Procedural Aircraft Design Demo

I recently came across this really cool project to build an airplane generator. Denis Kozlov made it in Houdini, creating a web of nodes that transforms the input parameters into fully-realized 3D models, complete with twisted rivets and weathered textures.

It’s a great example of a complete generation pipeline, using a parametric approach to give a designer control across every step of the generation while taking care of the grunt work and making sure everything connects properly.

Tools like these are the exact kind of things that I think are important for artists. Automation can help artists produce work faster. But, more than that, it helps artists make work better: by taking care of the little details like making the curves fit together, the artist can concentrate on the design aspects that the computer can’t handle.

Going further, it lets the artist think in larger concepts. Instead of thinking in units of vertexes or pixels, the artist can think in terms of “a wing” or “how the curve of the fuselage flows with the tail.”

It’s also an opinionated tool: it just makes airplanes, and a specific type of airplane at that. This lets it be really good at the thing it is interested in and introduce variation where it counts. Generative systems that do specific things can be better than trying to do everything, because they can concentrate on the choices that have maximum effect.

http://www.the-working-man.org/2017/04/procedural-content-creation-faq-project.html

http://www.the-working-man.org/2015/04/on-wings-tails-and-procedural-modeling.html