Hello World: Some Updates

I talked to Ben about randomizing lots, and he introduced me to stochastic rules in CityEngine, which creates variation in lots using randomness. One example (take from the CE help page) would look like:

Lot -->
30% : Lot("residential")
20% : Lot("retail")
else : Lot("industrial")

Currently I'm using another method to randomly generate structures on a lot. It's "get" function that returns different file paths at different probabilities. See the following:

getBuilding =
20%: "assets/shack1.obj"
30%: "assets/shack2.obj"
20%: "assets/shack3.obj"
else: "assets/shack4.obj"

For now I find this easier than the previous method since it doesn't require me to define a new symbol for each possibility. I'll probably use it when I need a lot to develop into different types of procedurally generated buildings (Right now a majority of them are OBJ's...I cheated a little).

I also inserted vegetation into the city. It's funny how much of a differences trees make.

Trees added without wireframes (since they tend to make the leaf-clusters look black)

Now with wireframes (just for comparison)

City view. The shadows really slowed the computer down. They look nice, though.

Also met with Joe, Norm, and Ben today. For now I'll be working mostly under Ben. For his city he wanted procedurally generated buildings (as opposed to OBJ's), since that method would allow us to identify doors on a building. We will be starting with roughly 5 types of buildings: Home, School, Inns, Food/Convenience Stores, and Restaurants. A high level of detail isn't required this time, so most of the architecture will be very basic.

Also working on the slides at the moment. Since I'm posting here already, I might as well include the pictures I'll show on the slides.