customize building options. These things are important to me and I’m afraid I can’t afford to spend $80 if it isn’t suitable.

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

@seanser The free version will probably be released along with the next version, 0.8. I’ll announce it when it’s ready

[seanser]

Cheers Piichan, I’ll most likely go ahead and buy it this week anyway.

[seanser]

OK, I’ve purchased and downloaded the program, I’ll give a brief overview of it for anyone interested. For me, Scene City installed without any problems on Windows 7, it seems to be created with/around the Unity game engine. I have an i7 980x cpu, nvidia gtx580 3GB and 12GB of system RAM. With these specs the app runs and navigates very smoothly.

This 0.7 version has limited creation options, there is a weather tab containing four HDRI preset skies that are quite nice. Next there is a terrain tab with 3 preset sizes 320, 640 and 1280 sq metres. There are some mountain and water generating options which use sliders to determine the mountain height and water depth and percentage sliders that determine land coverage. Each has a few different texturing options. After adjusting the sliders you hit a generate terrain button. In this version you cannot manually sculpt or place the mountains and water.

Next, there is a roads tab. Currently it only has two options, a max road length in metres and number of cross roads as a percentage. In Ver 0.7 the roads only create straight New York city type blocks.

The final creation tab is to generate buildings, there is currently only one option which is the amount of buildings as (land?) percentage. The generating process is very fast but again there are only a small number of different buildings and assets, even so the generated cities do look quite nice, if a little repetitive.

There is an export button which sends all of the generated assets to Blender using a linked libraries structure with a pre-made materials and textures setup for use with Blender Internal and Cycles. The exporting process runs quite smoothly.

Inside SCG there is a nice navigation and street view first person walk around feature.

Personally, I was interested to see if I could render the final output using external engines. For V-Ray, this is not a problem and is just a matter of editing the material properties inside the materials.blend. It is also possible to edit the different buildings and assets as you normally would inside of Blender. Of course, it is also possible to bring in some of your own assets to create a bit more variety. The buildings generated by SCG in 0.7 don’t have nicely laid out UV’s but the models are decent and when rendered they do look pretty good.

At this stage of development I would conclude that there is a lot of potential here. The addition of curved and diagonal roads and the ability to do some manual editing of terrain and roads before exporting to Blender would be a great addition and even at this stage, it would be really nice if there was a few more buildings and street furniture in the package.

Over the past while, I have been working on creating my own handmade sci-fi city. In the next couple of days I’ll work on merging my own assets with SCG and I’ll make some renders with V-Ray to see what I can come up with. I’ll post some results when done.

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

Thank you seanser for your very detailed feedback it will be useful to other users, and to me as well, to improve the generator. You gave a honest description, I agree with everything you wrote.

Yes Scene City is based on Unity, and more variety and features will be added in the next version. I’m on it already. I also take note of your wanted features.

I’m very interested to see your renders, if you’re willing to share them, especially with V-Ray, as I don’t use that engine.

[rambrogi]

Hello-

Just downloaded my copy of Scene City 0.7, and have run into a frustrating problem This actually occurs across Linux, Mac AND Windows under Blender 2.73. I can go in to scene city, just generate a terrain, export the scene, and can open in blender. IF however, I then add just roads or roads and buildings to the scene, export, blender will exit when I try and load. Traces aren’t really screaming that there is an error, so I was thinking perhaps there is a user setting that limits object count (or something) that I need to change. I can go down into the lib folder and open single objects without issue. Really sense it may be a size of scene thing (willing to be proven wrong), although I get the same fault if I choose the smallest city profile. I have 16 GB RAM, Radeon card on my Linux node, so I don’t think it is a resource issue.

Any one seen this behavior before ?

[piiichan (Arnaud Couturier)]

Hi @rambrogi

this issue is with Blender 2.73. There is a bug in Blender that makes it crash if auto-run of scripts is enabled. I hope it’s fixed in Blender 2.74, I’m going to test it.

In the meantime, you can disable auto-run of scripts in Blender (user preferences -> file), and it will work. All you’ll have to do then, to have your cities in Blender, is execute the import script manually once Scene City has exported your city and opened Blender for you. Simply click on the “Run script” button in the text panel, in city.blend.

Let me know if you have any other problems.