I like DAZ's art deco living room, but it doesn't come with an outside world. So, I need a daytime and a night time render of a large city like you might see from inside an old sky scraper apartment. 

I can probably put something together in Vue, but my vue skills are still on the pitiful register. Ideally, it would be a photograh of the same city from the same spot at night and during the day. 

I'm open to a commercial package, as long as it isn't 3d squid prices:) I'm not a professional...so..

Free is certainly good too (preferable, actually, but I am realistic  ;) ). 

Make your own.  Get the background from the textures, take it into a graphics software for dimensions, make a new blank image and copy any good background you like into the box.  Or, cut out the part of the image you want and make a new background.  Be sure to save them and label them for future use in other projects.

Well, I wanted the same exact shot, but daylight and night. There are a lot of wonderful city scapes on Google, but they are all either day or night. 

1. Well, if you have access to a city, take your own shots. Even a fairly low end digital camera might be able to make something high res enough for what you need. Not sure if that's what Cedarwolf meant by make your own.

2. A webcam image like the local TV stations have giving a view of the city 24/7 would be ideal and possibly accessible on the web but the frame grabs would probably be too low res I'd think. 3. Inquire with some of the stock photography sites and they might have what you need.

3. Try searching for specific buildings/landmarks/locations. It might be more likely that some of those are shot from close to the same vantage point many times.

4. If it's for private use, maybe some DVD film might have appropriate shots and a frame grab might work.

5. In film they also do something called 'day for night,' e.g. making a daylight scene look like night. If you do a web search for "day for night" and photoshop there are quite a few tutorials on the technique. How well they work I have no idea. I imagiine the steps are usable in other software as well and there may even be a plugin or action for PS. Seems to me that for a cityscape, the trick would be getting the building lights, signs etc. Unless you found a city model with the lighting built in, you'd face the same issue in Vue or any 3D app as well I'd think.

This may be a better solution than the others I listed. Citygen is a city generator for the POVRay renderer. With a couple of clicks, you can generate a city and export it. Load the file into POVRay and render. No real POVRay knowledge needed. The neat part is Citygen lets you change the time of day for the render so you can simply export a day and a night view. You can also customize the city and streets if desired. Here are a couple of samples done very quickly. You can switch off reflections in Citygen and change the view. These were not done with the best POVRay settings.

Note the only issue I found is that the Citygen POVray files produce a version related error. To fix it place the following line in the pov file (a text file yopu can edit inside or outside of POVRay  Add:

#version 3.0;

right after the last comment line in the header, that is the author's email. and save the file. It should now render fine. Note I used v. 3.6 of POVRay.

Thanks, I'd forgotten about CityGen. I often have a need for something generic to put outside windows, so it doesn't need the ultimate detail. The ability to show the same scene at diiferent times is definitely useful, hard to get in stock photography as noted above unless you shoot your own.

(To the guy who honked his horn at me the other day - I was taking stock shots of the traffic, not thinking about comitting suicide. Or spying on you. :)  

Pretty cool lmckenzie, I have Povray installed but never really spent the time learning how to use it, maybe additional incentive here. (Ditto with Groboto and Terragen and god knows what all, might be a while).

That's exactly what I need lmckenzie. I was fussing with 4 blocks from the free dystopia city blocks available at DAZ inside vue. It looks like it works fine, except for the lights in the windows. I'll have to take a look at CityGen this weekend. 

Thanks a bunch! 

Ok, gotta try that POV/City thing soon as the semester is over!

There's also Suicidator...  Might be my reason to learn blender in the future.

http://cgchan.com/suicidator/

NOTE: I got an IM from someone who was having problems with CityGen. The readme says in part: “Copy the .inc files into your POV include directory (for Win 95 or NT …” For whatever reason, I didn’t RTFM and just unzipped CityGen to a desktop folder, installed POVRay 3.6, which I didn’t have on this machine and ran with it – no problems. I also tried deleting them from the CityGen folder and putting them in the POVRay include folder as instructed and that worked as well so I’m not sure what the problem might have been. I’m on XP, maybe it’s a newer Windows version issue. At any rate, something to be aware of. Post if you have a similar problem. Also do remember to add the #version line in the all of the generated files and save the edit. There may be a way to edit an inc file to avoid that but beyond my POVR knowledge.

"(To the guy who honked his horn at me the other day - I was taking stock shots of the traffic, not thinking about committing suicide. Or spying on you. :)"

LOL. That camera on my shoe? I'm taking stock photos of ceiling tiles - honest Lady!

"I have Povray installed but never really spent the time learning how to use it"

I have enough trouble with GUI 3D, so pretty much all I can do with POVRay is export scenes from PoseRay and now I more often use that to go to Kerkythea. There are various generators like this though and even the Moray POVRay modeler is now free. Though old, it's a capable renderer with a lot of support, though probably not to the taste of the dermatologically correct ÷) I can identify with getting things and never learning them .

“That's exactly what I need lmckenzie.”

Glad it may be helpful. I know that seachnasaigh here has done a lot with lighting using Firefly materials/shaders and lighting for this sort of thing. I’m sure the same could be done in Vue. You’d probably need the windows to have a separate material. If the buildings are hollow, maybe you could put an area light inside and use a glass material on them or the backlighting option looks like it might work though apparently the parts have to be one-sided.

Tips: You can use the Sel-Run button (in POVRay) and in Command line options put

Output_File_Type=N

to have the render saved as .png format instead of .bmp

A bit down in the CityGen .pov files, there's a fog section if you change the distance from the default of 2000 to something smaller, you can get a foggy city.  

(mamba-negra) 

Quote -   ...dystopia city blocks available at DAZ inside vue. It looks like it works fine, except for the lights in the windows. 

     Try adding about 0.333 ambient (simple pale cream color, or pale blue-violet) to the window materials (window_a, Window_b, and window_c).  Add about 0.67 red ambient to the beacon material zone.

Gad!  I'd forgotten about Citygen, but the last time I used that was in a  P-4 single core on XP.  That one gave up the ghost, and when I loaded up the replacement, I didn't put it back in.  Thinking setting a.ini file for a forty eight frame animation, rotating the light source around to act like sunlight.

But that might also take a while, it would also allow picking the light level and angle you want.  Pov doesn't make a video file, or at least I've never found a way to do it, just tons of .png files.

Doric.

PrecisionXXX, if you run it again, maybe you can tell if there's a way to put the #version directive in one of the CityGen .inc files to avoid having to add it manually each time. Alternatively, in one of the POVR settings files. For the latter, I'm not sure whether it would only accomodate older syntax and not mess up on newer files. Also do you remember a way to set the default format to .png. I think I did that once but I got spoiled by being able to set all that stuff in PoseRay.

Type in the version and save the file. or just type it in and run it.  POvray saves every change, it'll ask if you want to.  It just tells Pov what codes to use and there have been some syntax chages.  I'm not sure how far back this will work though.

Default format, you'd have to go into the master .ini.  Easier to do in the command window, +FN +UA, or leave off the +ua if you don't need transparent background.  That's the little window beside the resolutions.  Notepad for editing the .ini if you chose to go that way.  I know the default is .bmp, not sure where in the .ini you'd find the output format.  Also, the command line window commands will stay until you take them out.

Doric.

lmckenzie, my error, misinterpreted your question, you're asking about Citygen and I'm answering in povspeak.  Been a long time, but somewhere in the output there should be a way to pass params from citygen to pov, obviously, but It would probably take me some time to figure out how it's plugging in.  If it's passing on format data to pov, that will probably override the command, as it becomes the command line.  If, however, it's passing an .ini file to pov, then it should be relatively easy to edit, just open it in the pov edit window. Scene .ini files are usually in the same directory as the scene.  Same name.

Doric

Cool looking city Moogal!

Thanks PrecisionXXX. Putting it in POV.ini worked. Also using +MV3.0 (the command line version switch) worked there as well - for some reason, it didn't seem to recognize the #version format. Editing each file is only a minor annoyance, especially since I'm not going to be doing many of these, but an annoying challenge anyway. I was on the verge of writing an app to launch CityGen, watch the output folder and add the version override to files as they were generated - definitely overkill. I enjoy code and coding, just not with 3D which I want to be fun of another kind :-) Edit: I see the command changes persist between sessions not just in each so that would have worked, no doubt for the resolution as well and easier to change than editing the .ini.

CityGen isn't connecting to POVRay in any way, just generating .pov files. The only way I can see to affect things would be in the CityGen .inc files but those get called after the #declare statements. It's the latter that are causing the version error since the 3.1+ syntax requires a ; ending #declare statement and those are missing in CityGen's output. A scene .ini might work, but if one is required for each .pov file, it's easier to just have a .bat file to drop the .pov's on and execute the command line with the version included. The pov.ini will do for now. I'm hoping it only makes it more forgiving of older syntax and not disabling anything newer.

There''s' another CityGenout there that looks really nice and is supposed to output to Collada. It's no longer available but if you use the Wayback machine, you can find a version to download. I tried it but unfortunately, the integrated video on my old Dell isn't up to snuff. I'll have to get it on another machine to try it. There is yet another (also named CityGen!) that outputs (.wrl) VRML files but the buildings aren't very nice looking. Of course there's a CityGen plugin for C4D and the one moogal posted looks interesting (with at least an original, albeit odd name) - not interesting enough to do Blender at this point though.

CORRECTION: Earlier, I mentioned using the sel-run button to set the output format. it's actually the ini button in POVRay's toolbar. Doh!   

can povray export an obj ?? just wondering no biggie

lmckenzie: Been a very long time since I played with that, so excuse the seeming ignorance.  But, exporting a pov file, look in the file until you find the camera, if it's locked to something else, just delete the camera and create one to your own liking.  The insert menu has just about anything you'd want, one click and it's added.

Heddheld, no.  Povray speaks Povray, nothing else speaks povray.  Poseray  can convert a povray mesh, but not CSG.  Poseray will convert an obj to pov, which works well and allows using a lot of the other features Pov has.  But Povray has no export built in.

"But, exporting a pov file, look in the file until you find the camera …"

Yeah, that's what I'm doing, just editing the existing camera in the .pov file. Since I'm genetically unable to think in 3D, I'm only longing for a way to visually move/tilt/pan etc. within the scene. I did also putz around and insert the default code to turn on radiosity in one of the scenes. The reulting improvement wasn't worth the exponential increase in render time BUT that was without any knowledge of how to edit the radiosity parameters and/or scene elements that might have yielded faster results - again too spoiled by PoseRay, Vue etc. to mess with code.

.obj export would be nice but as PrecisionXXX says, no go in this case. I don't think that any of the free, stand alone city generators I've found export to .obj. The one I mentioned that supposedly does Collada might be the closest if you can get it to work.

I'm going to look at the Moray modeler for POVRay. Some modelers like C4D have the ability to convert their geometry to a polygon mesh, so it might be possible to convert the CityGen scnes to something PoseRay could read - though the .obj output might be huge and I don't know how the mapping would be handled. If nothing else, it like Moray may be able to provide a visual scene preview and camera manipulation. One thing that detracts from the credibility of the scenes is the empty streets. It might be possible to add a few cars in Moray as well.

I very rarely use radiosity, because of the exponential increase in render times and because it's not needed most of the time. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCEN0qQOsIA

Here's a tutorial for blender, it's long, but covers just about everything, and should probably be exportable as an obj, I'm not that far along with Blender that I could try it.  He makes it seem simple, but it's like everything else, simple once you've done it, not so simple before then.

Trying to do this, on line, and trying to watch the chargers on several model helicopters at the same time.  Let them go a little too long and the batteries let the smoke out and stop working.  Electrical things operate on smoke, that's why we don't want to let it out.

I'll have a play with Citygen a little later, it's possible it is exporting a mesh, although I would have some doubts there, I just don't remember anymore.  I don't work much with cities, but more woods type stuff, small areas.  I ain't no city boy, don't even like small cities.

"it's possible it is exporting a mesh, although I would have some doubts there"

Nah, not AFAI can see. PoseRaay sez no verts/no facets. Found Moray only exports POV, not import. No problem. I have that NYC model somewhere and I'm pretty sure Trimble has something good enough for aerial shots. CityGen will be fine for the original purpose and in Vue, I usually want the great outdoors.

Before I got to the RC helicopters part, I was wondering, who is that big a San Diego fan that they need to watch the Chargers on multiple sets at once? :-)  

* *

IIRC, for a .pov file, you just open it, unless Moray has changed since I tried it.  I didn't like MOray, prefer the text interface.

guess I was hoping for a plugin to export an obj (or maybe I'm just lazy lol)

"guess I was hoping for a plugin to export an obj (or maybe I'm just lazy lol)"

Maybe look into the Blender city generator mentioned earlier. That have a path to .obj. No idea how much Blender you'd have to learn to use it. Now if everyone at 'Rosity took a cube primitive and …

lol blender is my main app nowadays, the blender one is ok but texs are a bit iffy(free one)

"Now if everyone at 'Rosity took a cube primitive and " , yeah I wish! can you imagine the arguments!!!!! will keep on with mine at 1 building a month should keep me quiet for years

Sweet Moogal!

PX, unless I missed it (quite possible), I didn't see an open .pov option in Moray, only its own format (.udo) - I know that's what PoseRay exports to, .udo. I already uninstalled it - may look at it again to be sure or check the docs online.

"lol blender is my main app nowadays …"
Ah, so you are already an initiate into the dark arts.

Found this in my files CityScapes3 by Karanta - may be in freestuff here. It's a very basic cubes model with no textures but fairly nicely laid out and might do for a distant aerial or on the horizon shot with a simple color. I saw that the Cadillac of generators, City Engine has a Vue version for $299. IIRC Vue had some odd looking building materials whose use always puzzled me. A few cubes of varying height placed in an ecosystem might yield interesting results.

got into blender about a year ago an love it ;-)

is easy enough to make a low poly "skyline" type thing with cubes an decent maps then use dupliverts or a particle system to spread em out a bit

vus is a bit out of my cash flow!! 'tis only a hobby for me ;-)

Quote - lol blender is my main app nowadays, the blender one is ok but texs are a bit iffy(free one)

"Now if everyone at 'Rosity took a cube primitive and " , yeah I wish! can you imagine the arguments!!!!! will keep on with mine at 1 building a month should keep me quiet for years

 

You're as good a person to ask as anyone, what is up with that purple cube?

I too would love to learn blender but can't seem to make myself put the necessary time into it...

I didn't stay with Moray long, and it's been some time since I tried it, so, more than likely I'm remembering what I shouldn't be remembering.

Found a plan for a small building on line a little bit ago, blueprint, says at the top "N.P.RY" so I assume it was a railroad, I want to say Northern Pacific, but it could be something else, maybe not even US.  Doesn't matter, the function of a two holer is the same all around the globe.  1905 date. Small but lots of modeliing to do.

But I want a privy anyhow.

Doric.

Indeed, according to a search, Northern Pacific out of Washington State, Seattle, Tacoma, Yakima etc. Usually spelled with a lower case y from what I see. Odd, don't recall seeing that before always RR for railroad as ooposed to Ry for railway.

It's going to be fun, no  guessing, I've got dimensions for almost everything.  Board and batten, but with dimensions for that too, ten inch boards, three inch battens, trim around the door and corners four inch.  Color called on the print is Indian red, I should have a chip somewhere around here from my many years playing in HO scale.  Only dimension not on the drawing, the diameter of the holes.  Also calls for 3/4 gallon of oil, which I'll assume is linseed oil, maybe tung, for the seat boards.  Calls for one gallon of the Indian red, I'm thinking the interior was bare wood.  Guessing, I mean.

Doric

if you have an nvidia gpu (gtx 500 or better) cycles will blow you away

@Imckenzie really should try it again m8  new version has just come out (2.67) get the zip and theres no need to install, if you can get used to it you'll have lots of fun

@Precisionxxx if you have blueprints blender lets you add pics as ref's for modeling

ps I just made a privy rofl mind you its not for a railway lol

Quote - @moogal , usualy when you get that pinky/purple colour it means blender has "lost" a texture, could be you moved the pic or the blend or maybe you haven't loaded it right? but does depend on if your using cycles or BI. BI (blenders original renderer) makes you jump thro hoops to load a texture, cycles is more like poser with nodes an you join the dots ;-)

Every time I've installed and ran blender the purple cube seemed to be there by default.  I just wondered what the logic behind it was.  Is it supposed to have a texture?

Nice privy, heddheld.  The reason I like the prints is to fill in what I don't know, the lumber sizes used and construction methods.  I've made a couple of "gadgets" for Wings that I can import, things like a one foot long section of 2 x 4 made from a Poser primitive and exported, Fireangels measuring tools used to get that.  Another is an 8 foot long hexagon, each foot is a different color, helps with dimensions of the more basic.

moogal, that cube is simply the "default cube", you can start from that if what you want to make calls for starting from a cube.  I'm just starting with Blender, for about the fortieth time.  The new interface is a lot less intimidating, but there's still a lot to learn.

Doric.

"Only dimension not on the drawing, the diameter of the holes."

LOL, Go small - the avg. American butt has grown since back then. I saw on some antique show that the standard size of a dinner plate has increased from ca. the 40s I think. Wonder if there's a connection. Last permanent 'holer' I used was in a Nat'nl. Park - stainless steel seat in the middle of winter ):

@Imckenzie really should try it again m8- …

I may, though of course, I haven't learned much of Carrara either. Got it on a mag disk and I like the interface better than most 3D apps. It's mostly the 'ancillary' things in Blender that look interesting like fluids, not available anywhere else free that I'm aware of. But, you have to model before you can fluidize I imagine - sigh. What 'modeling' I do is with Art of Illusion, mostly bottles or things than can be created with the lathe tool or a few primitives. I'm grateful to whose who have the knack and the generosity to share. * *

* *

* *

Quote - "Only dimension not on the drawing, the diameter of the holes."

LOL, Go small - the avg. American butt has grown since back then. I saw on some antique show that the standard size of a dinner plate has increased from ca. the 40s I think. Wonder if there's a connection. Last permanent 'holer' I used was in a Nat'nl. Park - stainless steel seat in the middle of winter ):

@Imckenzie really should try it again m8- …

I may, though of course, I haven't learned much of Carrara either. Got it on a mag disk and I like the interface better than most 3D apps. It's mostly the 'ancillary' things in Blender that look interesting like fluids, not available anywhere else free that I'm aware of. But, you have to model before you can fluidize I imagine - sigh. What 'modeling' I do is with Art of Illusion, mostly bottles or things than can be created with the lathe tool or a few primitives. I'm grateful to whose who have the knack and the generosity to share.

Got it figured at about seven and a half or eight inches. 

The park I used to volunteer for has the stainless butt chillers.  But I barely remember back when I was maybe four or five, we had an outhouse.  That's when Dad finally got rid of it, maybe '45 or thereabout.  About all I remember was complaining because it was cold out there and Mom telling me it was good because I wouldn't be wasting time.  Then the inside bathroom was built, it had the commode and nothing else at that time, baths were in the kitchen and the old galvanized tub.  Once a week whether we needed it or not.  Water heated on the kitchen stove.  Wish I could remember more of that time, but time and age take their toll.  I know the outhouse was just pushed back some and burned, but I don't remember seeing it and that would have fascinated me to watch.  Oh, well.  Getting older, not gracefully.  Kicking and screaming as I'm led into it.

Doric.

Remember 'country' relatives had one. Had heard a story about someone who supposedly got bitten on the butt by a tarantula. Held it all day afraid of butt bites.

Quote - moogal, that cube is simply the "default cube", you can start from that if what you want to make calls for starting from a cube.

Thank you...  So it's exactly what I thought it was then.  I've just always found it strange as the only other 3D program I know of that starts you with a default object is Sculptris (and that makes more sense given its limited scope).  I'd wondered if it was a part of the GUI, was there for scale, was there in case I wanted to box model, or if there was merely a limitation in blender that prevented opening a completely empty scene.  Suzanne would actually make more sense to me than a purple cube, as I'd likely still always be deleting either one.

If only Poser and blender played better together.

Long way from being done, but a throne room fit for a, 

conductor?

Doric

all this talk of outdoor privys an tin baths !! (we're showing our age here boyz ;-) rofl ) still it keeps the kiddies out.

nice looking loo! but its bigger then I imagined, from the outside I'd expect it to be a 3 holer lol

@moogal sorry m8 I misunderstood, just delete that cube make any other changes you want to your "blank screen"  eg setting windows as you want them/adding "add-ons" then under file you have save user settings hit that then it will open just as you want it to everytime, I did a "cheatsheet/tut" for peeps in a group I am in just to get them started in blender(just stops you pulling hair out an get on with learning it) can dust it off an pm you it or a link to that group if you want

have fun y'all .......an dont forget to wash your hands ;-)

So I'm a COF.  Big deal.  It's not that big, 4 1/2 x 6 feet wide.  Door is only 6 feet high, so Michael is going to either duck or smack his head going in.  But now comes the shingle roof, a royal PITA in Wings.  Followed the N.P.Ry plan fairly close, but took a few shortcuts.  Door handle has to come up a little, needs bolts in the hinges.  Should probably go in and assign material zones, but it don't look too bad as is if I get the color halfway right, which it ain't yet.

Doric

Watch freestuff if you're looking for a privy, 1905 railway type, not completely slaved to the drawings, but close enough for looks.  Doesn't look much different from what I posted here.  Almost time to make a zip and upload it.

Doric.

It's up.  CHeck freestuff.

Doric