[CityGen] City generator

thomthom

I uploaded a first rough draft for the core: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=19492

And the Street Generator module: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=19493

I was thinking that we could continue the over all concept discussion here. And use the two other threads for specific development discussion.
I figured that unless we split the development discussion for each module the thread would become very confusing quickly. Feel free to suggest different organization. I just wanted to get something out there.

Gaieus

Just feel free, Thom, to organise the discussion as you guys need. I see both Remus and Chris is in the "team" and since they are mods as well, they can easily move/split/merge topics/posts.

Once you get to a stage, we can even create a new/temporary subforum to collect all the discussions if really needed.

Edson

this is already exciting as it is! best wishes for SG!

Jernej Vidmar

Hi guys,

I see you have opened a very interesting topic here

I would love to actively participate in the development of application you are aiming to make, but my main priority is to develop Modelur further We have quite some work to do before we reach the first full version... However, If I can help you out with something, please let me know!

We don't have any plans to add procedural functionality any time soon, so the app you are planning, would go hand in hand with Modelur very well, as procedural approach can also be very useful in urban design to create simulations of city development.

I keep mi fingers crossed for CityGen!

Regards,
Jernej

thomthom

I'm very pleased to hear that you take interest in this. It's be very interesting if Modelur could be fit in somewhere. If you have some ideas that would make this project fit better with the workings or Modelur it'd be great to hear about it.

Chris Fullmer

That is very nice to hear indeed! I need to check out modelur and see exactly what it does and how it works. I'm more interested in proecdural city modeling than making an analysis tool. But It would be awesome if they worked together! So I'd like to be familiar enough with modelur so as to make sure we develop this in a way that it can play nicely with modelur. I think that only makes sense. Thanks for chiming in here Jernej!

Chris

pichuneke

I remember that I read about a professional tool of this kind that is being used to recreate the Rome of A.D. 320

http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/ (version 2.0 of the model)

The tool is this:

http://www.procedural.com/

Of course it's a very complex software (and commercial), not a ruby script, but I believe you may find it interesting.

remus

@thomthom said:

@remus said:

I imagine a quick and dirty conversion from the street type/building height to a grayscale colour would do.

Its hard to explain without doing it: i'll try and knock out an example shortly.

Edson

CityGen guys,

would CityGen be able to create streets and buildings over a hilly terrain? or would it be restricted to plane surfaces?

remus

For the moment id guess it will only work on a plane (thoms script only works on a plane, and the code i was messing about with at the beginning of this thread only works on a plane) as coding stuff to work on hilly terrain is exponentially more difficult. It is certainly something to look at in the future, though.

TIG

@edson said:

CityGen guys,

Would CityGen be able to create streets and buildings over a hilly terrain? or would it be restricted to plane surfaces?

You could create the layout above the terrain and use the Sandbox tools to drape the streets ?

thomthom

The street generator I'm working on at the moment only works planar. The extra third dimension makes things a bit more complicated - I'd like to make it work in a simple 2D manner first. I expect to mature it a bit in 2D before I take on 3D.

Not sure what the others got planned.

thomthom

@tig said:

You could create the layout above the terrain and use the Sandbox tools to drape the streets ?

And Drop to place the buildings..?

Something like that has to be done by the user until we can get it working in 3D.

plot-paris

wow, this whole project is very exciting! I like the idea of the plugin doing all the work
no, but seriously. it would be great if the user can input all the information he likes and the plugin adds all the other information automatically (or parametrically).

so if you only have three main roads and lets say five important places of a city, the plugin will fill in all the other information (either by default or by user set parametres). thus the user can influence the outcome of the model to whatever level he likes.

the CityGen project is one of those big things that make SketchUp and the SCF so tremendously exciting!
I am really looking forward to first results

tug

Hi Thom.-

here is me again, now back in Spain. I'd tested city generator and found some bugs in the use. I don't Know if it's due to the configuration (as I told you before) or is a real bug in the programming.

I'm using Skechup 7.1 with many plugins instaled and here the main bug I found:

I can't modify the parameters on "define streets", can't create news types or change the predef-values

best regards

jann

ibr_remote

After I installed city_gen.rb and street add-ons, all my ruby scripts died:
see my discussion thread here:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=28731

I think maybe there is something up with SU7.1

thomthom

That's very odd. Never seen that before.
Did you install anything else as well?
Where did you place the files for CityGen and StreetBuilder?

ibr_remote

The way I had them organised was like this:

..\Plugins\street_gen.rb
..\Plugins\Street_Gen\webdialog\ etc etc
..\Plugins\modules\readme.txt

That's what I extracted from my SU7.1, and these are now kept in a temporary folder.

I'd really like to use this script, so it would be great if I could figure out to do.

ibr_remote

I removed all my scripts other than city_gen.rb and put in all those of city_gen.rb and related.

I get this error when launching SU7.1

%(#0000FF)[Error Loading File street_gen.rb
undefined method `file_loaded?' for main:Object]

thomthom

Ah. This is probably why.

Modules to CityGen, such as StreetGen, should be located under the module folder you find the the CityGen folder.

It is mentioned in the instructions, but I know it's not necessarily obvious. On the StreetGen page it's mentioned in the small prints under the download. On the CityGen page is described under "Core and Installation Check".
This whole project is very much work in progress (except that there has been little progress the last year) - so all our instructions are not that obvious to follow. We where talking about installers, but the project fell down from out priorities before we got to that point.

So, what I think you need to do is remove all the CityGen and StreetGen files you added to your plugins folder.
Then see if your other plugins work.
If they do work, then first install CityGen core
Then install StreetGen to the modules folder of CityGen.