Yet Another Town Generator (3D)
Okay, yes, I know, people are trying this sort of thing all over the place and doing it better I have no doubt! This one is targeted more at making pretty piccies of RPG towns and the like - for gaming - so it's a less "cerebral" about "reality" and more about saving time, I hope?
Introduction
YATG3D is predominantly written in POVRay at the moment. I appreciate that it might be better in something else but "something else" isn't something I can write, so that's my only excuse for that. What I am attempting to do is create a tool which can provide lots of the "vanilla" aspects of a town randomly and leave you to add in the cherries on the top. However, the project involves aspects I am not au fait with and I would really like to collaborate with somebody (or bodies) on this...
It isn't going to "compete" with the art of cartography as evidenced here, but if you're a GM with a world to create and a need for lots of towns in it... well... it could be handy.
What it really needs is a Graphical User Interface, and that's what I'm pestering all you fine people with. I can write stuff but not well and my background is Hardware, not Software, so POVRay is good for me, but Python isn't!
The GUI wants to do a number of things and I'm not going to fill this thread up with a complete specification, so I've cobbled together a private website* which rambles on a bit more fully about the wretched idea.
I'm very open to criticism and comments about any of this - I think!
Just to present some idea of what I'm on about here, I attach some renders of "Bendford" which is my "testbench" town at the moment. I've done a range of streets from slums to posh, a castle, a couple of bridges and boats, and a "special" building. I've also "borrowed" a google sketchup building and imported that rather hurriedly (it needs working over a bit).
Other aspects that need thought are "painting the height_field" and how to manage a potential "library" of "things" - because I'd love it if people added their own buildings to the thing, it is, after all, just a vanilla town generator. The "library" need only be povray INC files, but where to put them? I can run it myself from my own webspace but it isn't my first choice...
I'm also interested in checking to see how well I can import other 3D models, I'm happy that Sketchup imports with its image_maps and so forth, and can be modified to work better than the example here, but how about 3ds max and so on? POVray can take in meshes and most things can export them so the possibilities are there... and there are quite a few conversion programs around...
It's not my intent to make money out of this, I'm working on the assumption of a CC BY SA license or something like... so if you're interested in collaborating/assisting, please feel free to contact me here by private message or something?
Anyway, if you have ideas, models, skills, opinions please let me know!
These are some of my latest renders...
An overview
A closer look at the docks
And a maket and some "specal" buildings... the round one is mine, a POVRay object, the rather washed out bleached thing is a Sketchup import of an Inn done by Joel Hoekstra (aka Mr. Hook, Son of Joxer, None the Wiser) from the Google 3D Warehouse - an object he has designed for RPG use so imagine he won't mind ? [That said, if this idea gets more mature I'll probably try to contact him (if he isn't here???)]
OK - that's enough of me rambling on here. The website I cobbled together is here - and more piccies of older renders...
http://www.vgap4-info.org.uk/3DTownGen/
have a peek at the the "Help needed!" dropdown if you're interested?
cheers!
* I say "private website" only in so far as there is a robot.txt file supposedly hiding this area from bots and I haven't put my email address on it and I'd rather people talk to me about it here first?
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