Generating Buildings

The Landscape Tool allows procedural generation of buildings based on shapes stored in the vector data sources.

There are two types of buildings:

• Single-storey buildings, which have only one floor
• Multi-storey buildings, which have two or more floors

• Underground Pedestal is always 2 meters down from the Terrain level. This value is hardcoded and cannot be changed.
• The Pedestal height is defined by the Ground floor offset value and is 1 meter high above Terrain by default.
• The Ground Floor height is defined by the Floor height value and is 3 meters high by default.
• The height of Upper Floors equals Number of Upper Floors * Floor height.

Buildings Texturing#

This step is the same as Adding a Vector Data Source and Specifying Tags for Spline objects.

1. On the Sources panel, select the Vector data source type, and the following settings will be displayed in the 2.5D Buildings tab of the Parameters panel.

   

2. Add a basic object for generation by clicking the Add button at the top of the Parameters panel and specify the object's name. You can add as many objects as necessary.
3. For each basic object, specify the following parameters:

   

   Vector tag	The tag to be used for the selected object from the list of the tags specified at the first step. This tag is used to select data from the vector source.
   Floor number tag	The tag that is used to read the number of building floors from the vector source.
   Floor height	The height of a floor in the generated buildings. The default value is 3 meters.
   Ground floor offset	The height of Pedestal. The default value is 1 meter.
   Split length	The size of the grid cell by which the generated geometry will be divided. Geometry of each cell is represented as a separate ObjectMeshStatic object. If the specified value exceeds or equals to the size of the Play Area, a single static mesh will be generated. For example, if you specify 10000, for each 10000x10000 km cell, a separate static mesh will be generated.
   Min Visibility	Minimum visibility distance from the camera at which generated objects (ObjectMeshStatic) start to appear on the screen. By default, this value is -inf.
   Max Visibility	Maximum visibility distance at which generated objects (ObjectMeshStatic) are no longer fully visible: they can either disappear completely or start to fade out. By default, this value is inf.
   Min Fade	Minimum fade distance, over which generated objects (ObjectMeshStatic) fade in until they are completely visible. Along this distance, the engine automatically interpolates the level of detail from alpha of 0.0 (completely invisible) to 1.0 (completely visible). Fading in starts when the camera has reached the minimum visibility distance and is in the full visibility range.
   Max Fade	Maximum fade distance, over which generated objects (ObjectMeshStatic) fade out until they are completely invisible. Fading out starts when the camera has reached the maximum visibility distance and is out of the full visibility range.
   Building category tag	The tag is used to read the building category from the vector source. Materials are assigned to buildings based on the value of this tag. The value must be an integer. For example, you can specify the type tag here: buildings of different types (garages, apartments, houses) will have different materials applied.
   Floors per texture	The number of Upper Floors for which a single texture is applied: If the texture height corresponds to the height of a single floor, this value should remain 1. The texture will be applied for each floor. If the texture height corresponds to the height of two/three/etc. floors, this value should be set to 2/3/etc. The texture will be applied for every two/three/etc. floors. If the texture height is equal to the height of the Upper Floors part, this value should be equal to the number of Upper Floors.
   Materials	Materials that are applied to buildings generated for the basic object: Building category — the category of buildings for which the material is applied. Here the value of the Building category tag should be specified. Base material — the base material for the specified building category. Default — the flag indicating if the material of this building category should be used as the default one. It is applied when the vector source contains no data on the building category or no material is specified for the building category. For example, we use the type tag as the Building category tag. The vector source should distinguish between various types of buildings by using integers. 1 is assigned to garages, 2 — to villas, 3 — to office buildings, 4 — to apartment houses. The garage material and its children are applied to buildings with value 1, the villa material — to buildings with value 2, etc. In addition, the apartment material, being the default material, is applied not only to buildings with value 4, but also to buildings that have no value assigned, or have a value that is not specified in the list.

4. Select basic objects that you want to be generated.
   Notice

   If you are going to update some of the existing buildings, select only the changed ones. Buildings that are not selected remain unchanged after terrain regeneration.

Now you can generate buildings by clicking the Generate button and selecting the Vector objects option in the Steps window. In this case only vector objects will be generated.

To regenerate a certain part of existing buildings, select only the basic objects that should be updated, click Generate and select the Vector objects option. Only the selected buildings will be regenerated. Basic objects that have not been selected remain unchanged.