procedural Building Generator for 3d Studio Max

[awakeningfromobliv]

I came across a free procedural Building Generator that Max users might find helpful for building city's with.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=808733&page=1&pp=20
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6193717&postcount=408

[johanz]

Looks awesome. But it seems it doesn't generate interiors, right?
I wonder if there is a full building generator that would make outside and inside.
Actually it seems that it does something like that, will check it out.

[Piranhi]

That really is awesome, good find mate.

[CrystalCore]

How well does this work with UDK, i assume if you wanted to make a city with this, you'd make it all as a static mesh? Import the textures and mesh into UDK, apply the material (hoping that it sorts UV's out already) and then place that down on a plane which you could texture in-editor with various ground textures, then you have a large city scape with all buildings enterable. Has anyone tested 3DS-UDK translation for this??

[Masakari]

Well, this is a great tool, but it will still require a ton of manual tweaks, no procedural tool does magical work for you when it comes to game art. I haven't tried it yet, but i doubt the UVs will be ok for the most part, and there might be mesh issues as well.

Still, a useful resource. There's also the Greeble plugin, which is very nice for concepting cityscapes and techy stuff.

[Jlacroix]

its a great plugin but like the buy before me I suggest you use it for concept only when it comes to UDK or any game development. Use it to test out ideas and layouts before making any final decisions. Once thats finished then you can model/uvw your own models around then with proper meshes.

[JamesG]

Cool stuff! I'm actually working on something a little like this in UE3 - it might be in a state where you could play with it. Here is a very rough 'getting started':

1) Create a new 'ProcBuilding Ruleset' in some package using the browser
2) Add 3 rule nodes to the ruleset, Repeat along Z, Repeat along X and then a Mesh node, giving it a static mesh of a window for example. The pivot must be bottom-left corner (min X, min Z) and the Y axis should point out of the window.
3) Place a 'ProcBuilding' volume in your map like you would any other volume type.
4) Go into the ProcBuilding properties and assign the ruleset you just made as the Ruleset setting

It also creates a very low-LOD version of the building, which is just the volume geometry, and uses render-to-texture for the faces (so it is just a couple of sections).

As I say, we are still very much working on this system, but once we feel it is ready for real applications we will be writing UDN docs etc for it.

[Fire Knight]

I came across a free procedural Building Generator that Max users might find helpful for building city's with.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=808733&page=1&pp=20
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=6193717&postcount=408

Wow talk about saving thousands of hours of time and just for giggles you should see how well the buildings crumble when you use the rayfire tool on it.
Build em and trash em in seconds.

Fire

[spilnerk10]

so okay, i have this building generator on max running, i create a cool classic building. with lot glasses,windows, doors and stuff,
then i export it as ASE, for the UDK,
but when i import it, it says "did you forget to add geometry and textures" (then i hit OK and it moves on, and then later on it pop's another error)
about having "too many faces or collision" so the first few 65535 will support collision and consider adding extra material to split up source mesh into smaller chunks"
and then this model gets deformed, and i have really no idea please help. have i missed a step in exporting ritual?

[darthviper107]

You're exporting too much geometry. You want to keep the polygon count very low. If you export something that has too much detail, it can end up being deformed when you import it.

[spilnerk10]

So how am i supposed to reduce the poly count?
without removing or deducting anything from the mesh?

[lethal_d0se]

So how am i supposed to reduce the poly count?
without removing or deducting anything from the mesh?

Wish upon a star!

[spilnerk10]

What? and how is that supposed to help me?

[darthviper107]

So how am i supposed to reduce the poly count?
without removing or deducting anything from the mesh?

you will have to remove loops that aren't necessary or remove details that aren't important (keep small details in the texture maps)

It would also help to post a picture with what you're trying to export.

[collix]

you will have to remove loops that aren't necessary or remove details that aren't important (keep small details in the texture maps)

It would also help to post a picture with what you're trying to export.
Or you could use poly reduction software like Meshlab (free and very nice results)

[darthviper107]

Or you could use poly reduction software like Meshlab (free and very nice results)

Poly reduction software usually produces results that make the models useless and unorganized.

[spilnerk10]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/842/manp.jpg/

so here is the snap of what i have been trying to get into UDK, but this one is small, compared to what i have been trying to import,

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/221/deformedversion.jpg/

and here is the deformed part of it,
looks kinda sad huh.

[darthviper107]

Yeah, that's too complex. if you want those details, you need to break it down into objects. Like many of the windows are the same thing, so you would break that into one piece and then import it into UDK and place them where you want them. Basically rebuild the building with pieces. That way it doesn't have to keep so many copies of the same window in memory, it just keeps one and makes copies.

Otherwise, since it's basically one big block, you could make a box that's the same shape and then use Render to Texture in 3ds Max to bake the image of the building onto the box. As long as you don't need to get too close to it, it would look the same.

[spilnerk10]

That's a long hard work now.....:(

[frostymoss]

Haha I've been in this situation before with trying to use this plugin. Meshlab will waste as much time as you can throw at it. If you're dead set on this though, it's not impossible, you'll just have to avoid meshlab and take it slow.

[Whitenorthstar]

I've been through a similar story last year, with a beautiful but complex ship model. To import this as a whole, in a hacky way, I suggest keeping your polygon count under 40,000. But, depending on what else you have going on in your game, it will affect the performance and reduce your options for collision types.

The medium way would be to split it into three or four models, and import to UDK. Easy to do, of course.

Imho, the expert way is to make it modular... windows, doorways, walls, pillars, skylights, floors etc. Ideally, it would all snap together on a grid and you can reuse elements throughout your level.

[Kimihito]

I played around with that script a little. It actually generates a group of meshes if you ungroup it, it’s just few min away from becoming a modular building and it can create low poly buildings too and I think I have seen an LOD setting somewhere. Still don’t know everything

Creator of that script deserves an award. He just saved me months of work.
Modular modeling is a way to go.

you still have to model an interior if you want to walk inside it