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Procedural modeling is an umbrella term for a number of techniques in computer graphics to create 3D models from rules instead of constructing them from geometric primitives such as cubes and spheres.
Hence, procedural modeling focuses on the rule-based generation of semantic 3D content, rather than the cumbersome and complex manual editing of individual 3D primitives. As a consequence, procedural modeling is several times more efficient than traditional modeling.
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In film, games, and other applications, consumer expect richer, higher-quality digital content for their dollar. Because budgets won't allow content producers to increase cost significantly, they have only one choice: they must improve their tools. Procedural modeling is the primary ingredient in these tools!
One of the main drivers of these trends is urban content. Cities are huge, richly detailed artifacts often required in digital productions. Modeling them with existing tools can take hundreds of man years. The cost-effective solution for this challenge is the CityEngine.
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The CityEngine is one of the most mature procedural modeling tools available.
The CityEngine allows the efficient creation of 3D cities and buildings in movies, games and virtual worlds. This helps companies to save costs and enables 3D content creators to focus on the creative creation process.
The CityEngine free artists to spend more time creating and polishing, rather than performing mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks.
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Whenever you create a building use the CityEngine. The advantages of procedural modeling are already stated by just one building and you will be amazed when you create a city.
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If you need to model a house or a city, you are in the game! The CityEngine allows the efficient creation of 3D cities and buildings in movies, games and virtual worlds.
The field of use is therefore versatile. To give you an idea how you can benefit from the CityEngine, have a look at our industries.
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The use of the CityEngine is as easy to learn as scripting languages with the advantage of the visual feedback!
Users unfamiliar with scripting generated grammars (designers, archeologists, urban planner, etc.) can without difficulty use the CityEngine's visual interface or its image-based methods.
For e.g.: while archeologists have detailed architectural knowledge of the monuments and settlements they study, they have little formal training in CAD or computer graphics modeling packages. The CityEngine can bridge this gap, providing user-friendly, high-level interface and filling in detail where the archeological record is incomplete.
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Workflow in the CityEngie typically begins with a specific idea from a photograph, a drawing, an architectural figure or a new design concept.
The next step is to analyze the design and find the most important parameters. We then encode shape grammar rules for assembling the building's crude mass model out of basic solids (mainly boxes) and for constructing its facades.
After confirming that the resulting proportions match a specific sketch, we carefully start randomizing parameters to create stochastic rules that generate a whole city. It's important to begin with one working instance and then add randomness gradually, because too much randomness creates chaotic, uninteresting design.
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We plan to include first image-based modeling functionalities in the next major release of the CityEngine.
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For most of your usages the model creation process will be almost instant. Since you can create vast amounts of geometry there are technical limits. In that case you can simply submit batch jobs for the generation.
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CityEngine can produce as much buildings and objects as you need. Within one pass you can generate large scenes with mid-detailed buildings. For scenes with high-detailed buildings you can submit batch jobs for the generation.
For exports, there are no such limitations.
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CityEngine is really flexible in permitting the user to build any kind of buildings and 3D objects from low-polygonal to high-resolution geometry. Additionally it is possible to manage the preferred level-of-detail. So the user can decide to get the maximum performance for his working pipeline by for example generating low-detail models for large camera distances. With only few adjustments he can generate from the scene a more detailed version for a close-up.
If your set requests extreme facade close-ups, CityEngine will generate the needed geometry along with needed scene materials, so there is no real limit on nearness.
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Yes. CityEngine is quite ideal for the game development pipeline. Especially when the creation of building models comes into play - since asset creation is one of the most time consuming tasks in development. CityEngine offers different levels-of-detail settings for the geometry generation process so that the user will always get optimized asset data. The inbuilt material and shading network editor automatically produces shading networks and uv-sets. With FBX and Collada file-type-support there is unlimited connectivity to your developer package. Users are also free to use Wavefront .obj for data exchange (please see also: Production Pipeline).
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Yes. CityEngine closes the gap between preproduction and postproduction. Users benefit from consistent geometry scenes since postproduction services can elaborate CityEngine assets from the preproduction team into high detailed versions. That is a real break through in visual effects. For the first time you do not need to remodel your scene for the final production shots. CityEngine offers different levels-of-detail settings for the geometry generation process so that the user will always get optimized asset data. The inbuilt material and shading network editor automatically produces shading networks and uv-sets. With FBX and Collada file-type-support there is unlimited connectivity to your dcc application. Users are also free to use Wavefront .obj for data exchange. Software rendering can be achieved through pixar's RenderMan and nVidia's Mentalray (please see also: Production Pipeline).
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CityEngine is a standalone program, but can import and export files from other 3D packages. With FBX and Collada file-type-support integrated into CityEngine a vast amount of applications can connect to CityEngine by getting most out of CityEngine scenes. For best backward compatibility CityEngine additionally offers the Wavefront .obj file type for geometry, material, light and camera export. CityEngine supports common image file types (please see also: Production Pipeline)
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Yes. CityEngine can export scenes into the Collada file format.
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Yes, of course! CityEngine writes out FBX, which is largely promoted by Autodesk and is well understood in recent releases of Maya and 3ds Max. For older releases we suggest to use the Wavefront .obj file type instead.
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CityEngine is a city modeling solution. For that reason CityEngine only offers hardware rendering via the built OpenGL renderer.
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Currently, there is no API or SDK available. However, we are in contact with several game companies and plan to offer such a solution in the near future.
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You need a working internet connection to be able to download examples, tutorials and watch learning videos.
In case you are behind a proxy, add the following lines to the .CityEngine.ini file (located either in your home directory, or for older versions in the same directory as the CityEngine executable e.g. C:\Program Files\Procedural\CityEngine\CityEngine.ini). - http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort indicate the proxy server and port that the http protocol handler will use.
- http.nonProxyHosts indicates the hosts which should be connected too directly and not through the proxy server. The value can be a list of hosts, each seperated by a |, and in addition a wildcard character (*) can be used for matching. For example: -Dhttp.nonProxyHosts="*.foo.com|localhost".
To find the correct values for your proxy server setup, you might need to contact your system administrator.
CityEngine.ini excerpt with example proxy configuration
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-Dhttp.proxyHost=proxy.YOURDOMAIN.com
-Dhttp.proxyPort=8888
-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=="*.YOURDOMAIN.com|localhost".
Or as an alternative, you can manually download the example and tutorial projects (as zip archives) here:
After downloading you have to import the archive files into your current workspace by using
File -> Import -> Existing Projects into Workspace -> Select archive file ...
Note that you do not have to un-zip the files.
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