00:03Welcome to Tutorial 6: Basic Shape Grammar.

00:07In this video tutorial, we are going to recreate this building here, in CGA code...

00:13...but you can, of course, also download it from the Resource Center...

00:18...Tutorial 06_Basic_Shape_Grammar, download the project...

00:21...link it into CityEngine and look at the last scene file in here.

00:27But before we now start and actually code the building...

00:30...let's look at a few tricks, which I'm usually using, for the most efficient coding.

00:36So I'm going to select this building here, open the Model Hierarchy...

00:43...this window here, with first, a dark-grey canvas.

00:48Then I'm going to select or click this button here, which is the Inspect Model Mode.

00:54So I'm entering the Inspect Model Mode.

00:56And now here in the Model Hierarchy, you see that...

01:00...a few nodes have been generated or visualized, so if I'm zooming in we see...

01:06...that we have a Lot, a Building Frontfacade, Sidefacade, and so on and so on.

01:12So this is actually the way CityEngine created this 3D model in the Viewport...

01:20...according to the CGA code, which was applied to the footprint with Rule File.

01:28Say, if I'm opening the Rule File here, by clicking on the Rule File...

01:33...clicking on the Rule File link, I can visualize the code in here.

01:39We have seen before that there is a node-based or a visual representation of the rules...

01:45...but there is also a text-based, and this is the one I'm going to use for the code creation.

01:51Now, I had mentioned that there's a few tricks.

01:55So let's actually minimize the code again and even these out.

02:01Now, you have seen that something popped up in the Viewport when I clicked the Lot here.

02:08And what you see here is the visual representation of the so-called scope.

02:14The scope is like a bounding box for the shape...

02:18...which you are currently working on in the code.

02:21So the scope can be either two-dimensional or it can also be three-dimensional...

02:28...actually, it is always three-dimensional.

02:34But the scope is one of the most important concepts which you have to use...

02:39...if you want to learn how to code CGA.

02:43Now here you see the little GUI button, which activates, and deactivates...

02:49...the Shape Scope visualization.

02:54Then there's the Shape Pivot, which is currently the same as back here...

03:00...so nothing changes there.

03:02And then there is also -- that's a little bit advanced...

03:06...the Trim Planes visualization in here.

03:10So let me quickly hide...

03:16...let's do it like this -- hide all the rest and quickly create a new Rule File.

03:22I'm not going to save this one, but I'm going to create a new Rule File from scratch.

03:27So this is the simpleBuildingAgain.cga.

03:34And I'm going to use this on one of the lots right next to this building.

03:39So I'm going to use this footprint here and I'm going to assign...

03:45...the empty Rule File to this building.

03:48I'm getting a little error, but that's okay, so let us start with the Start Rule...

03:58...@StartRule, and I'm calling the StartRule "Lot."

04:03This is usually the very default, so I'm going to just write X here.

04:10This means that I'm writing all the geometry from the incoming shape into a new shape.

04:16And I'm naming the shape just "X."

04:19The point usually means I want to stop the execution at the end and don't continue.

04:25We're going to use this a lot in the upcoming minutes, so I'm going to save...

04:31...actually, let me add here a color, operator and say color "R-G-B," so that must be red.

04:41And select the building here, the building footprint, and press Generate.

04:46Now I can do the same thing with the Model Hierarchy in here.

04:51So let me select the model here, go into the Inspect Model Mode, and here you see, we...

04:58...have Lot, and then we have X as the final geometry which is visualized in the Viewport.

05:09Now, obviously, if I went in and would rename this to ABC...

05:16...save the Rule File, regenerate the model, this here would adapt.

05:23Okay, so let's go ahead and create our first attribute here....

05:28...an attribute called, "Building_Height" with a default value of, let's say, 20 meters.

05:40Now, how can I actually create a building which is 20 meters?

05:44For this, we have a specific operation which is called, "extrude."

05:49So I'm going to extrude, in the vertical direction; actually, it's world.y, so it is...

05:58...extruding exactly vertically up and I'm going to use this this attribute as the value.

06:06Save, and I'm going to name this, "Mass," or let's call it, "BuildingMass."

06:15And save the Rule File again, and regenerate the model.

06:20Now you see that we have Lot, and then we have Building.

06:27Okay, so that makes all sense, so let's continue.

06:34The next thing, actually, let me continue and create a new rule.

06:38So you see that any number of rules can be generated, and I can just go on and...

06:46...pass on rules, or call different rules, from any point in my code.

06:53So in here, I'm using another operation, which is the component split.

06:58And this actually splits off different faces based on some inputs.

07:03So I'm going to choose all the side polygons...

07:08...of this Mass and I'm going to name them "Facade."

07:13And then, I'm making this vertical pipe sign which says to me, "I want to continue."

07:22And then I'm going to choose top, and the top will obviously be a roof.

07:30So what we have done here is, from the geometry, which was created with selected...

07:36...all the side faces, all the side shapes, and define them as facades...

07:42...and all the top polygons, there is just one.

07:46There would be also a bottom one, but we are not calling this...

07:50...so this shape will get deleted afterwards.

07:53The top shape is Roof; now you see here I did not put a point here.

08:00And on the left-hand side, we get a little warning.

08:04So that means Undefined rule:Roof.

08:07Now that is nothing which matters, but so I can easily go and continue and...

08:15...generate the building again so nothing will happen.

08:20But it's just because these rules are not defined as rules themselves.

08:27So this is a rule definition and this is just missing.

08:30So I'm just going to continue with the roof here.

08:35And I'm going to go ahead and directly finalize the Roof.

08:39So, in the assets folder here, we have under roofs, we have a roof.tif.

08:47I can visualize this file right here and you will see that it is a picture.

08:55So this is a roof picture, and I want to use it and map this directly on top of the...

09:01...the building as a roof.

09:05It's a very simple roof, so I'm going to use it just that way.

09:11So now I can drag and drop this roof.tif into my rule...

09:18...and since it is recognized as a texture, it will automatically create...

09:26...the appropriate CGA code for me with the correct path for the file.

09:31So this is perfect.

09:33Let me go in and add something more because CityEngine does not yet know...

09:40...how I want to project this building onto the geometry.

09:44So we have to define this, and for this, there is also another CGA operation.

09:52And this is called "setupProjection."

09:55Now, sometimes it may happen that you don't know all the precise...

10:04...name of the operation, so you can also go ahead and just create or write...

10:12...a few of the characters and then hit CTRL+SPACE...

10:16...which triggers the command completion.

10:19Now this is also something which can also, obviously, save you some time.

10:24So I'm going to double-click it, then I'm going to define it uvset, which is the first uvset...

10:31...for the color space, then I'm going to say, in this case, I'm not going into all of the details.

10:40So otherwise, you wouldn't have to learn anything more.

10:43So I'm going to use scope.sy, I'm going to choose '1 and '1.

10:57Now, there is a little error, that's not .sy, that's .xy, and also now the warning is gone, yea.

11:15Okay, let me undo and create some more space here, okay, now, projectUV(0)...

11:29...okay, there you go.

11:39I went out of the Inspect Model Mode, and here you see that the picture has...

11:47...now been mapped on top of my building.

11:50So if I'm editing the building footprint, I can just go in, select the underlying road...

11:58...network and the whole building will be restructured or regenerated immediately...

12:05...adapting all the textures and all the side facade polygons.

12:12Now, I'm not going to dive into too much of the technical details...

12:16...because this is just a simple introduction here.

12:20But what I wanted to show you is again the setup projection in scope.xy.

12:27Now, if I'm again entering the Inspect Model Mode, and I'm selecting...

12:32...the roof shape here, you see that the scope again is visualized.

12:38Now scope.x, that is always red and scope.y, that is always green.

12:46So I am projecting this image in this plane, yea, in this plane...

12:53...and this is the scopes red and green plane.

12:57The dimensions I am actually using is in the direction...

13:01...in the horizontal direction, '1, which is exactly the same as scope.sx...

13:09...as a length, and it is also the same as scope.sy in the height.

13:17And then I'm actually applying or breaking down the UVaccord in the projection...

13:25...information into the polygon of the roof; and then I'm assigning the texture.

13:33So let's continue and work with the facade.

13:37So I'm not going to perfectly layout the code, so I'm just going to continue here.

13:44Now, often it may happen that you have a different floor height...

13:51...on the ground floor than on the upper floors.

13:56So I'm going to create another attribute, which is called, "Groundfloor_Height..."

14:06...which is, in my case, 5 meters, and then I'm creating another one...

14:13...Upperfloor_Height, and this is just 3 meters.

14:21So we can distinguish between these two geometries...

14:27...or between the heights visually, a little bit better.

14:31Now, the facade, what do I want to make with the facade actually?

14:36I want to split it into different floors, but the moment, at this...

14:42...as the geometry is, I want to make a little bit room on the side or split two shapes...

14:51...of the very edges of the wall, or of the facade, to just have some more space for...

15:06...between the edges of the...

15:17...so I'm going to split, so I want to go ahead and split two parts of the sides...

15:50...of the facade, just to make a little bit space between the edges of the actual facade.

15:57So I'm not going to define this as an attribute, and by the way, when I'm visualizing the rule...

16:04...in the Inspector, you see that all the attributes which I have defined...

16:08...are now available as attributes in the Inspector.

16:13So if I'm going to write the function, for example, like myValue = 10.

16:24Save the Rule File.

16:25Then you see that this value does not appear.

16:30But if I define it as an attribute...

16:33...attr, save the Rule File, then you see it appears in the Inspector as an attribute.

16:40So I'm not going to use an attribute in this case.

16:46I'm going to define WallSidePart_Width, which is, let's say, 1 meter wide.

17:01I'm going to use this in my next split, and I'm going to split this facade.

17:09So let me enter the Inspector -- oh! An error, let me fix this quickly -- there you go.

17:20Okay, let me...

17:22...enter the Inspect Model Mode again and again and select one of those side-faces here.

17:28Now you see again that we have a red line and a green line...

17:31...so that means this is scope sx and scope sy.

17:38So I'm going in and I'm writing split(x), because I want to split in that direction.

17:46And then I'm going to say the "Wall Width" part on the side...

17:56...which happens to be Wall part.

18:00Not to explain all the details here, than I'm writing ~ 1, which means...

18:13...Facade_Main, and then again, I'm going to create this part here.

18:21Save, regenerate, now you see what happened here.

18:26So, on the left side, Wall part was split off.

18:31Then, on the right-hand side, also a Wall part was split off.

18:37But in the middle, which is ~1 meter wide...

18:43...so this is a floating value, where CityEngine adapts the value, so I could also write...

18:51...~10, but it's just a short value since the left-hand side...

18:57...and the right-hand side is already defined.

19:00I can just write ~1 and this is defined as the Facade_Main part, which is in here...

19:08...and I'm not going to mess with the wall parts again; otherwise, then texturing them.

19:13So I'm going to copy-paste the Facade_Main here and I'm going to split vertically...

19:23...split in the green direction...

19:27...and here, the first thing which I want to do, is I want to first split off the ground floor.

19:32So Groundfloor_Height : Upper_Floors, I'm just going to name this shape that way.

19:42And then a second split -- no, sorry -- Groundfloor_Height : Floor, then...

19:56...~1 again gives Upper_Floors, and this is a new shape.

20:02Now let's visualize that by regenerating the building, and here you see that one shape...

20:10...has been created for the ground floor, and then ~1, which basically means the rest is...

20:18...defined in another shape, which is called "Upper_Floors."

20:22Now let's copy this whole thing here...

20:25...and paste it again and name this guy "Upper_Floors."

20:30And here, we split again vertically, but this time, into Upperfloor_Height...

20:36...and delete the rest.

20:39And then here is a new sign, a new little functionality, this is the *.

20:46So the star means do the stuff inside the brackets, the curly brackets...

20:53...as many times as possible.

20:56So I'm going to save again and regenerate.

20:59And now you see that multiple upper floors have been generated.

21:04You see that here a little bit better.

21:07Let me hide all the shapes.

21:10Okay, now the beauty of this whole process is obviously that if I'm changing...

21:17...the incoming building height to say, 40, it doesn't matter how many floors there are.

21:24CityEngine will always update the number, or the geometry, and thus also the number of...

21:32...the upper floors.

21:33And this is done by this little * sign here, so I'm going back to 20 meters.

21:41And regenerate, okay.

21:43Now we are at a Floor, and let's go in and...

21:50...split the floors, each of the floors, again, horizontally.

21:55Now we can go in and say, split(x), as many times as possible.

22:02And we are going to create another attribute, which is, or let's...

22:08...yea, let's create an attribute, an attribute which is the...

22:14...Tile_Width, which is, I'm going to define as, let's say, 5 meters.

22:22So I'm going to create big tiles in this facade.

22:27So let's use this Tile_Width and define a Tile.

22:35So here I'm going to, instead of, actually, let me quickly show you the difference here.

22:41So I'm generating the model, and here you see that we have 5 meter-wide tiles here.

22:52But there is one which isn't 5 meters wide, and this is because I did not define...

22:58...the ~ sign in here, so what the correlation is in this case...

23:04...specifically, actually let me split (x), here, oh, wrong position.

23:13I did not define the Tile and the ~ here, so what this does is the ~ together...

23:20...with the *, they will make a certain amount of full tiles, which all are the same width.

23:27So let me regenerate this -- actually, I messed up the code here -- yea, now it works again.

23:39So here, CityEngine again defines how many tiles there are.

23:44So let's continue with all of these tiles.

23:51Now split the tile again; let's say again, horizontally, with this structure here..

24:00...and define new values, let's say, Tile_Side_Width = 0.5...

24:21...Side_Width, and in between, that's the Tile_Main.

24:40Tile_Main again gets split vertically split(y) into...

24:50...let me redefine this as an attribute called "Window_BaseHeight," which is 0.9 meters...

25:14...attribute Window_Height = 1.4 meters.

25:27And now, split off that way, gives Wall, Window_Height : Window, and ~1 gives...

25:44...try to guess it: Wall.

25:49Let's save and regenerate.

25:52Now we see that on all of these tiles we have the base height, which is this high....

26:04...then the window height and the rest, which is wall.

26:08Now these geometries obviously change, or have changed, since there's a ground floor...

26:14...or between the ground floor and the upper floor.

26:18So let's go in and change one of these widths, which was the Tile_Side_Width...

26:23...which maybe does not make too much sense...

26:26...so 5 meters, that should be approximately 3.5 meters.

26:38Actually, hmmm, yea, that makes more sense.

26:46Okay, and in this case, I'm just going to continue with the Window Rule in here...

26:55...and I'm going to texture this again.

27:02So let me go grab the window texture, or one of the windows here...

27:16And now, I'm going to use a different function.

27:20I created a function which generates me one random or gets me one random image.

27:28So the texName, for example, = fileRandom in this path.

27:37So I'm going to copy this, delete this fileRandom, and put it in here.

27:48And now, the idea is that I'm replacing this number here with a *.

27:55So the *, in this context, means it's a wildcard search, and may bring back...

28:03...any of these images here.

28:06So it could be a random, or it is a random sample, between all of these windows here.

28:13So I'm going to have to set up the projection again.

28:17I'm going to copy some of this code here.

28:22Put it in, and I'm going to say "xy," that should be correct...

28:28...and I'm going to texture the shape with the texName.

28:36Regenerate the building, and now we see that each of those...

28:42...windows, again, has gotten a correct, or a new, individual texture.

28:50So now the facade itself looks a little bit...

28:55...uninteresting without the texture, so let's go in and also assign a texture to it.

29:04So let's find the facade first.

29:06So here is the place where we want to set up the projection.

29:11And here, I'm just going to search the image I'm want to use...

29:18...here is facades > textures and I am going to use just simply the brick wall.

29:27Drag and dropping this into the rule here, just quickly...

29:33...and also drag and dropping the dirtmap into the code here.

29:43So I'm going to do something with those two pictures.

29:49Let me comment out this code here.

29:53By the way, you can comment out code with either this #, or with just...

29:58...// the division sign here.

30:03Let me code this out.

30:06Okay, so I'm going to use not a full repetition of the texture...

30:16...along the whole facade, but I'm going to enter a different value.

30:21So we have seen that the image is repetitive, so I'm going to open it again...

30:29...just to visualize it.

30:30And this part is about, let's say, 50 centimeters high in reality...

30:36...and about 1 meter long, approximately.

30:40So I'm going to define this.

30:42This means ~1 and ~0.5.

30:49This here, CityEngine tries to adapt the number of repetitions of the texture.

30:56So I'm going to grab this texture and I'm deleting the rest out designing this...

31:02...and regenerate the building.

31:05Now we see that the texture has been...

31:10...assigned and repeated accordingly in the given dimension.

31:15Now, I've taken a second image here, which is the dirtmap, so I'm just quickly...

31:22...adding into other lines here, so I'm going to, actually, basically...

31:28...just paste what I had in my clipboard just before, which is these two lines here...

31:38...and I'm going to choose the UVset to UV(2).

31:43I'm changing the UVset to the so-called dirtmap UV layer.

31:50And I'm going to copy this here and then set, this is a little bit special, but...

32:00...material.dirtmap, and then the image itself.

32:09So what does this actually do?

32:11I am saving and regenerating the building.

32:15And now you see I have commented out...

32:18...the texture, so what we see only is what these three lines are doing.

32:23So again, I'm using the full dimension of the facade for the projection on the second...

32:29...UV layer, which is the dirtmap layer and then I'm assigning the dirtmap.

32:34And the dirtmap actually looks like this.

32:37It's quite a low-resolution image, but it is adding some dirt, as the name states...

32:44...onto the full facade -- here it is.

32:48The dimension is adapted so there is always a full repetition over the whole polygon.

32:55So let's go in and reactivate the texture.

33:01And save the rule again and regenerate the building as so.

33:10Now this is already quite beautiful, and we have a lot of different attributes now, too,...

33:16...to play with so I can go in, and for example, edit the Groundfloor_Height...

33:24...and you see how the number of upper floors is adapted...

33:30...or you can go in, and for example, change the Tile_Width and so on and so on.

33:40Now, in the written version of this tutorial which you find here in the scenes folder.

33:48There are more or different ways...

33:52...covered different elements of how you can write CGA code.

33:57So, for example, there is also a little topic about how you can...

34:01...embed different levels of detail.

34:04So I'm not going to cover all of these steps.

34:08Additionally, it's better than you just work through this PDF.

34:12A lot of the stuff will be the same as I have just shown you here...

34:16...but I don't want to spend too much time in this video.

34:23So I hope you liked this video, too, and let's continue with the next one.