Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling

Massive procedural content creation, for example, for virtual urban environments, is a difficult, yet important challenge. While shape grammars are a popular example of effectiveness in architectural modeling, they have clear limitations regarding readability, manageability, and expressive power whe...

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Main Authors: Pedro Brandão Silva, Elmar Eisemann, Rafael Bidarra, António Coelho
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2015-01-01
Series:International Journal of Computer Games Technology
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/808904
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author Pedro Brandão Silva
Elmar Eisemann
Rafael Bidarra
António Coelho
author_facet Pedro Brandão Silva
Elmar Eisemann
Rafael Bidarra
António Coelho
author_sort Pedro Brandão Silva
collection DOAJ
description Massive procedural content creation, for example, for virtual urban environments, is a difficult, yet important challenge. While shape grammars are a popular example of effectiveness in architectural modeling, they have clear limitations regarding readability, manageability, and expressive power when addressing a variety of complex structural designs. Moreover, shape grammars aim at geometry specification and do not facilitate integration with other types of content, such as textures or light sources, which could rather accompany the generation process. We present procedural content graphs, a graph-based solution for procedural generation that addresses all these issues in a visual, flexible, and more expressive manner. Besides integrating handling of diverse types of content, this approach introduces collective entity manipulation as lists, seamlessly providing features such as advanced filtering, grouping, merging, ordering, and aggregation, essentially unavailable in shape grammars. Hereby, separated entities can be easily merged or just analyzed together in order to perform a variety of context-based decisions and operations. The advantages of this approach are illustrated via examples of tasks that are either very cumbersome or simply impossible to express with previous grammar approaches.
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institution Kabale University
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spelling doaj-art-a3b6765c0e224e34bb0fcc350f6b0f552025-08-20T03:38:25ZengWileyInternational Journal of Computer Games Technology1687-70471687-70552015-01-01201510.1155/2015/808904808904Procedural Content Graphs for Urban ModelingPedro Brandão Silva0Elmar Eisemann1Rafael Bidarra2António Coelho3Faculdade de Engenharia/INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, PortugalComputer Graphics and Visualization Group, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, NetherlandsComputer Graphics and Visualization Group, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, NetherlandsFaculdade de Engenharia/INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, PortugalMassive procedural content creation, for example, for virtual urban environments, is a difficult, yet important challenge. While shape grammars are a popular example of effectiveness in architectural modeling, they have clear limitations regarding readability, manageability, and expressive power when addressing a variety of complex structural designs. Moreover, shape grammars aim at geometry specification and do not facilitate integration with other types of content, such as textures or light sources, which could rather accompany the generation process. We present procedural content graphs, a graph-based solution for procedural generation that addresses all these issues in a visual, flexible, and more expressive manner. Besides integrating handling of diverse types of content, this approach introduces collective entity manipulation as lists, seamlessly providing features such as advanced filtering, grouping, merging, ordering, and aggregation, essentially unavailable in shape grammars. Hereby, separated entities can be easily merged or just analyzed together in order to perform a variety of context-based decisions and operations. The advantages of this approach are illustrated via examples of tasks that are either very cumbersome or simply impossible to express with previous grammar approaches.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/808904
spellingShingle Pedro Brandão Silva
Elmar Eisemann
Rafael Bidarra
António Coelho
Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
International Journal of Computer Games Technology
title Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
title_full Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
title_fullStr Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
title_full_unstemmed Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
title_short Procedural Content Graphs for Urban Modeling
title_sort procedural content graphs for urban modeling
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/808904
work_keys_str_mv AT pedrobrandaosilva proceduralcontentgraphsforurbanmodeling
AT elmareisemann proceduralcontentgraphsforurbanmodeling
AT rafaelbidarra proceduralcontentgraphsforurbanmodeling
AT antoniocoelho proceduralcontentgraphsforurbanmodeling