Zephyris' Procedural Buildings Tool
Posted: 09 Nov 2010 01:24
So here's something a bit different:
I have decided I was bored of drawing buildings and wanted a tool that could draw them for me, so I am working on a procedural building generator! This, at the moment, is made up of two halves; one half generates the building structure (including construction stages and the four orientations) based on a simple numerical description of the building's storeys and roofs. The second half procedurally colours the building with the TTD palette. It is all still under heavy development but it's (IMO) quite impressive so I wanted to show off how powerful it could be!
Here is an example building definition:The two big arrays contain most of the info about the building structure. The building definition array has 6 entries per line which define the following:
The aux definition array has 4 entries per line which define which walls have windows in for walls, the height and orientation of a sloped roof, and will be where any other future variables will sit.
This set of instructions gives the following building:
This can be fully "proceduralised" with some random numbers...
These procedural instructions give, for example, the following buildings:
A few sets of procedural instructions should be able to generate a very wide range of buildings, from terraced houses to skyscrapers, extremely quickly and consistently... It would also make generating regional variations of architecture style (e.g. typical roof slopes, building size, window shape/size, etc.) for a building set really simple!
I have decided I was bored of drawing buildings and wanted a tool that could draw them for me, so I am working on a procedural building generator! This, at the moment, is made up of two halves; one half generates the building structure (including construction stages and the four orientations) based on a simple numerical description of the building's storeys and roofs. The second half procedurally colours the building with the TTD palette. It is all still under heavy development but it's (IMO) quite impressive so I wanted to show off how powerful it could be!
Here is an example building definition:
Code: Select all
storeyheight=6;
windowwidth=3;
windowheight=3;
windowbaseheight=2;
windowspacing=2;
buildingdefinition=newArray(
0, 1, 8, 12, 22, 8,
1, 2, 16, 8, 2, 20,
0, 1, 16, 24, 2, 4,
1, 3, 8, 12, 22, 8,
1, 1, 16, 16, 2, 4,
2, 2, 2, 16, 2, 4,
2, 1, 14, 16, 4, 4,
3, 3, 14, 16, 4, 4
);
auxdefinition=newArray(
1, 0, 1, 1,
0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 1, 1, 1,
0.7, 1, 0, 0,
1, 0, 1, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0,
1, 1, 1, 0,
0.7, 0, 0, 0
);Code: Select all
s, t, w, d, x, y
s=storey (i.e. 0 (ground), 1 (first), 2 (second), etc.)
t=type (1=walls, 2=flat roof, 3=sloped roof)
w=width (in 3D)
d=depth (in 3D)
x=x location (in 3D)
y=y location (in 3D)This set of instructions gives the following building:
- Building1.png (3.37 KiB) Viewed 5420 times
Code: Select all
gwa=randomRangeEven(12, 20);
gwb=tilew-gwa-2;
bya=randomRangeEven(0, 8);
byb=randomRangeEven(0, 8);
gda=randomRangeEven(16, 32-bya);
gdb=randomRangeEven(16, 32-byb);
uda=randomRangeEven(8, 14);
udb=randomRangeEven(8, 14);
bxa=0;
bxb=gwa+2;
buildingdefinition=newArray(
0, 1, gwa, gda, bxa, bya,
1, 2, gwa, gda-uda, bxa, bya+uda,
1, 1, gwa, uda, bxa, bya,
2, 1, gwa, uda, bxa, bya,
3, 3, gwa, uda, bxa, bya,
0, 1, gwb, gdb, bxb, byb,
1, 2, gwb, gdb-udb, bxb, byb+udb,
1, 1, gwb, udb, bxb, byb,
2, 3, gwb, udb, bxb, byb
);
auxdefinition=newArray(
1, 1, randomBinary(), 1,
0, 0, 0, 0,
1, randomBinary(), 1, randomBinary(),
1, randomBinary(), randomBinary(), 1,
0.7, randomBinary(), 0, 0,
1, 1, randomBinary(), 1,
0, 0, 0, 0,
1, randomBinary(), randomBinary(), 1,
0.7, randomBinary(), 0, 0
);- ProcBuilding2.png (3.94 KiB) Viewed 5420 times
- ProcBuilding3.png (3.89 KiB) Viewed 5420 times
and it's not like its syntax looks like totally incomprehensible, even though I haven't yet written any scripts for it. A pro would also be that ImageJ is quite well documented.