CityEngine 2009.2: Sustainable Urban Planning of Megacities

[asche]

ich have not used it till now but saw the demo on the FMX ... damn impressive ...
recommend everyone to try it out, if there is any project i need cities i will for sure check you guys out first :)

[Mic_Ma]

[I]...groundbreaking software ...used by high-profile companies ...radically different 3D application...efficiently design cities...significant improvements in performance ...CEO Procedural Inc. ...unique reporting functionality, the perfect tool for ...advanced python scripting...

Well there's certainly a whole lot of marketing waffle there, not even to mention that "the world’s foremost procedural modeling technology" is known by another name as far as I'm aware.

[AliasMarks]

Well there's certainly a whole lot of marketing waffle there, not even to mention that "the world’s foremost procedural modeling technology" is known by another name as far as I'm aware.

I'm a bit green in this area... out of curiosity what software of which do you speak?

[fuzzylizard]

I would assume he is talking about Houdini.

[AliasMarks]

I would assume he is talking about Houdini.

Thank you :)

[arctor]

@Mic_Ma
as a Houdini user I can say that yes, you're right...
and work like this can be done in Houdini...but not easily.

[Mic_Ma]

Yes, I agree, not easily, but probably more procedural. I'm sure megacityengine-soft does cities pretty well, for that price it should.

The above marketing blurb just irks me a little. All this hyperbole makes them sound like bankers, car salesmen and telesales trying to baffle us with amazing stuff. Especially when you're selling yourself as "the world’s foremost procedural modeling technology" and all you've got up your sleeve is making cities. That's a bit rich IMHO.

Just pushing it into a little perspective. :curious:

[PascalMueller]

Nice comments ;-)

I actually agree with you concerning the marketing waffle, but you have to consider two things. (1) We as a young startup company tried out different press release styles: technical & informative, clever & amusing, or spectacular with trendy keywords ... so, now guess which one performed best ... personally, I'd prefer the technical one as well. (2) Besides lots of fixes etc, the features of this release mainly target the needs of our urban planning clients, therefore we addressed these guys in the press-release. In urban planning the term megacity describes nothing else than a big city, and they seem not to have yet a procedural tool to simulate and evaluate planning scenarios of cities of that size. However, I have to confess it sounds here a little bit cheesy - but hey, at the end we all love Judge Dredd and his Megacity One, don't we? ;-)

And I am a huge fan of Houdini since years. I guess the difference is that Houdini is a tool for creating all sorts of procedural content, while we are specialized on architectural stuff only and provide dedicated tools accordingly. So you are right, our 'spectacular claim' should be "the world’s foremost procedural URBAN modeling technology" (at least based on our seminal Siggraph paper: http://www.procedural.com/company/publications.html). But anyways, at the end it should be all about the tool and the models you can produce with it. Our love and passion is to make a cool tool which enables designers to create amazing 3D cityscapes - and everyone can check out oneself if it fits his production needs by downloading the trial version and playing with it (http://www.procedural.com/purchase/trial.html). In case you are a little bit in scripting it is really worth a try.

Best,
Pascal (CEO Procedural Inc.)

[romrom74]

hi all,
well as a CityEngine and Houdini (and maya and lightwave etc) user I couldn't agree more with you Pascal on the words: "the world’s foremost procedural URBAN modeling technology".

CityEngine is for me the ultimate tool for making cities really fast (but you can't animate procedural storms with it!).
It's a dedicated streamlined tool powered by its highly abstract CGA scripting language. All tools in Cityengine are urban or architecture oriented. The user manipulates architectonic concepts trough derivation of simple yet powerfull scripting operators: In CE you don't deal with polygons, vertices and so on (and you don't have to do complex maths!),but you rather focus on patterns, rythmes, sequences and space partitions, you naturally think your city or building modeling as if you were writing a piece of constructive DNA wich could adapt itself in any situation or location (if you're clever enough at scripting!!). The strenght of the CGA is its simplicity: if one can naturally describe a building or a city in terms of patterns, rythmes, splits, repetitions, one can writte a CGA rule which grows this particular kind of building with variations.

In Houdini you can do almost everything procedurally, but if you really want to make realistic,a adaptable, quick and scalable cities, you will finally realize that you need to adapt whatsoever similar concepts of CGA in Hscript, python, with nodes etc...
someone tried http://ima.udg.edu/~dagush/Projects/buildingEngine/

so obviously it require several man year of work to implement a dedicated City builder in Houdini. With CE I can work on making cities now...and the demand is growing fast.

[Mic_Ma]

I'm much more interested now! :thumbsup:

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