City Designer: Generating a City in Ürban PAD 2.5¶

The procedure for generating a city in Ürban PAD 2.5 is slightly different than in Ürban PAD 2.0. Follow this tutorial to generate a city using the Ocean Isle 2.5 city project.

Tutorial Objectives¶

Creating a New Simulation:

Use Surface Creation option to define city nodes and boundaries.
Assign a Sector or City Template to surfaces.
Launch a simulation.
Manually edit the simulation using City Edition and Sector Edition menus.

Loading an Existing Simulation:

Import a Surface file
Assign a Sector or City Template
Launch a Simulation
Save the export.
Manually edit the simulation using City Edition and Sector Edition menus.

Tutorial Resources¶

Trial version of Ürban PAD 2.5 (available on the Forum or on the site
Ocean Isle 2.5 City Project (available for download with your trial version)

Creating a New Simulation¶

This tutorial section will lead you through creating a new simulation in City Designer.

To begin your tutorial:

Load the Ocean Isle 2.5 city project from the Project tab by opening the City Project folder and clicking file project.gcp.
Click the City Designer tab in the Ürban PAD 2.5 Interface.
Place the camera in Pos Camera Sky from the Cameras menu to maximize the surface area.

Use Surface Creation to Define City Nodes and Surfaces¶

Cities created with Ürban PAD 2.5 can have multiple surfaces.

To draw a surface:

Select Surface Creation from the Surface menu.

Trace the outline of the city surface with the pink line.

It is possible to create more than one city surface.

Use Surface Handling to Assign a City or Sector Template¶

When you have finished drawing your city surfaces:

Select Surface Handling from the Surface menu.

Click inside the city surface to highlight city boundaries.

Right click inside the city surface to open the Surface toolbar.
Select Assign from the menu.
Select City Template to create a city template.

Note: The City Template option corresponds to the specification step in Ürban PAD 2.0. Please refer to Creating a City Specification for information on creating a city template, or specification.

Selecting City Template will give you three options:

New: create a new template
Create From: modify an existing city template and affect it to the selected city node
Select Another: select an existing template and affect it to the selected city node

Once you have created, modified, or selected your city template, the city node will be outlined with a road network and filled with the default world sector specified in the template (see Step 8: Defining World Sectors).

Creating a Surface That Follows a Watermap¶

It is also possible to construct a surface that interacts with a watermap. The following images will show you how to create a surface that follows the terrain in the Ocean Isle 2.5 city project:

Launch a Simulation¶

Once you have created your city template (see Creating a City Specification) and affected the template to the selected node(s), you are ready to launch a simulation. (Selecting Sector Template does not allow you to launch a simulation.)

Right click in the city surface to access the simulation menu
Select the green play button to launch the simulation.
Right click and select the blue pause button to stop the simulation.

You may want to stop the simulation in order to save it or manually edit it.

Manually Editing the Simulation¶

The manual editing toolbars in Ürban PAD 2.5 are accessible from the City Edition and Sector Edition tabs.

Handling¶

Use the Handling options to adjust elements of the city simulation:

Roads Creation: place additional roads in the road network. Use the hotkey A to join two extremities.
Unconnected Roads: place unconnected roads in the road network (dead ends, no outlets, etc.)
Road Splitting: manually curve the road with a greater degree of finesse by adding additional spline control points.
Parcels Creation: manually place parcels. Use hotkey W to join parcels to road.
Parcels Handling: regenerate, lock, show, or hide parcels
Roads Handling: regenerate, lock, or edit road template
Area Handling: regenerate area or edit area template

Display¶

Show or hide roads, sectors, and parcels.

Map¶

Get map views for the city simulation, including positioning failures, activities, and constraints.

Loading an Existing Simulation¶

You may also load an existing simulation by clicking Import Surface from the File tab:

You will be prompted to choose an export.

This action will affect a surface onto which a simulation has previously been run on the screen. You may now Launch a Simulation or try Manually Editing the Simulation.

The simulation export ocean isle demo.gcf is furnished with your trial version of Ürban PAD 2.5. This simulation is a demonstration created with a 30-second generation time. Features of this simulation include:

A heightfield with relief (can be modified by following Heightfield and Heightmaps tutorials)
A city featuring a seaside walkway and a road network
Urban content placed by hand (beaches next to seaside) and automatically
Constraint maps (see City Designer: Creating a City Specification)
An unbuildable forbidden zone (area in white)

After importing this surface, you might try launching a small simulation with a short runtime (30-60 seconds) to see what results you obtain. You may adjust the simulation runtime by clicking Edit tab, then Preferences.

If you are interested in further limiting the buildable areas of your city, see Optional Step II on the Heightfield and Heightmaps page for a short tutorial on creating environment layers.

Saving the Simulation¶

You may:

Save the simulation as a .gcf file
Save the simulation as an XML export (not available for trial version)
Export the simulation to Collada

To save the simulation as an XML or .gcf file:

Right click inside the paused simulation and click the XML export option

Save the export as a .gcf or .xml file in the path city_project/name/cities/export.

Exporting the Simulation to Collada¶

Please see City Designer: Saving and Exporting City Simulations for a tutorial on exporting your simulation to Collada.