If there is such thing as digital magician then this is it!
Its pure magic!
Free procedural building generator: Building Generator v.01
SerdarVFX
#422
really awesome! Congratulations!
It would be really nice and really helpful, if you could make a video tutorial which covers every features,…
- give us a paypal button
Osiris9650
#423
Tyson, bravo! The new version has everything you said it would!
Question - any chance you can upload some cool presets to play around with? You’ve made some really amazing buildings, and I’d like to see how you put them together. I promise I won’t use them in any commercial projects without permission! 
CGButler
#426
Another great release!
Basic road generator to augment surface generation system…this sounds intriguing. Any snippets we can get a glimpse of?
One thing I thought of over the weekend that might be a handy feature was the option to “load the settings” from a selected building and “update” a selected building. Would that be possible?
You’ve improved work flow by adding in the X button, but it would be handy to be able to select a building, click a button that loads the settings and then change one or two things and then update it. Would that be a feasible option?
It’s a written option in another script I have, all be it a much simpler one!
Cheers.
Butler.
jonadb
#427
Just in case you run out of ideas: Make buildings interact with the daylight system. You could start turning on lights (or swap to self illuminating interior materials) when it gets darker, open/close windows, curtains and blinds depending on the light angle and intensity.
One other idea… in After effects there is a thing called ‘brainstorm’ it shows you a grid of slightly randomized versions of an original, you can click on the variation you like and the you see a new grid of variations based on the one you liked. Something like this would be great to visually steer the direction into which you want to take the design of a building.
And keep up the good work! I think you definitely deserve a CG-award for this!
SLI
#428
lol.
Give them a finger…they want the hand. Give them the hand…they want the arm. :hmm:
Just kidding! You have already given us dinner…everything else is just the sweet, sweet dessert!
thorsten_hartmann
#429
Hi Tyson,
have some Problems…
a) when i load a Preset and want update all Data, is no update the Material Settings.
b) when i select a custom Material and after i read my Map-Directory, comes a error.
c) i click windows/binds and come a error " Unknown Property max in 36.25"
mfg
hot chip
ivanisavich
#430
That’s a neat idea…unfortunately, it’s not really possible to update a building, because there are too many problematic factors involved.
For example, if the building is a MR/Vray proxy, or a combined mesh, there’s no way to analyze it to see what parts it has, because all of the parts are combined, and in the case of proxies, they’re not accessible as geometry.
Another problem would be, if someone generates a building, and then deletes some of its parts, that could confuse the “updater”.
One idea, instead of updating the building, would be to simply save the building’s settings in its root note as custom data. That way, you wouldn’t be able to update it per se, but you could “load” its settings into building generator.
ivanisavich
#431
Thanks for the ideas Jonah. As for the first idea, I don’t think I’ll implement that type of thing. That requires too many things to micro-manage, just for a feature that not many people would probably use.
As for the second idea, I like it…but the problem is that in order to “see” any variations of the buildings (like, in thumbnail form or whatever)…you’d have to generate the building, then do a render of it, then post the little render image into the “grid”, and repeat that process for the number of grid items there are. So…doing something as simple as a 4x4 grid would require 16 generations, and renders of each…that could take several minutes, depending on the complexity of the buildings and isn’t that practical.
One thing I could do though, is a system similar to that, only things like building details are skipped. So…you choose some options, and it renders just the shape of the building (no windows, no doors, just height settings, length/width settings, ledge and roof settings)…and then you can go from there. That’s an idea I might implement in the floor layer manager.
ivanisavich
#432
This is not a bug, since I decided not to have material settings saved with presets, since if someone loads up a building on a computer where they don’t have all the same texture files…then errors could occur with missing maps.
Maybe though, I could do a thing where you can still save other material settings with your preset file…just not the texture maps…so you’d still retain all the UV/MatID settings.
I’ll look into it…
b) when i select a custom Material and after i read my Map-Directory, comes a error.
Does this happen as soon as you select “custom material”? Or does it happen when you click on one of the map slots within the custom material settings? It looks like there is a bug that occurs when you select one of the map slots in the custom material settings, in max 9 (I just checked). The problem is caused because a function is being called sooner than a global variable…a workaround until I put up a fixed version of the script, is to just run the building generator script again, and try again. The problem should only occur the first time you run building generator, since after that first time, the global variable is defined.
c) i click windows/binds and come a error " Unknown Property max in 36.25"
I was unable to reproduce this on max 9 or max 2009. Could you tell me which version of max you’re using, as well as the exact steps you took to cause the error? Thanks
leckter
#433
Sorry for this, but version for 3DS Max 8 will be appreciated.
If it is not possible keep this good work anyway.
Congrats. :bowdown::bowdown:
CGButler
#434
thanks for the response.
I appreciate some people would make a proxy “on the fly” shall we say, but how many people create the exact building they want first time every time and just tick the proxy option knowing it is correct? Not many I’d wager!
I still think it would be a really useful feature to have so that you don’t have to delete and regenerate each time. I know it would only work if nothing was deleted after creation for example, but it would give us a speed increase in creating the building we want, then when we are happy, we can either create it again with proxy ticked, or just proxy t ourselves outside of your script.
Would it be possible to do, or are there still other factors that might cause a problem?
ivanisavich
#435
Well, assuming that the building is not a combined mesh, or proxy, and assuming that no parts of it were deleted, it’s still not feasible. There’s just too many factors involved …especially if the user is “updating” one of the floor parameters, upon which all the wall parameters of neighboring floors are contingent. The amount of code re-writing I’d have to do to implement this type of system doesn’t really justify the few seconds it would save.
CGButler
#436
OK, no problem. It was just a thought!
Two things I have noticed in version 6 is that if you turn the roof type to 2 and turn the roof wall off, the roof object is floating. If you choose windows only to be in certain walls, the orientation seems to be odd. Front is fine. If you tick only the back back they appear on the right. If you tick only left they appear on the right as well! And if you only tick right, they appear on the left. I kept one corner bevelled so I’m sure I was looking of the correct face for my windows.
Cheers.
Butler.
ivanisavich
#437
Oops! You’re right…this will be fixed in the next version, that is coming out in a day or two (won’t be a big update…just some bug fixes and a new building setting randomization system)
If you choose windows only to be in certain walls, the orientation seems to be odd. Front is fine. If you tick only the back back they appear on the right. If you tick only left they appear on the right as well! And if you only tick right, they appear on the left. I kept one corner bevelled so I’m sure I was looking of the correct face for my windows.
Ah…you’re right about this as well…looks like this is caused by a little bug in the layer system that cropped up in the latest version. This will be fixed in the next release as well.
Thanks!
davius
#439
Hey Tyson! Just passing by to tell you how much I love this script! Used it only for fun until now, and it’s been giving amazing results! You’ve proved yourself a great programmer, a fast coder and a friend of all in this community. Thank you so much for giving us this tool!