Hello everyone, I am working on my bachelor on space and architecture of virtual spaces (similar field with architecture in video games) so my models are a bit experimental and sizes and scale are objective and relative to the ‘player-visitor’. The thing is that I would love to work procedurally and generate a world based on my model language , and in general to see the possibilities that it gives (my experience is only by making some terrains and buildings in blender with displacement maps, which is very simple). This video represents in a way my theme but its less architectural Houdini Tutorial Procedural Level Design in UE4 - YouTube .
So I am checking constantly a lot of programs (grasshopper/ Houdini / Unreal engine blueprints/ blender geo nodes) and I’m a bit overwhelmed by them and what they can do. My question is would grasshopper be very strict for a world building? and would the other programs be good for making an architectural project? which program would you recomend for my approach ? (for ex. the video I attached above is done in houdini but everyone online is saying houdini is not for architecture and could be very overwhelming for simple projects.)
Thanks for you time reading all this.
I don’t exactly understand what you mean by “strict”, but in my opinion something like shown in your reference video can be done in Grasshopper, at least geometry-wise and massing-wise. You could probably achieve similar results with vanilla GH components, but plug-ins like Wasp or Monoceros would probably let you take things further and allow you to gain more control.
The world building in the video seems mainly fuelled by randomness (?), which might be undesirable for an architectural project. You may want some random stuff here and there to keep things fresh, but you want more granular control over how things come together.
For texturing and rendering, you might want to export the resulting geometry to another application or use Vray in Rhino. I use Blender.
Sure, I don’t see why not. I’ve seen them all used at least in the design phase of architecture.
And I use them all here and there, except the Unreal Engine.
Well, neither is Blender or the Unreal Engine. These are tools that can be used in the design phase though. Their lack of accuracy, scale, and such make it necessary to use other apps (i.e. Rhino, Revit, ArchiCAD, SolidWorks, Fusion 360, etc.) in the development phase, which should be irrelevant for a university project, so you can let lose and go crazy!
Thank you so much for your extensive answer, helps a lot, especially by looking a bit into wasp and monoceros they seem to be what I am looking for, at least the examples of projects that are made by them. By strict I mean that if it would let you explore new design solutions in a more conceptual manner. Allow you to explore ideas like the superstudios in a more procedural way. Monoceros thought seems to have this kind of freedom in the examples of projects done with it look very close to what I want to do at least design and scale-wise , should I go with it? I was asking mostly because all the tutorials for grasshopper focus on singular buildings ,a “shel” or a facade design rather than a “world” or a bigger space (like a “level” in a video game).
I’d take both for a spin and see what works best. You could even do a combination.
Sounds great thank you.
@johncaraj, found your question through a quick google search on procedural programming and Grasshopper. What has been your experience so far? Was Grasshopper only sufficient in generating spaces?
I have a set of elements (floor, wall, decoration, etc) and am wondering if i can use Grasshopper to generate compositions with them.