Example of custom developed procedural tool to generate buildings.

In the sample, a tool to generate parametric buildings was needed to improve level design workflow efficiency and reduce error from manual construction.

Procedural building generation tool

Custom editor scripting, generation algorithm definition, and tool design.

Features

Primary Features:

  • Allow designers to configure buildings parametrically

  • Supports like-modules to be batch edited after generation

  • “Bakes” configured assets to support dev requirements

    • Optimizes meshes for performance

    • Organizes mesh to support VFX

    • Applies required extra components and game object markups for systems hookups (Nav, collision, spawning systems, etc.)

Secondary Features:

  • Integrates into existing custom level design toolset

  • Designed with collection scaling in mind

Level Designer Workflow

  • Using the level design toolset (or manual) a building configuration prefab can be instantiated into the desired scene

  • Custom editor interface allows level designers to parametrically define their desired building size; one-button generation

  • By selecting one or more like-modules (e.g. wall modules, floor modules, etc.), custom editor interface allows for batch assignment of specific module

  • When design is complete, level designers can use one-button “bake” feature

Tech Art Team Upkeep Workflow

  • New building modules can be added to module selector prefabs

  • New building module collections can be added by creating new module selector prefabs

  • New Procedural Building Tool can be configured by modifying the in-editor references and modifying proceduralization parameters

Building Design

  • The Procedural Building Tool assumes that regularly sized building modules will be used to generate buildings using floor, wall, ceiling, roof, exterior wall corner, and roof overhang modules

  • The tool allows for the parametric definition of depth, width, and height of building by module counts

  • Allows for the specific definition of which floors (besides the first floor) have floors and ceilings to allow for large open structures like warehouses and factories

  • The foundation of the building uses a simple cube foundation with procedural concrete texture to allow for easy building placement on uneven ground

Baking Feature

  • All wall segments on the first floor are preserved as individual components to support cosmetic structural destruction

  • All upper floors’ walls are converted to combined meshes for optimization and to support view obstruction fading (VFX)

  • All upper floors and ceilings are converted to combined mesh for optimization and to support view obstruction fading (VFX)

  • Combined meshes baked to support submeshes to preserve multi-material assignments

  • Each new building is assigned a random serial ID and is applied to all game object names to make for easier in-editor searching

  • All meshes are appropriately tagged for optimized searching

  • All meshes are placed on appropriate layers to support game-wide collision detection policies

  • NavMesh components and colliders applied and configured to conform to navigation and collision conventions

  • Colliders and NavMesh component dimensions configured procedurally by accounting for in-game mesh size