http://www.wifchicago.org

Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 15 - Index

EQUIPPED
CityEngine Generates Rome In One Day
At this year’s SIGGRAPH, a spectacular 3D recreation of
ancient Rome (A.D. 320) will be revealed, where revolutionary
graphics technology has been applied to reconstruct the
extremely detailed virtual urban environment. It wasn’t until
now that professional users could actually buy the software
that made it possible, Procedural Inc.’s CityEngine®.
Procedural Inc., an innovative software company located in
Zurich, Switzerland, is home to the world’s foremost procedural
modeling technology. With the CityEngine, Procedural Inc.’s
graphics experts have created a radically different 3D
application that allows the modeling of cities up to 10 times
faster than previous solutions, making automatic digital
city creation possible for professional users. This makes it a
compelling tool for the production of video games, feature
films and television series, architectural visualizations and
applications for the emerging 3D internet, where consumers
expect richer, higher quality digital content for their dollar.
“Cities are huge, richly detailed artifacts that are often
required in digital productions, and modeling them with
existing tools can take several man years,” says Pascal
Müller, CEO of Procedural Inc. “The CityEngine addresses
these previously unsolved modeling problems by offering
several procedural modeling tools for generating largescale
urban layouts, as well as a unique shape grammar
for the efficient creation of detailed building models. With
these tools, users not only experience a faster modeling
experience, but one which allows them
to create cityscapes that have never
been seen before.”
As the core of the CityEngine, the
shape grammar has been designed
specifically for rule-based production of
architectural content at arbitrary levels
of detail. The procedurally generated
3D buildings can be exported in various
file formats, allowing for a flexible and
simple integration into existing production
pipelines. In addition, the underlying
procedural approach ensures the
reusability of designs and is well suited
for collaborative work environments.
“The CityEngine is a perfect match for
the Rome Reborn project,” says Bernard
Frischer, director of Rome Reborn. “Our
project involves the complete virtual
reconstruction of the city at its zenith
under Emperor Constantine, when it
had about one million residents. To
build by hand the corresponding 7,000
apartment buildings, family houses,
public buildings and temples would
have taken us forever; but CityEngine’s
power and flexibility made the process
amazingly quick without sacrificing
detail or quality. This allowed us to
concentrate on modeling the unique
monuments. The CityEngine also helps to quickly change the
model as new scholarship or discoveries warrant.”
“After the Rome building designs had been specified in the
CityEngine, generating and exporting the entire city model
took exactly 1 hour and 55 minutes,” continues Müller. “Thus,
Rome actually WAS built in one day… or, at least its digital
counterpart was.”
The release of CityEngine also marks the official debut
of Procedural Inc. Founder and CEO Pascal Müller was
formerly a researcher at ETH Zurich, where he pioneered
the field of procedural urban modeling (with his series
of SIGGRAPH publications about procedural urban
modeling), which led to the creation of CityEngine. In just
six months, the Procedural engineering team under CTO
Simon Schubiger transformed the research into a powerful
industry application.
//www.procedural.com
��������������
��������������������������������
����������������������������������������������
���������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������
�������������������������������������������������������������������
����������������������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������������������������
���������������������������������������������������������
���������������������������������