ESRI CityEngine - Creating Cities inside Logos and Logos inside Cities

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The best way to learn new modelling software is to step away from complex data and take a side look at its capabilities. We have used this approach to run through the various features of CityEngine, producing a series of movies based around the logo of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, here at University College London.

First up we integrated the CASA logo into the cityscape by manually tracing the logo and building a network around it. Via an import into iMovie the result is a playful fly around the logo:




Taking the concept further we built the city around the logo, using the nodes and hubs as interconnected cityscapes. With the city base rising out the sea it presents a different feel to the original movie:

Finally, we used an alpha channel on the logo, allowing us to lower the outline onto the cityscape:

The combination of Adobe Illustrator, ESRI CityEngine, AutoDesk 3DMax and finally Lumion make for a rapid way to create unique cityscapes. The next steps are to integrate actual data.....

CityEngine: ESRI and Lumion a first look.

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Yesterday a license for CityEngine landed on our desk from the nice people at ESRI and to be honest we were a little too excited for our own good, after all its only software. However, CityEngine and its integration with ESRI ArcGIS, while maintaining full export capabilities to load into 3DMax/Lumion/Unity etc, is a game changer.

It moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Over the coming weeks we will be putting the software through its paces and exporting into Max/Lumion and Unity as part of introducing CityEngines onto our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation. The clip below details out first output direct from CityEngine into Lumion, adding in a general landscape, sample trees and transport objects:




Linking in our previous post on ArcGIS Twitter Visualisation in Lumion it seems that the worlds of GIS and architectural visualisation/game engines are finally starting to become accessible.

Procedural/ESRI and NVIDIA: 3D Cities from 2D ArcGIS Data

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Procedural and ESRI have teamed up with NVIDIA to set up a pipeline for the creation, analysis and visualization of photorealistic 3D cities from 2D ArcGIS data. The video shows the creation of the 3D model of the City of Rotterdam in CityEngine:



3D in ArcGIS has always been a bit of a love/hate affair with us so the ability to create a workflow that includes the CityEngine is an intriguing development.

3D Rotterdam in the cloud: http://www.procedural.com/showcases/rotterdam.htmlNVIDIA

RealityServer: http://www.mentalimages.com/products/realityserver.html

ArcGIS 3D Analyst: http://www.esri.com/3d

CityEngine 2010: An Upgrade and New Licensing Models

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CityEngine is without question one of the best city authoring systems out there. In the past we always noted pricing as an issue, but with the release of City Engine 2010 they have a whole new pricing structure in place.

Highlights of the update are interactive editing of dynamic city layouts, node-based rule authoring, and a sketching tool for facades. In addition to that, CityEngine 2010 include advanced block subdivision, modeling of curved streets, new rule operations for instancing and asset search, native Collada support for assets, export instances with the new FBX 2011.2.

The clip below illustrates the power of the latest version:



As part of the new licensing models the CityEngine INDIE is available for $495 and CityEngine STUDENT for $149.

Head over to http://www.procedural.com/ for full details and a free trial. Really, if your interested in cities in any shape or form the trial is a must.

The Scalable City

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Scalable City creates an urban/suburban/rural environment via a data visualization pipeline. Each step in this pipeline builds upon the previous, amplifying exaggerations, artifacts and the patterns of algorithmic process.
The results of this are experiences such as prints, video installations and interactive multi-user games and virtual environments. We really like this, its an extremely impressive demo:



Scalable City is a project by Sheldon Brown and the Experimental Game Lab.

There is a 1.27 hr talk on the concept available via YouTube which is well with a look, it is also worth checking out the 'Construction Process' page over at http://www.sheldon-brown.net/

Thanks goes to Andrew Leahy from the University of Western Sydney for sending this in.

CityScape 1.8: GIS and OpenStreetMap Import Options

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PixelActive have released a new version of their CityScape software. We are a picky bunch here at digital urban but the demo of CityScape is impressive, especially the ability to import native GIS data, OpenStreetMap and export to AutoDesk. Combine this with Unity and you have a powerful city creation tool, complete with traffic.



Admittedly CityScape is priced for high-end users ($19,000) - but the free demo is a blast and a must download for anyone interested in building cities.

See http://pixelactive3d.com/ for download and more details.

CityEngine 2009.3

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The latest version of the CityEngine (2009.3) includes features such as advanced roof types and global texture mapping to make the creation of large urban 3D models even easier. We are big fans of the CityEngine, especially with its ability to import OpenStreetMap data for street layouts.

The movie below details the new City Wizard to create and generate whole cities from pre-defined templates with only a few mouse clicks:



Another nice touch is the ability to download a use a 30 Day trial, even if you have used a previous version.

What better way to spend your Christmas than building cities? Head over to http://www.procedural.com/cityengine/ for full details.

Procedural Building Generator v0.5 Launched

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Tyson Ibele, over at http://tysonibele.com/ has released the latest version of his Building Generator for 3D Max 9 and above. Development has been swift with the addition of textures a couple of weeks ago and now a notable update to the creation of windows/details on the buildings.


With the creation of digital cities the 'detail' is crucial, from shutters on windows to lights and blinds, they all add up to create a sense of place. We have not had chance to run the latest version yet as its just been released, but if its anything like the previous iterations it is one of the 'must' have scripts for building digital cities.

CityEngine 2009.2 Released

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Procedural Inc. has announced the CityEngine 2009.2, the latest version of its software for the fast creation, visualization and analysis of large 3D cities. The software is used by high-profile companies such as Foster+Partners, Microsoft, Navteq, Boeing, IBM, Thales, Blizzard, Square Enix, etc. and was awarded Killer Technology 2009 by 3D World magazine.

Personally, we really like the integration into game engines - the example of Crysis is notably impressive:

Key Highlights of CityEngine 2009.2

– Large Data Set Support (over 500‘000 buildings on 64bit)
– Map Projections (over 80 projections are supported)
– Accuracy Enhancements (enabling high precision at global scale)
– 3DS Export (plus advancements of Collada and FBX export)

Other improvements of CityEngine 2009.2 include selection-sets handling, interactive editing extensions, GUI refinements, better ATI-support, advanced python scripting and many more details providing a good user experience. For more information, see: http://www.procedural.com/cityengine/whats-new.html

Pricing and Availability
A free 30-day trial version is available for download at http://www.procedural.com. The software can be purchased via Procedural Inc.’s website, or by telephone order at +41 76 720 3303. The CityEngine retails from a starting price of $ 3,450.

Those wanting a cheaper route, complete with integration with Crysis via 3D Max take a look at the developing Procedural Buildings Generator or for the completely free package, Suicidator for Blender.

These are interesting times in the field of procedural cities...

Suicidator City Engine - Free Procedural City Script for Blender

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You wait for years for a free building/city generator and then two come along in the space of the week. Yesterday we detailed the Procedural Building Generator for Max and now the Suicidator City Engine (SCE) has been released. Running via a Python script in Blender, the results are as equally impressive:



The script allows you to automatically create a city by adjusting various parameters, such as city size and complexity, rather than creating each building, each street, and each texture manually.

Creating detailed cities and buildings has suddenly got so much easier and indeed free, which can only be a good thing.

Head over to the Suicidator City Engine page for full details.

Free Procedural Buildings Generator - Now with Textures

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The procedural buildings generator from http://www.tysonibele.com/ has eaten up quite a lot of our free time in the week since its was released. With updates coming thick and fast it now includes automatic texture creation complete with an included texture pack.


If digital urban gave out awards, this plugin would win a big shiny gold one, fantastic stuff and so refreshing to see this level of quality without an equally high price tag.

Head over to http://www.tysonibele.com/ for the download.

Free Procedural Buildings Generator Released for 3D Max

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Procedural building generators are few are far between so when one comes along that is not only powerful but also free it is well worth our attention. Tyson Ibele, over at http://tysonibele.com/ has released version 1.5 of his Building Generator for 3D Max 9 and above.

The clip below provides a glimpse of its output:

We are going to give it a spin later today - you can download Building Generator free via: www.tysonibele.com.

Thanks go to Karel Airapetjan for emailing us in the link.

CityEngine to Unity: Rapid City Modelling for Game Engines

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The CityEngine is a unique professional tool for creating, visualisating and exporting cityscapes. As such it is of notable use to the games industry with a quick and easy route into either 3D Max or the Unity Engine.

Unity supports a number of input formats, allowing for direct integration with the CityEngine with the following features:

* Direct model export to Unity via Autodesk FBX including textures - thus, generate'n'play your environment with a few clicks only.
* Arbitrary mesh granularities such as per-material groups or editable scene nodes are possible thanks to CityEngine's various export options such as "merge by material" or "single node objects". Most of these options are supported by Unity.
* Collider meshes (almost) for free: The CityEngine's CGA shape grammar is a perfect tool to generate and control low-res collider meshes in Unity (and they always adapt to model iterations).

The video below demonstrates a CityEngine-Unity-workflow.



It is impressive how easy it is nowadays to create buildings/cities and visualise them direct via a game engine...

See http://www.procedural.com/ for full details.

CityEngine 2009

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Procedural have released a new version of their CityEngine - 'CityEngine 2009'. The updated version provides new innovative tools for urban design and modeling on a citywide scale with he aim of working with complex 3D urban environments easier than ever before.

Key highlights of the CityEngine 2009 include:

#1: Interactive Editing (immediate mode, undo/redo, etc.)
#2: Improved 3D Export (Collada with instancing, 3ds Max, etc.)
#3: Support for Geospatial Data (import/export of GIS data)
#4: Improved Street Geometries (with round curbs, junction handling, etc.)
#5: Occlusion in CGA Shape Grammar (to query the spatial context)
#6: Reporting Functionality (Excel tables for master plans)
#7: Python Interface (to speed up and streamline repetitive tasks)
#8: Floating License (enables flexible network licensing installations)

Of particular note is the ability to import .shp files opening up the possibility to import MasterMap data into The City Engine and the report output for urban planning, the video below provides details on this feature:



There is also a free 30 day trial which is well worth a go..

Pixel City: Creating a Procedural Cityscape

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Shamus Young of Twenty Sided has a fantastic walk through of creating a Procedural City, complete with source code. Shamus's goals were to create a night time cityscape that made predominantly of of lights and suggestions rather than real detail. The movie below provides a look at its creation:


The city is entirely procedurally generated, no art assets, textures or models are used - which makes for a really interesting approach, especially from our point of view of always starting from the basic model/texture and building up to the cityscape.

See the 11 part write up, complete with code and demo over at Twenty Sided.

Thanks go to Radek for sending us the link to http://flowingdata.com/ who covered the project, a blog that is now bookmarked...

New York City 2259

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Procedural with their impressive cityengine is certainly a company to watch, we have had a chance to use their demo and the ability to import GIS layers, combined with the rapid creation of cities is certainly impressive. As such their work on New York City 2259 is well worth a look.

NYC 2259 by is the extrapolation of New York city 250 years into the future, inspired by the great 1998 motion picture The Fifth Element.

Today's street network of NY, imported from openstreetmap.org, has been extended to a bigger area, available due to the lower water levels in the future.
The example includes grammar rules to create futuristic skyscrapers in two levels of detail as well as flying cars - press play below:



Take a look at the NYC 2259 page for full details...

Procedual City Generator

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procedural city from javisantana on Vimeo.

We tip that a number of new players to come into the procedural city market this year after the success of the City Engine. The movie above comes from Javier Santana - note the pedestrians within the scene. Crowd Dynamic is another up and coming field, soon the production of cities, complete with traffic and crowd simulations, will be as simple as a click of a mouse...

CityEngine - Now for Mac

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We have been oddly quiet on the blog about the CityEngine, mainly due to a slight melt down in the lab of our windows machines. As such we are overjoyed by the release of the CityEngine for the Mac by Procedural Inc.

Featured below is a city based on the Apple Logo:



The CityEngine is one of the most powerful tools currently available for the creation of urban environments. Of note is its ability to import OpenStreet map data allowing a 3D road network to be quickly and easily developed.

The movie below illustrates the construction of a fantasy city:



Finally below illustrates the rebuilding of Rome:



We hope to set aside a few days in the new year to take a close look at the CityEngine - you can download a 30 day demo direct from Procedual.

Automatic Architecture: The CityEngine

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Pedro Martins emailed us a link to the 'CityEngine' by Pascal Mueller a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Computer Vision Lab of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

The CityEngine is focused on the procedural modeling of buildings and brings together the term 'Automatic Architecture' that is becoming increasingly common in the industry. We will have more on Automatic Architecture and work coming out research labs in Japan in a future post.

The YouTube demo reel below details Pascal's work on Pompeii and general cityscapes, its it both fascinating and impressive at the same time - bearing in mind all of this is automatic:



Take a look at the CityEngine wiki for more info, including SIGGRAPH papers.

Its not surprising to hear that Google is interested in procedural city modelling techniques and i would expect to see Pompeii and other historic reconstructions in Google Earth sometime soon.