Interactive Sketching of Urban Procedural Models
This research, presented at SIGGRAPH 2016 by Gen Nishida, Ignacio Garcia-Dorado, Daniel G. Aliaga, Bedrich Benes, and Adrien Bousseau, is a fascinating approach to creating 3D buildings. I find it interesting not just because of the results, but because of what it suggests about the future of creating things.
Expect these kinds of interfaces to be more common in the future. It doesn’t replace general-purpose 3D modeling, since it can only create things it can find a grammar for. But for specific purposes, this is great. And it suggests some ways an interface like this could be introduced for sculpting. If you could build a library of generalized geometry grammars, plus modifiers and gestures for actions to change the model, it could open up new ways to sculpt 3D objects.
It’s also interesting because the results are parametric, and can be adjusted afterwards. Adding intuitive interactive interfaces to these kinds of generative grammars opens up many possibilities for artistic expression.
You can read up on their research here.