The procedural 3D cities are generated in Blender by iCity 1.1

In recent years, the demand for realistic 3D cityscapes in various industries such as urban planning, gaming, and visual effects has grown significantly. The ability to efficiently create detailed city environments is a crucial aspect of many projects, and the use of procedural generation tools has become increasingly popular. One such tool is iCity 1.1, an add-on for Blender that empowers artists and designers to generate intricate 3D cities through procedural techniques. In this blog, let’s delve into the capabilities of iCity 1.1 with iRender and explore how it simplifies the creation of 3D city environments within the Blender software. 

Blender is an open-source 3D creation toolkit that provides a wide range of tools for modeling, sculpting, compositing, animation, rendering, compositing, and more. Blender is known for its powerful feature set and active community.

There are several reasons why someone might choose Blender as their preferred 3D modeling and animation software:

1. Free and Open-Source: Blender is free to use and its source code is available for anyone to modify and distribute. This makes it accessible to a wide range of users, including hobbyists, students, and professionals.

2. Feature-Rich: Blender is a robust software that offers a wide range of features for 3D modeling, sculpting, animation, rendering, VFX, and more. It can handle complex projects and is constantly being updated with new features and improvements.

3. Active Community: Blender has a large and active community of users who share resources, tutorials, and support online. This can be very helpful for beginners who are learning the software or facing technical challenges.

4. Cross-Platform Compatibility: Blender is available on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it versatile for users who work on different platforms.

5. Customizability: Blender allows users to customize the interface, tools, and workflows to suit their preferences. This level of flexibility can help users optimize their workflow and productivity.

6. Integration with Other Software: Blender can be integrated with other software tools and pipelines, making it compatible with a variety of workflows. This interoperability can be important for users who need to collaborate with others or use specific industry-standard software.

Hothifa Smair, a tools developer and architecture student, has put his exciting generative city-generation add-on for Blender, iCity, into commercial beta.

Aimed at both entertainment artists and architectural visualization professionals, the Geometry Nodes-based tool allows users to sketch up road networks that iCity automatically fills with 3D buildings produced from a bank of pre-made components. 

iCity allows users to create cities – or at least sets of city blocks – by extending the edges of existing blocks or drawing out road networks using the Procedural Roads tool. Next, the software automatically adds procedural buildings to each new block.

By changing roads directly in the viewport, users can alter the structure of the city, and iCity will automatically reshape the buildings to meet the new road network. A collection of parametric controls can be used to alter important features, such as the overall size and number of floors, structures, and roadways. Replacing a city block’s buildings with a randomly generated park is also feasible.

Users can customize the 20 procedural buildings in iCity, which include smaller apartment complexes and skyscrapers, by setting up their own unique presets. In addition to procedural elements like leaves, rubbish, and puddles, streets can be adorned with pre-made 3D objects like vehicles, trees, and lamps.

When working with complicated assets, proxy mode makes it possible to convert to low-resolution geometry without textures, which improves interactive performance. The video above shows you how the workflow works, although the online documentation on the product website is still rather rudimentary.

The update adds a new ’empty block’ option, for better control over generated city layouts, and allows data to be exported to other DCC applications in USD and GLB formats.

City generation is also now “10x faster”.

The advent of iCity 1.1 as a procedural generation tool within Blender represents a significant leap forward in simplifying the creation of 3D cities. By automating the placement of urban elements and offering extensive customization options, iCity 1.1 enables artists and developers to efficiently produce intricate and realistic cityscapes for a multitude of applications. Whether it’s for urban planning visualizations, gaming environments, or cinematic backdrops, iCity 1.1’s procedural 3D city generation capabilities position it as a valuable asset in the toolkit of 3D content creators.

As the demand for immersive digital cities continues to grow, iCity 1.1 stands out as a compelling solution for streamlining the creation of detailed and visually captivating urban environments within the realm of Blender’s 3D design ecosystem. With its procedural generation prowess, iCity 1.1 exemplifies the fusion of artistry and technology, empowering creators to bring virtual cities to life with unprecedented ease and efficiency.

iRender is proud to provide suitable configuration packages for Blender to bring you a great experience during the rendering process. With the benefits that iRender brings to the configuration, it is very suitable for all versions of Blender and complex projects. We offer from 1/2/4/6/8 RTX 4090s and 8 RTX 3090 servers. All servers at iRender are also equipped with AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 3955WX @ 3.9 – 4.2GHz or AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, 256GB RAM, 2TB Storage NVMe SSD.  Right now, we have pre-installed Blender 4.2 option.

Below is information about iRender’s service packages:

Not only does iRender have powerful configurations, but it also offers you more services. Free and convenient transfer tool iRender drive for macOS and Linux users. For Windows users, we recommend the iRender GPU application, you will no longer need to access our website. The price at iRender is also very flexible with hourly rental (pay as you use it), and daily/weekly/monthly rental with a 10-20% discount. 

We released our GPU Server 9S, with 8x RTX 4090s, powered with AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, let’s see how our RTX4090 performs when rendering with Blender scenes:

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Source and video:cgchannel.com