I want to design a city, much like New York but I am not sure of the best way to do it. As far as planning out the layout goes, I thought I'd use google maps and take a screenshot of a sky view of manhattan, and then open up the image in a 3ds max and outline the streets and blocks where the building will go. I will be creative with the buildings, but I don't know how to actually put it altogether.
How do the pros do it?
What is this city for? You'd pretty much never want to put a realistic city into a game; you either want to design it around the way it is supposed to function for the player, or around the way it is supposed to look if the player can't actually wander through it.
It is for a free roaming game I want to make. actually not much of a game, just something I want to try. I have an iron man character that I want to use to fly around a city.
There's a plugin for 3dsmax called Greeble, which can generate city blocks for you. You should still do some planning yourself, but this makes it easier to populate your scene with buildings more quickly. Also great for just creating a quick mockup to get it working, then you can refine the scene later on.
Have a look here: http://max.klanky.com/plugins.htm
">
Here is a video on how to model a city using Blender, it uses a particle system to clone buildings. Even though you are using 3DS max, it is likely that you can do the same thing once you see how the technique works. http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/how-to-create-a-city/
Blender City Generator makes a city with one button.
Here's a video I made of one with no textures and some interesting lighting:
This one has simple textures:
What is this city for? You'd pretty much never want to put a realistic city into a game; you either want to design it around the way it is supposed to function for the player, or around the way it is supposed to look if the player can't actually wander through it.
Good point.
