SceneCity šŸ¬

*employee

ā€¦

Nice work watsnick!!!

Thank you very much for sharing your work, very nice :grinning: And such a big screen!! :open_mouth: Iā€™m glad SceneCity helped you! More detailed included assets are on the way.

I released SceneCity 1.7 :grinning:


It is mostly about much improved maps features, and the addition of terrains features. Check the full list on the main doc page:
https://scenecity17doc.cgchan.com/

Happy city blending :slight_smile:
https://www.cgchan.com/

8 Likes

Hi.
Help please.
I study the old version docs and do in a blender 2.8 with 1.7 Scenecity

Faced with some things:

  1. the orientation of the axes. The object (my road object) in the viewport is horizontal, but after applying the group becomes on sideways. But probably just need to set the axes correctly.

  2. Object getter for buildings not load children instances if instance not correctly named

If i try to add as instance as in doc for old version i have

But ok. If you study carefully you can understand where to find.


But how to get this name select for renaming - copy/paste? Or just add " instance" at the end?

Do you have discord?
Thank you

Hello Ssllav,

You should read the documentation for the current version 1.7, not the old versions. You have a link on SceneCityā€™s main page.

Normally if you follow the doc here, you should be ok.

It is not a matter of naming. This issue is because you specified object hierarchies for the buildings (the buildingā€™s parent object), in the ā€œobjects getterā€ node, then selected the ā€œdupli vertsā€ instanciation method, in the objects instancer node. The dupli verts method tries its best to reconstruct objects hierarchies (roof objects, props, floors etcā€¦), but dupli verts instances cannot have modifiers applied on them (thatā€™s how Blender works). However the original buildings use the array modifiers to repeat the floor objects. To avoid that limitation, you have to specify NOT object hierarchies for the buildings, but group instances instead.

Yes, but Iā€™m rarely on it. For support, I prefer direct emails, or here, as you prefer.

1 Like

Thank you. I started a few day ago and seems doc`s was a bit less than now.

It might be later, but I hope it is useful.
Select road portion. Click the Items tab (N - > Item). Scale of mesh must be 1. Dimension for this mesh must be 10 max by largest (longest side). (it`s if Units = None or 10m if in Metric)
This is important. This is mean 1x1 unit.
You need to scale road to 10 meters, then press Ctrl+A and apply Scale.

Thank you for the support to others :slight_smile:

Piichan. I have a unique situation. I brought Scene City almost 3 years ago. I installed it but never used it. I still have a copy of my invoice. Do I need to pay full price for the latest version ? Also is it still possible to get the latrst old version that still works for blender 2.79. I havenā€™t completely changed to 2.81 yet.

I believe you simply need to be transferred from the SceneCity website system to Gumroad at no cost - thats what Arnaud did for me a while back. I would guess he can do that for you when he sees this!

Yes, send me an email with the one you bought, and as @giacometti777 wrote, Iā€™ll transfer you to Gumroad :slight_smile: The latest version for Blender 2.79, which is 1.4, is available in the Gumroad productā€™s download section.

1 Like

I emailed you a copy of the invoice today

Replied :slight_smile:

Hi Arnaud!

Do you think you might consider using duplifaces instead of dupliverts and adding some size randomization? I am kinda hitting a wall in realism/flexibility with the current implementation. Or maybe I am missing something and this functionality is already there?

Hello @giacometti777,
are you talking about the grid cities? If so, what you would like to have is buildings with varying numbers of floors, to vary their height?

Yes - grid cities!

I am more talking about subtle size changes between instances to avoid seeing the same exact same scale silhouette repeated. Basically just having duplifaces support the instancing so the instances could have some size variation (which is not possible with dupliverts I think - someone correct me if I am wrong).

On your suggestion - I am trying to avoid having too many unique meshes to keep bvh cache times as short as possible.

Yes, by nature, dupli instances cannot vary in any way, except for their material with the help of the random value node. Thatā€™s a limitation in Blender, by design. The advantage is sheer performance, we can achieve massive scales with duplis. Object instances, even instances of the same data (eg same mesh, or same collection), real objects are heavier. Normally, past a few tens of thousands of objects, Blender will grind, no matter the performance of your computer. If you have a unique datablock (eg unique mesh) per object, and you have thousands of themā€¦ wellā€¦ you have the best in terms of uniqueness for each instance, but the worst performance.

Iā€™m aware of this current limitation in SceneCity. Real, useful, easy to use building generators that can make each building as unique as possible (within user control, and using user models) require careful design and research, Iā€™m on it, theyā€™ll definitely come out this year, Iā€™ll give more details when I have results to show. In the meantime, one very pragmatic approach is to simply duplicate your existing buildings, but you add or remove a few floors, and use them as new buildings in the node tree. That way, with little work, youā€™ll have varying heights in your city. It should break the repetitiveness quite well.

Speaking of grid cities, youā€™ll be glad to know that Iā€™m simplifying the workflow. In the coming versions, theyā€™ll require less nodes, and therefore less setup, less clutter in the city graph, and be more scalable (for instance adding many more buildings models quickly and easily)

1 Like

I believe I am following and your points are well made!

However - after creating a grid city I am able to go to the city dupliverts and make them into faces of varying sizes in edit mode and switch the instancing from vertices to faces and check ā€œscale by face sizeā€. It seems like adding this option would be pretty simple compared to the main complexity of SceneCity, right? For my uses the performance stays workable and I can get a variety of sizes. But maybe that is actually slowing things down more than I think due to even simple scaling and I need to experiment more.

I see. Scaling by faces size is an option I did not consider, because I assume the buildings must stay at the same scale as the rest of the scene (same windows, doors, floor height, props size etc), and they must fit together (not overlap if too big or create holes in the city if too small). If in your situation different scales for your buildings are not an issue, yes itā€™s a simpler solution, go for it. But I hear you, scaling the entire building for grid cities should be an option, Iā€™m taking note, Iā€™ll add that option somehow.

Iā€™m pretty confident scaling has no effect on performance :slight_smile:

1 Like