World building in houdini sidefx movie#
World building in houdini sidefx software#

Palladio is a plugin for SideFX Houdini and wraps the procedural modeling core of CityEngine. VRBN and Esri R&D Zurich are happy to introduce a new open-source project called “Palladio”. For this, there is no better host application than SideFX Houdini, with its 20+ years of history in procedural tools for VFX.Įnter “Palladio” – an open-source Houdini plugin

We want to take this to the next level and have a seamless integration of CGA into a VFX workflow that ranges from modeling to simulation (think destruction, fire, water) to the final render pass. The Maya plugin demonstrates a workflow that uses CityEngine to author “Rule Packages” (RPK) that are consumed by a plugin based on the CityEngine SDK (also known as “Procedural Runtime”, PRT).

World building in houdini sidefx software#

The difficulty with attributes is only one of the reasons we looked into ways to integrate CityEngine CGA into other software packages directly, as we have demonstrated with an experimental plugin for Autodesk Maya. These packages can be subsequently consumed by the CityEngine SDK running inside other host applications to create the final 3d models. Alembic or Esri FileGDB), there is always a certain overhead or even conversion loss in this process.ĬityEngine is used to author Rule Packages (RPK) which are a self-contained collection of CGA rules and associated assets (geometry and textures). And while there are a number of file formats in the VFX and GIS world that support transport of attributes (e.g. map layers), these attributes often come from external software packages and have to be imported. While CityEngine has a number of built-in features to create attributes for CGA on the scene level (e.g. In the end, these external attributes control the overall design of a city and ensure consistency across multiple buildings. These rules consume external attributes – from simple values like “building height” to more complex input data like zoning laws. CGA is organized into rules that are evaluated into 3D models of a building or a whole city. the layout of windows), mass configurations (e.g. CGA stands for “Computer Generated Architecture” and can express a wide range of architectural patterns (e.g.

World building in houdini sidefx movie#

A recent example of a movie where CityEngine has been used is Blade Runner 2049.Īt the core of CityEngine is the procedural modelling language “CGA”. While the main application of CityEngine has shifted to urban planning since it joined the Esri product family, we still have a small but strong user base in the visual effects industry (VFX). One of the original motivations for Esri CityEngine was to create digital urban environments for movies in a more efficient way than modelling everything manually.