Procedural Modelling of Cities Implemented as a Blender

Procedural Modelling of Cities Implemented as a Blender Plug-In Kevin Mullane Supervisors: Kevin Glass and Shaun Bangay

Project Aims • To procedurally generate an urban environment or city for use in the “Text-to. Scene” project. • Implementation of this modelling process as a plug-in for the Blender 3 D modelling package

Background • Text-To-Scene – Current project of the Virtual Reality Special Interest Group at Rhodes University – Aims to generate interactive 3 D environments based on textual descriptions.

Background • Blender – Open Source 3 D Modelling Package – Implements a Python interface – Allows for the generation of scenes using Python Scripts

Background • Procedural Modelling Of Cities – Procedural Modeling of Cities [Parish and Müller, 2001] – Procedural Modeling of Buildings [Haegler et al. 2006]

Procedural Modelling of Cities • Two major tasks to be implemented – Road Network Generation – Building Footprint Extrusion

Road Network Generation • Creation of complex network of splines – Lines form basis for roads – Gaps between form basis for city blocks

Division into Lots • Network of splines is divided into city blocks and building footprints

Building Extrusion • Buildings based on the combination and extrusion of basic shape primitives

Expected Outcomes • A simple plug-in for Blender which can be easily called from the Text-to-Scene system. • The procedural generation of a complex and visually diverse urban city environment.

Possible Extensions • This project will focus on producing cities of one style or genre and could possibly be extended to encompass varying styles and genres. • The implementation of further optional parameters to allow the Text-to-Scene system greater control over the city produced.

Questions?