Frequently Asked Questions

I don't understand what this is all about?

SCG is all about automatic creation of 3D cities in order to spare you time and efforts.

Why would I need it?

Everywhere you need to depict a city: in a game, in a movie, in a picture.

How do I use it? Is it a stand-alone program?

You must run it from within Blender, a free 3D creation suite available on all major operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux). If you're not familiar with Blender, I recommend that you first learn the basics.

It doesn't work, there is an error.

First, make sure you use Blender 2.49, that you installed the Python version (at least 2.4) requested at Blender's startup, and that you followed the instructions in the tutorial. If it still doesn't work, post a message on the Blender Artists forum with the error you get from the Blender console, plus, if possible, a way to reproduce the bug.

My buildings / streets are colliding with each other.

SCG was built with speed and visual complexity in mind, not accuracy. Consequently, it never checks whether buildings and streets are colliding with each other. Streets do collide with other streets, but sometimes they don't. SCG is a "macro" generator, not a "micro" one.

My buildings are black, or pink.

This is due to one of your building textures being either black, or not set. The buildings are assigned textures with a name that starts with building_tex. So for example if you rename a texture called building_tex_56 to foobar (in the UV panel), it won't be used the next time you create the city.

If your textures are turning black after a while, this is a Blender behavior I can't explain, but you can prevent it by packing your texture in your .blend file just after you've created them.

Why is it called "Suicidator"?

I used to work on a crazy movie project telling the story of a stupid hero, a perfect loser, named Suicidator (suicide + terminator, or was it predator? lol). It sounded silly and it suited the character perfectly. But a modern hero, no matter how simple-minded, needs huge cities to safeguard. I couldn't find a free city generator for Blender, so I started a script aptly named, guess what ... Suicidator City Engine.

Wasn't it called "Engine" before?

Yes, it was. But after a request from Pascal Mueller, author of the commercial software CityEngine, explaining that this name is a trademark in Europe and in the US, Suicidator City Engine has been renamed to Suicidator City Generator.

What is the license? Can I use it in a commercial project?

This work is in the public domain. Do whatever you like with it. You don't even have to acknowledge my work, even if it's always appreciated.

I need feature X, can you add it?

I can't guarantee anything, but you can always post a message on the Blender Artists forum, or send me an email about it.

When is the next version coming out?

I don't know, this is all done as a hobby in my spare time. Sometimes development goes fast, and sometimes not.

I know another, better city generator.

There are plenty out there, but most of them aren't free, or aren't for Blender. They are great nonetheless.

I'm working on a similar project, can you help me?

If you have precise questions: yes. If you want to discuss implementation ideas, no: my spare time is too precious for that.

Can I contribute?

If you want to help, spread the word, and link to this website.

If you're a developer, I prefer to work at my own pace, I won't team on this project, sorry. You can always dig into the code, modify it, and create your own version of the script.