From Procedural Inc
http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~pmueller/wiki/CityEngine/DownloadModels

Sorry if this has been posted before.

For info, I have copied n pasted the TnC from the webpage here:

"CreditsAll models created by Pascal Mueller and Simon Haegler.CopyrightAll material copyrighted by ETH Zurich ©2007. You may not mirror, licence, or sell any material without permission.Terms of UseUse of the models is limited to personal, non-commercial and non-military use. The material may be published in academic papers or in press articles after I granted permission and on condition that the SIGGRAPH 2006 paper is referenced. Contact me ( no link )  for further questions.DisclaimerWe do not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any model disclosed."

Gads -- all of Pompeii???

That's a little frightening to consider. Imagine trying to orient the Poser camera through that...

Pity it looks like the project never went any further, but I can imagine that it was a fairly daunting one.

I just downloaded the hi-rez single block of Pompeii -- 1.1 G!!! I can only imagine how big the file would have been for the whole city!

It would have filled my HD.

Pity I couldn't get the manhatten one though. I'd have loved to have had that one.

400 millions of polygons may be near the upper limit of these 64-bit machines
with 32 GB physical RAM.  it would still be real slow, too, IMVHO.  forget about
using 'em in poser, of course.

The hi-rez one-block comes in a bunch of obj files, so I suspect these may be individual buildings. I'll try loading it in tonight and see what happens.

Quote - The hi-rez one-block comes in a bunch of obj files, so I suspect these may be individual buildings. I'll try loading it in tonight and see what happens.

Let us know if you survived.

Well, I indeed survived, but this is one very strange package.

The objs are grouped by material, which means that when you load in something, you might get a rooftop here and a doorway there and a window way over here. Put in another, and a couple of walls and a section of street appear -- but it's not necessarily lined up with the other one.

It's obviously very well modeled, almost as well as any of Stonemason's streets. But it's done in such a confounding way (and, as much as I hate to say it, amateur way as well) that it's far more work than it's worth.

I'm gonna go back and snag the lower-rez versions and see what theyre like.

The price of the software that they have invented to make this is only in the region of 7000.

I just downloaded the Middle LoD because it stated it came with "Textures, Normals and Materials"

Load an obj in Poser and Poser ask you to locate the texture. There are no texture files in the compressed file and I didn't see any option on that site to download them.

Quote - The price of the software that they have invented to make this is only in the region of 7000.

Maybe so, but they could stand to take a few pointers from Stonemason on how to reduce the poly count while still maintaining definition.

And frankly, it's no more complex a modeling job than anything you can get out of FormZ or 3DStudio. Methinks they paid way too much for models that, while very nice, are borderline useless.

(Sorta like V4.2, but that's another post for another thread... :) )

SeanMartin,

Lol, the thing is that they didn't model the buildings, they invented a program to model the buildings according to preset algorythms. It is totally different to what Stonemason, or you or I would do to model buildings.

Helgard

All well and good, but what's the point if it's so unwieldy a result? Maybe this is why there hasnt been anything added to the site since 2006?

http://www.procedural.com/cityengine.html
Cityengine is actualy a really cool program,i've been waiting on it's release since reading the siggraph paper(which that Pompei stuff came from),grabbed the demo as soon as it came out & found it very intuitive to work with..just couldnt justify the price which seems focused more toward studios.aside from Wetas 'Citybot'(which isnt publicly available) this is the best looking procedural city maker i've seen.
I like the procedural nature of the way everything works..divide this street into this many lots,add this type of building,add this amount of windows with these types of details,add some shop fronts down below..and it does it all for you
it's certainly not as optimised as making everything by hand but it's a fair trade off to get a massive city built in a decent amount of time.

incidently,they have a contest going at the moment,download the demo & create a city that impresses them..and win a licensed copy of Cityengine..I'm hoping to have a crack at this soon
http://www.procedural.com/cityengine/siggraph-2008.html#c625

It does look like amazing stuff. And looking at the specs, it seems they have learned to optimize it since those sample files were uploaded two years ago. I dabbled a bit in historical recreations, mostly ancient theatres, and this made me really wish they could port it to the Mac so I could play with it.

Ah well, maybe someday...

I might give that one a go.  The software looks great.  I should think Vue could cope with all those polys

I downloaded them (the block, high res) and brought them up in vue one at a time as I don't have an obj. viewer.  You can do some neat things.  I let Vue do the texturing after importing them.   However you may have to think about a Cray XT5 if one were to go with the whole shooting match.  (Oh Honey!  I need a new computer.)  :)  

Now you know those models look GREAT!  I downloaded the low-res models and will give them a try!

My poor computer and all its downloads!

can't seem to find the download area on the site. Any help?

Also, were there anyones of Japan?

They've become password protected now. That seemed to have just happened in the last two weeks.

No Japanese ones that I remember.

Quote - They've become password protected now. That seemed to have just happened in the last two weeks.

No Japanese ones that I remember.

so how do I get the passwords?

I would look for contact information on the site and ask. But I suspect that they may require you to do something like buy their product.