MAXON Computer Cinema 4D Tutorials: How to Create City Blocks

Project Based Tutorials - City Scene

City Scene:
How to Create City Blocks
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GO SE XL Requires:
Version 5.0+

Description: One simple way to create a cityscape is to model a few simple buildings and duplicate them several times to achieve the illusion of a large city. This tutorial takes a look at how to create and position buildings suitable for a realistic, low-polygon city scene. In following cityscape tutorials, we will add greater detail to the city and create a fly-through animation.

Step 1: The first step towards creating your cityscape is to create a simple building. These buildings will be modeled by scaling cube objects. To create a cube object, go to Objects=>3D Object=>Cube. In the dialoge, checkbox Separate Surfaces so that all the faces of the cube are editable, then click OK.

Step 2: Turn on the scaling tool to use in shaping the cube into the shape you want for your first building. Click on the Scale Active Element icon or select Tools=>Action=>Scale from the File Menu.

Scaling Tool

Object Tool

Step 3: Make sure that you have the object tool activated by clicking on the Object Tool icon or going to Tools=>Options=> Object.

Step 4: Now, when you click and drag your mouse over the scene window, you will see the cube change scale. The cube scales proportionally in all directions unless you lock an axis. In the Actions Palette there three icons with an axis letter and a signal. Clicking on these will toggle the lock on that axis. When the signal is red, the axis is locked and the object cannot be changed along that axis. Click on the X axis and Z axis locking icons so that the signals are red. Now, when you scale the building the object will scale only in height and not width or length.

Y axis unlocked; X & Z axis locked

Step 5: Any number of axis can be locked at any one time, so if you're having trouble moving or scaling an object a certain way, double check to be sure that the axis is not locked. Play around with scaling until you are satisfied with it as a shape for a building.

Step 6: Next, we will create a new texture to be used for the roof of the building in the Materials Manager. Go to Window=>Material Manager to open up the Material Manger window.

Step 7: In the Material Manager window, select File=>New Material. A blank sphere will appear in the Materials Manager window. This is your new texture which can be applied to any object you create in the scene.

Step 8: Double-click on the texture to open up its settings window. This is where you set properties of your material such as; color, reflectivity, smoothness, glow, transparency. You will see a checklist at the right of the window in which you decide which properties you want this material to have.

Step 9: Now, work on getting a simple texture for the roof of the building. For this building we prepare a roof texture with color and bump properties selected. Check the boxes next to Color and Bump so that those characteristics are activated.

Step 10: You will also see either tabs at the top of the window if you're on a PC or arrows and a drop down menu for Macs to see the different settings for each attribute. On the color settings you can pick any color for the roof by clicking the Color button. Choose a brownish or grayish color to resemble an actual building's roof.

Step 11: After selecting a color, go to the Bump setting. Activating the bump property will cause the texture to look rough. Use the Roughcast file which is included with Cinema 4D in the tex folder for the bump on the roof. Click on the button to browse for a file in the bump settings screen and select the Roughcast01.tif file in the Basics folder which is in the Tex folder in the Cinema 4D directory. Change the bump setting to 20% so that the texture will look rough, but not jagged and click OK. Now, you have a rough, colored texture to apply to the roof of the building.

Step 12: Rename the texture by double-clicking on the name at the bottom of the material in the material manager. Call the texture roof, so you can easily recognize it.

The next step is to create windows for the building. A fairly simple and effective way to do this is to create two separate textures, one for the window material and another which will serve as the framing for these windows.

Step 13: Go to the material manager and create a new material.

Step 14: Double click on the new material to open up its settings window. Check the boxes next to Color, Reflection, and Highlight. Select the color you would like the windows to be tinted in the Color settings. I chose a light blue color for these windows. Next, go to the reflection settings and bring the reflection strength down to about 60%. Too much reflection will cause the windows to look like mirrors. Click OK.

Step 15: Now, you need to create a texture for the building's frame. A simple way to do this is to use a 2D editor such as Photoshop and make a simple black square with a smaller white square inside of it.

Step 16: Save the file to the basics folder (where you grabbed the Roughcast file earlier).

Step 17: Create another new material. This time checkbox Color and Genlocking. In the color settings, select what color you want your building to be.

Step 18: Now, go to the Genlocking settings. Genlocking takes a file, finds the light and dark areas, separates them and makes one of them transparent. In the File field in the genlocking settings, browse and find the file you just created with the black and white squares. Genlocking will punch out the middle square so that you are only left with the outer frame (this can also be inverted so that the outside frame is punched out, leaving only the middle square). Click OK. You now have three textures in the Material Manager. One for the roof, one for the windows, and one for the building frame.

Step 19: Now that these textures have been created, all that you have to do is apply them to your object. Go to your Object Manager window. If the Object Manager window is not open, select Window=>Object Manager in the File Menu.

Before applying any textures to your building, you should first go through a simple procedure which optimises your building structure to leave fewer objects and speed up render time. This becomes important later on when you might have dozens of different buildings to work with.

Step 20: In the Object Manager window, you can see your object "Cube" with a small arrow to the left of it. Click on the arrow to see the different faces making up the cube. They are listed as 'Face 1', 'Face 2', etc. The first four faces are the sides of the cube and face five and six are the top and the bottom.

Step 21: First of all, delete Face 6. Since it is at the bottom, you'll never see it and so it doesn't need to exist. Then drag the other 5 faces out of the Cube object, placing Faces 1 and 3 next to each other and Faces 2 and 4 next to each other. These pairs of faces are the opposite sides of the building. After all the faces are dragged out of the Cube object, you can delete 'Cube'. It's purpose was to house all of the faces so it won't be needed anymore.

Step 22: Next, you'll want to group together those opposite faces. Select Function=> Group Objects from the dialog and drag the marquee box around Faces 1 and 3. As a result, you get a new object called 'Object Group' which now is a parent of those faces. Now, group Faces 2 and 4 together using the same method.

Step 23: Use the Connect Tool to make multiple objects into one object. This lowers your object count and makes it much easier to work with when you have many buildings in your city. Select one of the object groups in your Object Manager. Then, select Tools=>Structure=>Connect to create a single new object which is a copy of everything in the object group selected. Connect the other object group too.

Step 24: You can now delete the original object groups which contain the faces. This way, you reduce the 7 objects you originally started with down to 3 objects without losing anything.

Step 25: Rename your objects so that you can instantly recognize them. Face 5 is the top, so a good name for it would be 'Roof'. The other objects are opposite sides of the building.

Step 26: You want to apply the roof texture to the Object. To apply a teture to an object, select the texture in the Material Manager and drag it over to the object in the Object Manager. In this case you want to drag the roof texture and drop it on the 'Roof' object. You will see the cursor change indicating that you can apply the texture.

Step 27: When you apply the texture, a dialog will open. The projection setting allows you to choose how the texture will be mapped to your object. I used a cubic projection becasue it gave me the best results.

Step 28: You can experiment with the other settings by changing how many tiles there are, the size of the tiles, I used 3 tiles by 3 tiles. You don't want so many tiles so that there is visable pattern, but you also don't want too little tiles so that texturing appears too large. Click OK. The same settings window can be brought back up by double clicking the small texture icon which appears to the right of the object in the object manager.

Render in Editor tool

Step 29: Click the Render in Editor Tool to test how your texture looks on the object.

Step 30: Once you are satisfied with the roof, apply the window texture to the side faces of the building. Again, select Cubic for the projection. The tiling doesn't matter too much with the windows since it is all one smooth material.

Step 31: Now apply the building frame texture to the same two objects with the glass texture. Multiple textures can be applied to one object. Select Cubic again for the projection and increase the number of tiles to around 10. Use the Render in Editor Tool to check and make sure the windows look alright. The X setting sets how many windows you will have across the building face while the Y setting determines how many window tiles you will have going up the building face. In order to move the building around your scene easily, you can make the building sides children objects of the roof. Simply drag the building side objects on the Roof object to set up the hierchy. Then, rename the Roof to Building 1.

Step 32: Thankfully, creating entire city blocks does not require you to create each building individually. You do, however, have to make a couple different buildings in order to get the desired effect of a realistic cityscape. Using the same techniques and processes as above, create at least three more new buildings. Make them either taller and thinner, or shorter and thicker. You can also create new materials with different colored framing or windows or different shaped windows entirely. Use your imagination.

Step 33: Once you have created four different types buildings, you can start making duplicates of all of them so that you have several buildings to work with. Name the individual buildings so you easiy select the different types. You can change the name by double clicking on it in the object manager.

Step 34: Now, make about 5 or 6 duplicates of each different building. Making copies of objects is very easy. In the Object Manager, select the object you wish to copy. Then, click and drag it down while holding the control key. This makes a single copy of the object. Do this 4 or 5 times with the first building. You now have a bunch of one type of building.

Step 35: There is a smart method of keeping your Object Manager from getting cluttered with too many objects. In the Object Manager, select Function=>Group Objects...'. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair in the Object Manager. Now, drag a box around all the copies of the one type of building. They will be placed into a directory called 'Object Group.' The small arrows (+s on the pc) to the left tell you that there are objects within the directory and can be viewed by clicking on the arrow.

Step 36: Rename the Object Group by double clicking on the name and calling it something like Building Type 1.

Step 37: Use the same procedure for the other individual buildings you created. Make copies and group them together by type. Objects in the object manager can easily be moved around in and out of groupings by simply dragging the object wherever you want it to go. Your cursor will change to a down arrow to let you know if you are placing an object in a group.

Step 38: Lay all the buildings out so that they resemble a couple of blocks of a city. Use the overhead view or the XZ view to manipulate the buildings easier. You can get to this view by clicking on the Top View - XZ icon or selecting View=>XZ - Top View.

Step 39: Select the different buildings using the object manager and move them around to setup a square area resembling a city block.

Step 40: Rotating the different buildings in different directions will add to the randomosity. You can rotate the buildings by opening the Coordinates Manager (Window > Coordinates Manager) and under the Direction Column, change the heading to 90 degrees. This will rotate the building 90 degrees around the Y axis.

Step 41: In the Object Manager, go to Function=>Group Objects... and group all of the buildings into one object.

Step 42: Rename the Object Group to City Block.

Step 43: You can make copies of this entire group of objects. Rotate the city blocks so that your new larger block of city doesn't look repeptitive. You can go even further with this concept and group together a very large city block. Then, go on to make several copies of that. However, unless you have a very fast machine, this will start to slow everything down.

Step 44: To add a light source to your scene, select Objects=>Scene Object=> Light from the File Menu.

Step 45: Afterwards, a dialog with many lighting options for you to play around with. For now you can leave everything as it is only changing the 'Shadows' setting from 'None' to 'Soft'. Soft shadows will give a more realistic look, while the hard shadows will give you a more illustrated look. Click OK.

Side View

Step 46: Now you can move the light source around your scene as you would any other object. Place the light source somewhere above and slightly to the side of your city blocks.

Step 47: In order to see the shadow effects, you need to change the settings in the render preferences. To adjust these settings, go to File=> Preferences=> Render...'

Step 48: In the new settings window set Reflection to 'All Objects' and the Shadows to 'Soft Only'. Now when you render your scene you will see the buildings lit from the new light source and the shadows they cast.

Step 49: The last step is to add a floor and a sky. Select Objects=>Scene Object=>Floor to insert a floor which is an infinite plane spanning the X and Z axis. Next, go to Objects=>Scene Object=>Sky to bring in a sky object. The sky is like a huge sphere which encompasses your scene. Create a new material and apply the Cloud01.tif image to the color setting. Turn the color strength all the way down to let the cloud image show through, Then apply the texture to the sky object in the object manager.