MetroModeler ® Version 2.1
3D city model made with MetroModeler, rendered in Bryce 5.5
MetroModeler is a 3D modeling tool for creating 3D models of houses, buildings, streets, and cities. With this computer program, you can create 3D buildings and 3D cities many times faster than you can by using general-purpose 3D programs.The 3D models created by the program can be used in:
- Video and computer gaming
- Movie and television special effects
- Magazine or book illustrations
- Web-based 3D environments
The Random Building Generator allows you to create a complicated 3D model of a building just by pressing a button and waiting a few seconds for the model to display. You can automatically generate a seemingly infinite variety of high-quality buildings, ranging in complexity from simple houses to very intricate skyscrapers. The maximum number of structural combinations you can generate is more than 1,000,000. The Random Building Generator is extremely customizable and extensible, and works off of the materials that you tell it use (which are grouped into 18 categories). You can create 3D models of buildings at a rate of about 7 per minute. There are numerous options allowing you to customize what type of buildings are generated. You can also customize the Random Building Generator to make only variations of some particular building or buildings that you are interested in. Once you have it set up, the Random Building Generator is the easiest way possible to make new 3D models of urban structures. You can even run it in batch mode, and create hundreds of high-quality 3D models while you are eating a meal or sleeping. The Random Building Generator has been carefully programmed to output buildings that meet standards of design, beauty, and realism, so its output is much better than purely random assemblages. Using this tool is rather like telling a group of architects to produce a diverse gallery of work for your review, and then selecting the buildings you like best.
The Random City Generator can be used to easily create an entire 3D model of a city or part of a city, such as a grid of 300 city blocks, each city block containing one or more buildings. This utility will even produce the roads, sidewalks, and street markings found in such a grid, and can even realistically populate the city streets with a variety of cars. To use the Random City Generator, you specify a pool of 3D models that this utility will use to construct a city or part of a city. This is very easy to do, because you can merely specify your favorite 3D models created with the Random Building Generator. The Random City Generator then constructs a city model using these 3D models, and some hints you give it (such as whether it is okay to use a particular building more than once, and whether a particular building takes up a whole city block, half a block, 1/8 of a block, etc.). The Random City Generator can (if you want) make variations in the sizes and materials of a building, so that even if your "pool of buildings" only has a few dozen items in it, the resulting city may still look like it has hundreds of different types of buildings in it. When you see the output of the Random City Generator, you will often see something as detailed and stunning as any 3D scene you have ever created.
The Random Building Generator produces 2 forms of output: a Wavefront .obj file that can be read by many other 3D programs such as CtrlView and Bryce 5.5, and a short MetroModeler script of a few lines. When you find this utility making a building that is attractive but not exactly what you would like, it is very easy to tweak the building to look exactly the way you want it. You merely need to change a few parameters in one or a few lines of script (or rerun the Random Building Generator, telling it to make lots of variations of this script). The script uses only functions that are fully documented within the program and on this web site. Moreover, MetroModeler includes remarkable script-editing tools that make changing a line of script easy for non-programmers (it is always as easy as changing an item on a form in which all the input slots are clearly identified and described).
MetroModeler saves 3D models in the Wavefront .obj format or in the VRML formats (1.0 or 2.0), formats which can be read by many other 3D programs (such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, LightWave, Bryce 5.5, Blender, etc). MetroModeler works seamlessly with the $30 CtrlView utility (www.ctrlview.com) that allows you to view, rotate, or zoom in on your 3D model, or save it in a variety of other file formats. The Wavefront .obj files created by MetroModeler can be read by the $20 AccuTrans 3D utility (www.micromouse.ca), which can convert them to more than 25 different 3D formats such as .3DS (3D Studio Max), .lwo (LightWave), .ma (Maya), and .x (Direct X). MetroModeler output files converted to the Direct X format can be loaded by the widely used TrueVision 3D game engine. One purchaser of MetroModeler is using its output with the popular Torque game engine.
MetroModeler allows you to easily create 3D models that seamlessly and realistically combine:
- Houses
- Buildings
- Bridges
- Rivers
- Roads
- Vehicles
- Parks
- Sea coasts
MetroModeler includes over 600 materials (textures) designed for architectural 3D modeling:
- Rows of windows
- Columns of windows
- Grids of windows
- Doors and building entrances
- House walls
- Building walls
- Dozens of structural materials (marbles, granites, bricks, etc.)
MetroModeler includes extensive functionality for handling a wealth of architectural details that can be hard to handle with other programs. For example:
- Balconies
- Dormers
- Gables
- Spires
- Arches
- Domes
- Pediments
- Double-saucer units (for the tops of futuristic towers)
- Rectangular rings of columns (as in the Parthenon)
MetroModeler allows you to create buildings in a variety of styles:
- Classical
- Contemporary
- Futuristic
MetroModeler includes powerful GUI utilities that save you tons of time:
- Random Building Generator
- Random City Generator
- City Layout tool
- Textures search and replace tool
- Tool that lets you change any aspect of any building (size, dimensions, textures, etc.) in less than 10 seconds
- Tool for automatically making 50 or more permutations of any building
MetroModeler is powerfully extensible and customizable because you can:
- Add new functions
- Add new materials (textures)
- Add new building layout files (templates for creating buildings)
- Add new city layout files (templates for creating cities)
- Create your own tools using the fully documented API of more than 240 functions
- Customize the type of buildings that are automatically generated, and what textures are used to create them
- Customize what buildings are used when 3D cities are generated, and customize the layout and dimensions of these cities
"A great 3D program"
"Great for creating background scenes"
-- Unsolicited comments about MetroModeler from 2 users at www.3Dcommune.com
Purchase MetroModeler for $500Version history