I am about to get a copy of procedural city engine; but before getting it I would like to know:
-anyone here use it? I’ve seen their tutorial for Unity, but what i want to achieve is to get a reproduction of a real city and then load it into Unity to have my customers walk trough it and interact with the various buildings and so on…do i save a city in fbx and then load it as mesh in Unity? The workflow is not really clear to me so any input from who uses it is welcome
-Is there anything else on the market, other than the 14K dollars software (forgot the name, but with that price is easy to forget the name, even if it looks cool) and Urbanpad? (that thing is horribly messy and convoluted; great results if you learn how to use it, but all that i want is a city created automatically with minimal intervention)
otherwise any other way to make a nice city other than using my buildings and place them by hand on a google map screenshot?
Thanks!
PS: please for Unity 4 pro make a city generator plz?
I recently bought City Engine Indie. Export to 3DS, import to Cinema 4D and export to fbx > Unity. CE Indie doesn’t export direct to fbx.
I am due to start creating with it later this week.
I got the unlimited 10 day license from Procedural to test out the export into Unity. I exported one of their sample scenes and viewed it fine in Unity using the above workflow.
CityGen2 plugin is currently being created for Cinema 4D and looks amazing plus can import Open Street Map files like City Engine. I have a project now so could not wait for CityGen2 which is due out in a month or so.
so basically you gotta do a 2 pass, going trough c4d…sadly i use cheetah3d, but i guess that there should be no big deal in saving in 3ds and exporting in fbx and then make a prefab with the geometry in unity.
What worries me is the textures…do you have to do all in Unity or the imported FBX has all the textures in the right place?
Checked that plugin that you mentioned, but is only for c4d, and there is a plugin/script for blender, that in the end makes a bunch of random boxes; so not that useful
Would be nice to see someone doing a tutorial on the forum about how to integrate cityengine in the Unity workflow
I just started using Carrara and I was browsing plugins and noticed there is a nice architectural plugin called Architools that looks like it will do this. Looks pretty nice for the price - $89. Even if you don’t have Carrara, you could get a copy of C8 AND this plugin for way less than the cost of City Engine Indie.
I think I’m going to get it and check it out. Supposedly DAZ has a 30 day refund policy they are good at honoring, so if it doesn’t work for Unity hopefully I won’t have any problem returning it.
The idea sounds interesting, but at first glance the solution from cityengine is way better, since is dedicated to do that function only; while with carrara it is useful if you are also using the software itself.
It is a good advice thou, since i own carrara (thanks to my beloved magazine 3d world, is the V7 and not v8); and 89 dollars is way less than buying a license for cityengine; but before i gotta see how hard it is to use this plugin
In my wildest dreams; i load a google map shot in a software and it will automatically reconstruct the topology and the building size and shape and spit out a file in fbx, ready to be texturized and imported in Unity…i am already stuck with 2 project that taking another daunting task like this would be a crazy idea
BTW did you know that city engine was not indie when it came out 2 years ago? I tried it at that time, and i am glad that the guys at Procedural decided to get the hint and make a version that was less than the 14K that they were asking in the beginning So for who tried cityengine a couple of years ago, the actual price is really nothing
Oh, I’m sure City Engine is way better, but it’s also 5x the price, so I would expect it to be. I was just throwing out Architools- seems like a nice budget option, especially for anyone that already has Carrara.
Let me know how that works out. I’ll probably get Architools pretty soon and play around with it, and I’ll let you know how it works out. I downloaded the trial for City Engine Indie, but I haven’t had time to even install it. At this point, I don’t know if I could justify the cost, but maybe in the future (so I think I’ll save the trial for later).
I know AT doesn’t support roads and stuff, which could be a real pain for what it sounds like you are doing. But apparently it does have the option to generate exteriors AND interiors, which is exactly what I’m looking for.
Anyway, I’ll report back once I learn more about it (probably a few weeks - still a ton of stuff on my list ahead of it), and hopefully you’ll do the same with CE. That way we can keep everyone informed of how these tools work with Unity.
I guess that many on this forum will be eager to hear how it goes with Architools too
btw if you make your own building, and need to set up an urban environment, then the expense is justified; otherwise if you just need a level in your game is much easier to position buildings at random around (i guess that there is a trick to load buildings instead of trees in the unity editor; that would create a random area with buildings)
i’m trying to download free trial of City Engine, … i can see the indie version is cheap, i guess not big difference between them just the scripting support and FBX output format…
And you can’t earn over $200k and you can’t get subscription - not bothered by these, just pointing out the other differences. I’d buy it if it had FBX export support.
Yeah so since this they announced the Studio version, which is far more affordable with FBX support. Also, they have a Christmas promotional special on at the moment!
