cityengine Archives - Digital Urban

UCL Quad – Procedural City and Lumion

Andy — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:24:48 +0000

The Quadrangle at University College London was designed by William Wilkins and constructed between 1827 and 1828. It is a natural building of urban research as its surroundings provide a mix of architectural styles. The 3D model of the quad was built using SketchUp with photos grabbed via a mobile phone – quick and simple.

UCL Quad – Lumion

Regular readers will recognise the model from our previous Elder Scrolls IV Game Engine work. We found the model on an old hard drive for a group of students working on a new UCL project. As such we took the opportunity to load it into Lumion and add it into a future Bloomsbury created using CityEngine. Finally, the falling cubes (CASA branded, home of digital urban) are via 3D Max, linked in from a previous tutorial on Mass FX:

The building is centered on a Corinthian portico, after the completion of University College London Wilkins went to design the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

The post UCL Quad – Procedural City and Lumion appeared first on Digital Urban.

Urban Ball – CityEngine, Unity and Agent Based Modelling on the iPad

Andy — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:14:26 +0000

CityEngine combined with Unity and a tablet – iOS requires a developers account, Android simple needs the 30 days Unity trial – allows city wide models to run with a touch based interface.

Urban Ball – CityEngine and Unity on iOS

We have used our recent work on Unity and Agent Based modelling to create a simple app called ‘Urban Ball’. Development time so far is around a couple of days so the route from city modelling through to iOS app is remarkably short. Via some tweaked physics and a touch interface linked to a to a ball (the target) we have a simple agent based model on the iPad.
The movie below shows the app so far:
We have been impressed with the rapid development path using Unity and the ability of the iPad to run city wide models complete with agents. Arguably we have completed a proof of concept here, in the next few weeks we will explore how much further we can go – perhaps to release our first free iPad/Android app….
See also – Trail Rending of Agents with NavMesh, Physics, Unity and CityEngine, Augmented Reality City Table Top – Unity, CityEngine and Vufoira and Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine.

The post Urban Ball – CityEngine, Unity and Agent Based Modelling on the iPad appeared first on Digital Urban.

Augmented Reality City Table Top – Unity, CityEngine and Vufoira

Andy — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:00:24 +0000

The Vuforia AR Extension for Unity allows developers to build AR apps using the cross-platform game engine – Unity. Working with both the free and pro versions of Unity, Vuforia is not only free it is also one of the best out there in terms of tracking and image based tagging.

Table Top AR City

Running on either iOS/Android or direct via a webcam it allows the integration of other Unity assets into scenes. As such you can create a table top digital city complete with agents all linked to an image based marker and running as a native iOS app:

We will be exploring this further over coming weeks, it opens up a lot of possibilities for augmenting city models (and office desks) with urban data visualisations via custom made iOS/Android apps….

The post Augmented Reality City Table Top – Unity, CityEngine and Vufoira appeared first on Digital Urban.

Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine

Andy — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:13:49 +0000

Shortest path network analysis, pedestrian modelling and moving agents around complex city scenes has always been a specialised domain. As regular readers will know we have always taken the view that game engines are arguably better suited to agent based modelling – especially in terms of pedestrian and transport than more traditional packages.

Agents in Unity

With a mix of Unity NavMesh and some simple Javascript it is possible to create a city wide navigation mesh. Below is out first example using agents to follow a target (viewable in 1080p):

We will be exploring this further over coming weeks…

The post Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine appeared first on Digital Urban.

Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine

Andy — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:13:49 +0000

Agents in Unity

The post Shortest Path Modelling and NavMesh in Unity and CityEngine appeared first on Digital Urban.

Processing, Lumion, CityEngine, 3D Max and a touch of Jazz

Andy — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:06:14 +0000

One of the questions in modelling a ‘living city’ is how to combine aspects of agent based modelling for crowds, traffic simulation and 3D cities without a work flow that takes weeks and a high end graphics house.

Processing Output in Lumion

Using the intriguing P5 to Max script it is possible to control 3D Max via Processing and a local server connection, this opens up a raft of possibilities for visualisation and urban scenes based on real data.
As a quick example we used the default processing P5 scene and created the clip below, it also allowed us to test the various configurations for lighting and weather in Lumion:

We will be exploring the possibilities of Processing and 3D Max further over the coming weeks…

The post Processing, Lumion, CityEngine, 3D Max and a touch of Jazz appeared first on Digital Urban.

Lumion 3 – ESRI CityEngine and Autodesk 3D Max

Andy — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:35:39 +0000

Lumion is one of the best rapid visualisation systems out there for architectural style rendering. Its ease of use and ability to create scenes complete with advanced sky and lighting effects make it perfect for urban visualisation. With the release of version 3 we thought we would take the free version for a test run.

Lumion 3 fbx Import

The scene below was created using a mix of CityEngine by ESRI and Autodesk’s 3D Studio Max, exported via .fbx. The movie took 8hrs to render at 1080p, 30 frames per second and depth of focus / advanced sky effects:
Lumion 3.0 has notably changed its watermarking on any output – the Lumion Free Not for Commercial Use is not easy to mistake, this is a change to the previous version that had a small banner in the top left hand corner. We can see the reasons why – the previous version could simply be cropped to take out the water mark – but as its on screen the whole time, even in the editor, it does make the work flow painful on the eyes.
With the addition of new video textures, updated sky effects, global illumination and new models Lumion is well worth a look…

The post Lumion 3 – ESRI CityEngine and Autodesk 3D Max appeared first on Digital Urban.

Rapid Augmented Reality using CityEngine, 3D Max and Lumion

Andy — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:50:20 +0000

AR-Media is one of the quickest ways to get started in Augmented Reality. The system is free for non commercial use and offers plugins for 3D Max, SketchUp and others with players running on iOS/Android and desktop devices via a webcam. The plugin used to be £100 + but the move to enhanced functionality and free for non commercial use makes it the first place to explore AR.

AR Virtual Projector on iOS

The plugin not only allows us of 3D models and animations but also movies and audio – the clip below demonstrates two example models we have built using AR Media, visualised using the AR Media player on iOS with models uploaded via DropBox:
Mixing AR Tags with 3D Max, CityEngine and Lumion opens up a lot of possibilites for rapid visualisation – head over to AR Media to download the various plugins required.

The post Rapid Augmented Reality using CityEngine, 3D Max and Lumion appeared first on Digital Urban.