{"id":749,"date":"2012-09-24T09:51:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T09:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/?p=749"},"modified":"2012-09-24T09:55:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T09:55:19","slug":"cityengine-modelling-older-existing-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"CityEngine Modelling Older Urban Areas (the power of random)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
How does one model the random nature of urban areas?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whilst modelling planned areas can be relatively easy, modelling existing urban areas convincingly is difficult. \u00a0 It’s the random nature of human existence I guess. \u00a0 But there’s they key, ‘random’, sometimes when modelling in 3D you need to add elements that aren’t planned, when I look at photo realistic models it’s the little details that count.<\/p>\n

We’re doing projects in the Middle East that require some 3D modelling, but some new areas and zones are up against older established areas. \u00a0 We haven’t got the resources of google to model exactly what’s on the ground but with CityEngine we can give \u00a0a good approximation of visualisation purposes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
With CityEngine of course!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Okay it’s a bad choice of image (above) but this rule file I’m working on adds random elements on a per floor level to my traditional building types within an historic\u00a0Arabic\u00a0core. \u00a0 You can see we’ve got covered market streets (I need to add some pillars), but the buildings now have air conditioning units and balconies in a random manner. \u00a0The balconies are placed on the main buildings based on a set of variables one is depth from building, so some are\u00a0recessed (more normal in this part of the world) and some\u00a0are\u00a0protruding.<\/p>\n

I’ve got a set of door types that are only placed on the front of buildings within a set of parameters as well as windows and shopfronts. \u00a0 Then there’s the roof with water tanks, and satellite dishes. \u00a0\u00a0Except\u00a0the satellite dishes all point the same way, so my rule file lets me globally rotate every satellite dish in the model.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0air-conditioner\u00a0units and balconies are sketchup models exported as dae or obj files. \u00a0 Because it’s rule based I can also randomise those as well, CityEngine in fact, lets you pick assets using a wild card ‘*’ so I can choose a specific balcony or in this case a random one:<\/p>\n

asset_balcony = fileRandom(“assets\/detailedBuildings\/BuildingFeatures\/balcony*.obj”)<\/p>\n

The line above will pick any obj file that starts with the word balcony, what’s useful about this is that I don’t have to add additional lines to my code to my rule file to add new balconies, I can just export from SketchUp straight to that directory,\u00a0refresh\u00a0and the rule file will pick it up.<\/p>\n

This lets me model large areas with relative ease and with a small change to the rule file my model can look totally different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whilst modelling planned areas can be relatively easy, modelling existing urban areas convincingly is difficult. \u00a0 It’s the random nature of human existence I guess. \u00a0 But there’s they key, ‘random’, sometimes when modelling in 3D you need to add elements that aren’t planned, when I look at photo realistic models it’s the little details […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[145,7,25,54,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-cityengine","category-gis","category-planning","category-tips","category-workflow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749\/revisions\/754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geoplanit.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}