Blender Addons For Buildings & Cities

Creating buildings and cities is important for most outdoor scenes, but the problem is that it takes a lot of time and it gets repetitive and boring real quick. That's why you probably need some help because it is the most efficient way of working on your projects, money, effort and time-wise. So today we're gonna go over a couple of blender add-ons that are all about creating cities and buildings in the most efficient way possible. From comprehensive asset libraries to city generation tools and procedural building generators, the list covers a wide range of options that you might find useful. I wanted to let you guys know that the blender market is having right now a huge winter sale with 25% discount on thousands of blender products from add-ons, courses, shaders, you name it. Also, if you don't know where to start, I have in the description of this video a list of the best add-ons and courses that can take your projects to the next level. Without further ado, let's jump right in. We're gonna start with procedural building generator version 2, which is an upgrade for the add-on of creating custom fully procedural buildings using the power of geometry nodes. The add-on kind of simplifies the process of making buildings by allowing you to drag and drop presets onto any object of your choosing. And by doing so, it will automatically generate a building that adapts your modifications in edit mode. What makes procedural building generator 2 so much better than its predecessor is that it has been completely rebuilt from the ground up with improved structure and user experience by allowing the drag and dropping of presets. It also now offers 9 different node groups for added flexibility, which allows you to apply different styles to various parts of the building. It also has experimental support for deforming meshes, enabling features like cloth simulation and armatures, which could help to achieve a trippy effect. In addition, the base version includes now a variety of building styles, with options to expand through additional packs or even your custom creations if this is something that you are interested in. Now, if you want something ready to use, I recommend City Builder 3D, which is an add-on packed with over 100 professional assets made for creating custom procedural cities easily and efficiently. The add-on offers many themed kits like Metropolitan, Derelict Future, Cyberpunk, Clean Future, Warzone, Soviet, Hong Kong and more. Each of which contains small, medium and large buildings designed to complement each other. From what I can see, these collections can streamline the city building process, which I think can eliminate the need for the time-consuming asset creation especially when building big cities. Next up we have Buildit, which kind of simplifies the process of generating buildings automatically by offering 10 different modules, each with different types and polycounts. One of the main features of Buildit is its ability to generate buildings that can be exported by simply checking the Export Ready button before generating buildings. This ensures that the resulting UV map meshes are ready to be exported to your game engines. Another notable feature is ability to create night buildings. So you can increase the light density parameters from 0 to 1 to eliminate windows, providing realistic night-looking buildings, which can be useful in different cases. In addition, Buildit allows you to edit buildings before exporting them by giving you access to the Modifier Properties panel where you will be met with a couple of adjustable settings. This feature enables control over various aspects of the buildings, including the building's type, number of panels of the X, Y and Z, in addition to light density, light distribution, the ground floor, roof parameters and more. The next add-on is called Buildify, which is a free geometry node-based tool, and it is all about creating buildings easily using a modular approach for a fast and efficient workflow. Generally speaking, it provides you with an intuitive user interface, which allows you to generate buildings very easily, like extruding, moving, copying and pasting faces. Also, its modular design offers lots of customization options by using pre-made node groups, making it possible for you to craft a wide variety of architectural styles. Around the same vein, and using geometry nodes, we have an add-on called Auto-Building. This one allows you to create doors, windows and panels, which are then distributed across a basic mesh to form detailed, complex buildings. And this one is really interesting, because it offers several key features to simplify the building creation process. For instance, you can easily spawn objects on faces with control over density, randomness and other parameters, which allows for precise customization of your building elements. In addition, the add-on enables you to deform objects to fit face shapes, making it possible to give a stylized look to your buildings. Also, objects can be spawned on edges as well, and you can extrude edges to create ledges or manipulate roof elements if needed, as well as the ability to automatically scatter objects on roof or facades. Last but not least, the add-on allows also for the creation of support pillars, foundations and basic interiors, and these small details really make this add-on stand out. Now, to create cities, and specifically futuristic cities, you can take a look at Cyberscape Pro, which can help you easily generate futuristic neon-like cities, or cyberpunk cities if you will. From what I can see, the add-on comes with a great deal of customizability, giving you a set of parameters to adjust various details of your city, like the city layout, buildings height and shape, streets, traffic plates, neon tubes and so much more. You can simply run through random seeds to get completely new results every single time. A very nice feature that comes with this tool is the ability to scatter custom ads onto your buildings simply by using image or video sequences of your choosing. In addition to the ability of adjusting the models of your city, you can adjust the textures too, whether it be color, texture seeds, building lights and more. Still with creating cities, we have Citygen. This one allows you generate cityscapes complete with streets, traffic lights, and trees. And some of the features that come with this add-on include, for instance, with the dynamic sky and SDRI baking, you can easily adjust the moon's position and see if the shadow shifts accurately as the sun moves. In addition, the add-on offers easy integration of custom building assets, because while the default assets have impressive detail, using many of them can crash your PC. So as an alternative, simpler assets can make it easier to create vast city layouts without burdening your machine. Last but not least, we have Urban Yak City Asset Pack, which is one of the best add-ons when it comes to assets in this video. This is the case because it includes over 184 realistic assets made with semi-procedural materials. This pack offers a dedicated interface for easy asset control and customization. The library also includes various types of buildings, sidewalks, asphalt roads, garbage assets, utility poles, generators, electricity boxes, and more. And the add-on offers two versions for each model. An HD version with high-quality details and procedural materials for close-ups in cycles, and a reduced polygon version with PBR materials optimized for animations or those with limited hardware. In addition, the add-on comes with the option to control the lights of your entire scene. So you can easily switch between day and night cycles, and you can add weather effects to your scene like snow, wet surfaces, and animated raindrops. And there you have it guys. If you are interested in one of these add-ons, you will find all the necessary links in the description. I hope you found this video useful and informative. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. You can also check some of our previous videos. Thank you guys very much for watching, and I will see you... in the next one!