Layer-Based Procedural Design of Facades

Martin Ilčík, Przemyslaw Musialski, Thomas Auzinger, Michael Wimmer
Layer-Based Procedural Design of Facades
Computer Graphics Forum, 34(2):205-216, May 2015. [preprint]

Information

Abstract

We present a novel procedural framework for interactively modeling building façades. Common procedural approaches, such as shape grammars, assume that building façades are organized in a tree structure, while in practice this is often not the case. Consequently, the complexity of their layout description becomes unmanageable for interactive editing. In contrast, we obtain a façade by composing multiple overlapping layers, where each layer contains a single rectilinear grid of façade elements described by two simple generator patterns. This way, the design process becomes more intuitive and the editing effort for complex layouts is significantly reduced. To achieve this, we present a method for the automated merging of different layers in the form of a mixed discrete and continuous optimization problem. Finally, we provide several modeling examples and a comparison to shape grammars in order to highlight the advantages of our method when designing realistic building façades. You can find the paper video at https://vimeo.com/118400233 .

Additional Files and Images

Additional images and videos

teaser: Decomposition of a facade into layers.

Additional files

preprint: Draft of the paper
Supplementary: Supplementary material with further details

Weblinks

BibTeX

@article{Ilcik_2015_LAY,
  title =      "Layer-Based Procedural Design of Facades",
  author =     "Martin Il\v{c}\'{i}k and Przemyslaw Musialski and Thomas
               Auzinger and Michael Wimmer",
  year =       "2015",
  abstract =   "We present a novel procedural framework for interactively
               modeling building fa{c c}ades. Common procedural approaches,
               such as shape grammars, assume that building fa{c c}ades are
               organized in a tree structure, while in practice this is
               often not the case. Consequently, the complexity of their
               layout description becomes unmanageable for interactive
               editing. In contrast, we obtain a fa{c c}ade by composing
               multiple overlapping layers, where each layer contains a
               single rectilinear grid of fa{c c}ade elements described by
               two simple generator patterns. This way, the design process
               becomes more intuitive and the editing effort for complex
               layouts is significantly reduced. To achieve this, we
               present a method for the automated merging of different
               layers in the form of a mixed discrete and continuous
               optimization problem. Finally, we provide several modeling
               examples and a comparison to shape grammars in order to
               highlight the advantages of our method when designing
               realistic building fa{c c}ades. You can find the paper video
               at https://vimeo.com/118400233 .",
  month =      may,
  issn =       "1467-8659",
  journal =    "Computer Graphics Forum",
  number =     "2",
  volume =     "34",
  pages =      "205--216",
  keywords =   "procedural modeling",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2015/Ilcik_2015_LAY/",
}