Dear Arryena Citizens,

I've been walking around with Arryena City in my head for over 2 years now. You people are the wonderful community that can make it happen :).

The problem is right now I don't have time to really really set up things perfectly, so I have a 50% concept down on paper and it's far from finished but I'll share my thoughts with you anyhow :)

Arryena City

What is Arryena City?

Arryena City is a 3 dimensional online city that is build and maintained by a group of people. It can be compared to a 3 dimensional version of Sim City that and is a 3d scene. For now Arryena is built with Bryce 5 software.

Vision

Arryena City has been a vision for over three years now. After I saw Kevin Cappis’ site Surrealplaces.com I started building myself and wondered wether a group of people could build a city together.
The only thing missing in the evolution of Arryena City was a dedicated enthausiastic community like Skyscrapercity.com

Participation

Everyone interested can participate in the Arryena City project just like the SSC project. The software that is used to build Arryena City is Bryce 5, I will explain why later on (in chapter *software).
Just like at SSC anyone can contribute a building by launching a topic with a poll to have other people rate the building.
Actually, Arryena City is just as dead as SSC if no one participates in the project.


Construction Process

Arryena City will steadily grow by submissions of the Arryena citizens (you) and will eventually be an incredible virtual metropolis.
The whole Construction Process is like that of SSC except for a few minor differences.
Construction Sites aren’t freely available like in SSC, but constructions sites are being released for a specific building type with specific requirements or lots can be requested by architects/firms and/or Arryena citizens.
Requirements include building maximum (and minimum) hights,
land value (which also affects mininimum and maximum building hights),
building style (Art-deco, International Style, Post-Modern, New Art Deco, Modern, Futuristic etc.),
minimum rating to be build
and the building has to fit in to it’s surroundings.

Also we could incorporate design competitions for specific high-demand lots where multiple designs are made by various architects and only one gets to be build.

Arryena City Council

The Arryena City Council (consisting of the X most participating members) decides over global Arryena City policies; building requirements, approve projects, release lots, etc etc.
Also the Arryena City Council is charged by the maintenance and updating of the City.

Arryena City Map

Arryena City is located on an Island Group in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean just north of the Equator. The City is build on two Islands; Atlanthena, the older, more residential and Midtown Manhattan resembling part of the city, which is said to be one of the possible locations of ancient Atlantis. Atlanthena started to flourish during the late 1800’s.
Cyerra, the second of the two Islands is a rocky vulcanic Island. Because of it’s rocky hard terrain it was harder to build there and only started to really flourish in the 1960’s. Therefore Cyerra more resembles Hong Kong, New York’s Financial District (DownTown) and San Fransisco (because of it’s hilly terrain).






SSC vs Arryena City

In many views SSC and Arryena City are identical. The only main difference is that SSC is pixel-art 2d and Arryena City is 3 dimensional.
Actually a lot of beautifully made up buildings of SSC would fit wonderfully in Arryena City.

I personally would LOVE a conversion-team that converts the best and beautiful SSC buildings from SSC to Arryena City.

Software (and requirements)

For now, I (and Kevin Cappis, author of Surrealplaces.com also) use(d) Bryce 5 to build the 3d cities. Kevin recently transferred to 3dsMAX (4) but I think Bryce 5 is still the best standard we should use.

That is because:

Bryce 5 is relatively easy to learn and therefore relatively accesible to all the more and less experienced 3d Arryena Architects.
You can make real great buildings using Bryce 5 (only REALLY organic buildings are hard of impossible).
Bryce 5 can render pretty large scenes (if you have enough memory).
Bryce 5 uses materials which, provided with a little skill, can make really realistic looking facades, also this rules out the texturing, which is really hard for some among us.

Next to Bryce 5 the Arryena City project is going to use a huge File-transfer server for uploading and downloading new buildings.
A new building in Bryce format reaches a good 5 to 30 MB soon. This might be a problem to some of us, but if we have a good fileserver it would be ok.


Tell me what you think of it!

Dont worry Skyrise, Real-Estate Developer Rapid is here to develope som nice buildings in the city!

I'll send you buildings regularily for the city!

Okay, you guys have indicated in another thread that 20.00 units equals 200 meters, which I think is what I use except in feet, so I'll have to scale them. What formats can Bryce 5 import? I can export to most formats, such as 3ds, cob, obj, lwo, or 3dm. Since I don't use Bryce, you may have to apply the materials for me.

I had thought about a similar idea to this where several people could draw the blocks, plots and sidewalks of smaller sections of the city (something like 250 meters by 250 meters). One person would have to draw the core section before anyone else drew a section, so others knew how to continue the streets and sidewalks. The sections would need to be assigned to volunteers carefully and in an order that allows them time to draw it out correctly. It could be an interesting evolution of a map. They would draw a polyline (or polygon) map that outlines plots (and what zone they are), sidewalks, and streets. Height restrictions could be figured out before anyone designs a structure. Plots that aren't just simple boxes (like Superpolis is using) would be more interesting and make for more interesting designs. Not to mention it would reflect how buildings are usually designed in the real world, which is to maximize the use of the land it's built on. Plots with unusual shapes can make for very unique buildings. I'll try to show an example of what I'm talking about tomorrow.

Also, it might be easier to get more people invloved if you used something free like GMAX (the free version of 3ds Max). Honestly I've never used GMAX, so I don't know how good it is, but I've heard decent things about it. Just an idea anyways. Bryce is okay if it can import one of my filetypes. 3ds, which is by far the most common filetype for 3D models in every 3D modeling application I've ever heard of, should be importable if Bryce has any rationality to it's programming.

Okay, you guys have indicated in another thread that 20.00 units equals 200 meters, which I think is what I use except in feet, so I'll have to scale them. What formats can Bryce 5 import? I can export to most formats, such as 3ds, cob, obj, lwo, or 3dm. Since I don't use Bryce, you may have to apply the materials for me.

I had thought about a similar idea to this where several people could draw the blocks, plots and sidewalks of smaller sections of the city (something like 250 meters by 250 meters). One person would have to draw the core section before anyone else drew a section, so others knew how to continue the streets and sidewalks. The sections would need to be assigned to volunteers carefully and in an order that allows them time to draw it out correctly. It could be an interesting evolution of a map. They would draw a polyline (or polygon) map that outlines plots (and what zone they are), sidewalks, and streets. Height restrictions could be figured out before anyone designs a structure. Plots that aren't just simple boxes (like Superpolis is using) would be more interesting and make for more interesting designs. Not to mention it would reflect how buildings are usually designed in the real world, which is to maximize the use of the land it's built on. Plots with unusual shapes can make for very unique buildings. I'll try to show an example of what I'm talking about tomorrow.

Also, it might be easier to get more people invloved if you used something free like GMAX (the free version of 3ds Max). Honestly I've never used GMAX, so I don't know how good it is, but I've heard decent things about it. Just an idea anyways. Bryce is okay if it can import one of my filetypes. 3ds, which is by far the most common filetype for 3D models in every 3D modeling application I've ever heard of, should be importable if Bryce has any rationality to it's programming.

Erhm... I've taken over the sizes Kevin uses. That is 16 bryce units per story tall. I don't quite know what a brycean unit is, but I guess 1 unit then equals somewhere between 0.20 and 0.25 meters.

We are already working on an outline for Arryena City, that will not be just a map of squares, but I really like your idea, it will be something like that indeed.

So far I know Bryce is able to import a lot of 3d types, at least you can import from 3dsMax to Bryce.

I am eager to apply the materials for you JPSLtd! :) no problemos ;)

I think that usually the units from one application export and import into another app the same, but not always.

I didn't have time today to make an example of what I was talking about, but I'll try to ASAP. That's college life for you. There's not much time for hobbies.

the prob is you cant import bryce into other progs. its probably the least open format around and why my company doesnt use bryce anymore.

Ouch! That alone is 3 strikes against Bryce. Obviously you get what you pay for, which isn't much when it comes to Bryce.

This is why I use Rhino 3D and trueSpace 5.2, which together are about $1500 worth of software.

This is a nice concept.
But how do you convert towers from SSC to Arryena?

This is a nice concept.
But how do you convert towers from SSC to Arryena?

rebuild them :)

About the whole Bryce issue: the reason I wanted to use Bryce is NOT:

1. It's compatible (because it's the worst program out there, you can only IMPORT from other programs, not EXPORT)

2. You can do pretty much anything with it, it's versatile (NO, it's NOT! Actually you can only "block" and "block" and "block" some more)

3. It's great in rendering (no, it's not, It's fairly easy, but you CAN make more beautiful renders using MAX for example... (though that's much harder))



so WHY in heavens do I want to use Bryce? Well, because a lot of people without real prior 3d/modeling experience can LEARN to use Bryce, and all people with prior 3d experience can use it right away.

That's why I wanted to use Bryce.

Everybody using MAX orso, can Import their buildings into our "bryce" city.

:)

Good points Skyrise.

Actually it's rendering doesn't look bad at all. It looks very similar to Rhino-Flamingo renderings.

skyrise is spot on. bryce has several weaknesses, the biggest is the file format is locked and you cant model organic shapes. the other problem is when you get above 10000 objects it throws a fit, its very bad at organising large amounts of objects properly thanks to how it groups them.
bryce does have a very nice rendering engine though. if you can, learn max. max is the dogs bollocks.

skyrise is spot on. bryce has several weaknesses, the biggest is the file format is locked and you cant model organic shapes. the other problem is when you get above 10000 objects it throws a fit, its very bad at organising large amounts of objects properly thanks to how it groups them.
bryce does have a very nice rendering engine though. if you can, learn max. max is the dogs bollocks.

Yeah :(... well hmm you are right.

Though, still I think it's cool to keep it an OPEN project, and that's the foremost reason to use Bryce I guess... You can create wonderfull buildings in MAX and export them to Bryce, so for the MAX-users, it's not really that a big problem.

Besides, ALL my scenes are above that 10,000 poly's and take a real pain in the ass to organise, (actually, grouping a whole city would get to an astonishing 512 MB of memory while continiously MERGING scenes together)

It sounds a bit stupid maybe, but that's a solution for now, that's how we've been doing it all the time.

but :) ill make the rest of my plans very soon, then we should go work make a blueprint of the city :)

I can try to try and keep any buildings I make low poly.

Does Bryce have texturing, as in being able to import a bitmap jpeg or png, that you can then put on a surface of polys?

I can try to try and keep any buildings I make low poly.

Does Bryce have texturing, as in being able to import a bitmap jpeg or png, that you can then put on a surface of polys?

Yes it has that :) gothicform knows all the ins and outs of texturing, im not a hero with that, I usually use Bryce Materials :P

10,000 polys? lol. i do scenes that are 30,000 objects, yes thats objects not polys. poly count for my scenes reguarly hits 10 million plus. merging works up to a point, i find once you get above 10,000 objects in the scene it starts to splutter badly thanks to the poor ability to handle groups.
i will write a guide on texturing when i have the time.