Procedural vector map elements -- some experiments

[Jykke]

This procedural mapping thing is really interesting. I am testing few scripts at the moment to see if I can get medieval style 3d cities generated with them. I don't really have that much knowledge about programming / scripting, but I'll see what I can do x) Btw, here's a render of 3d city (quite simple) generated with suicidator city engine.

gilgamec, have you ever tried creating procedural 3d cities ? :S would be nice to know if someone had any experience with them.

[gilgamec]

gilgamec, have you ever tried creating procedural 3d cities ? :S would be nice to know if someone had any experience with them.

For a recent Challenge, I tried implementing the method from this paper, but it didn't turn out so well (more my fault than the method, though). (On a side note, that company makes some of the nicest procedural cities I've seen; their program is a touch out of my price range, though.) A couple of issues I discovered:

1. You have to understand the forces which cause people to move to a specific location. The above method is for a modern city; everything is predicated on fast transport (cars), real estate pricing, and zoning. In a medieval city, of course, the pressures will be different, and I haven't yet figured out a good set of replacements.
2. If you're going for a 3D city (as opposed to just a street plan), you have to understand the architecture of the building you're going to have in the city. Modern city elements are very modular: rows of windows, uniform stories, and so on. In a medieval city, the architecture is a great deal more idiosyncratic, and hence harder to make procedural. I don't really have any experience with that.

So, no, I don't really know a lot about getting procedural city creation to work; but I'd like to!

[Jykke]

I know that procedural mapping might be the only way that doesn't take hundreds of hours of time to create a 3d city for a map.. but getting the scripts etc right, it's not an easy task at all. I know that the house & road network can be easily done with image maps, so that's not a so big an issue than creating good looking medieval buildings is.

[gilgamec]

Gilgamec...is there any chance you can make a tiling version of this? I'd love to use it as a tiling texture.

Sure. Here's both hatched and not-hatched versions. The hatching is on a different scale than the trees, so it doesn't match up perfectly left-right; this may not be a concern.

If you're going to use them, they're licensed CC-BY.

[Redrobes]

I am testing few scripts at the moment to see if I can get medieval style 3d cities generated with them.

Dont forget to look at the Thatching for Dummies thread where we talk about making random 3D shaded cities. We pretty much have it all sorted except that we need something to place 2D footprints down in a sensible city like manner.

[Jykke]

Dont forget to look at the Thatching for Dummies thread where we talk about making random 3D shaded cities. We pretty much have it all sorted except that we need something to place 2D footprints down in a sensible city like manner.

The problem is that I would like to have the city in full 3d, have it be shaped according to terrain altitudes etc. Being able to export the models to various formats (.obj, .3ds) is a must. :S Actually I have found a proper program to do that , but I just have to figure out how I get it to make non-flat roofs