CityEngine

The CityEngine is a high-end 3D computer graphics and 3D modeling software for professional users in entertainment, architecture , urban planning and general 3D content creation for the efficient vizualisation of urban 3D environments originally developed by Procedural Inc.
Procedural Inc. is a spin-off of ETH Zürich, where the underlying unique procedural modeling technology has been invented and developed.
Background
Modeling a city poses a number of problems to computer graphics. Every urban area has a transportation network that follows population and environmental influences, and often a superimposed pattern plan. The buildings appearances follow historical, aesthetic and statutory rules. To create a virtual city, a roadmap has to be designed and a large number of buildings need to be generated. The CityEngine uses a system using a procedural approach based on L-systems to model cities.
From various image maps given as input, such as land-water boundaries and population density, the CityEngine generates a system of highways and streets, divides the land into lots, and creates the appropriate geometry for the buildings on the respective allotments. For the creation of a city street map, L-systems have been extended with methods that allow the consideration of global goals and local constraints and reduce the complexity of the production rules. An L-system that generates geometry and a texturing system based on texture elements and procedural methods compose the buildings.
Feature
The capabilities of the CityEngine include:

Procedural Street Network Construction: The CityEngine includes street grow tools to quickly design and construct urban layouts. Street patterns such as grid, organic or circular are available and the topography of the terrain is taken into account.

Import of Street Networks or Lots: Real street networks of any city in the world can be imported from OpenStreetMap. This allows for a quick generation of existing urban surroundings. Furthermore street networks or lots designed in other programs can be imported via the DXF file format.
Scripting 3D Buildings: The world's first shape grammar implementation is the core of the CityEngine. The simple scripting language is specialised for architectural 3D content and offers unlimited modeling possibilities to control or vary mass, elements, proportions, rhythms or materials.

Parametric Modeling of 3D Buildings: A convenient interface to control specific building parameters such as the height or age is provided. Parameter modifications invoke the automatic regeneration of the 3D model with all architectural elements correctly aligned.

Parametric Modeling of 3D Streets: Similar to the buildings, street appearances can be controlled via a parametric interface, resulting in immediate visual feedback. For example, the profiles of streets can be quickly edited.

Map-Controlled City Modeling: The parameters of the many buildings and streets can be controlled globally via image maps. This allows for intuitive city modeling and quick changes.

Batch Export of 3D Models: The CityEngine has very advanced functionalities to export generated models to any kind of production pipeline. Supported file formats include Collada, FBX, OBJ, RIB and mental images' MI.
System Requirements
Hardware:
* 2GHz dual core CPU or better (at least Pentium4 compatible Intel/AMD)
* 2 GB of RAM or more
* 500 mb of free disk space or more
* Graphics Card
** NVIDIA: Geforce 6xxx / Quadro or better NVIDIA graphics card
** ATI: Radeon X1600 or better ATI graphics card
* Network adapter

Operating System:
* Windows XP 64bit, Windows Vista 64bit
* Windows XP, Windows Vista
* Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) 32bit, Intel only
* Linux x86 (only 32-bit versions supported)
**= 2.2.1 of the GTK+ widget toolkit and associated libraries (GLib, Pango)
** for help system: install xulrunner package and add environment variable "MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME" pointing to the xulrunner

Software:
* OpenGL 2.0 driver (e.g. latest NVIDIA or ATI drivers)
* For Autodesk Maya and Max, the FBX plug-in 2009.3 is required
Version release dates history
* 2008.3 December 2008
* 2008.2 November 2008
* 2008.1 July 2008

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu