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City Kit Version 1.2 Released Today 73 Comments

We are very excited to announce City Kit Version 1.2 featuring Shape City. Adding a city to any shape is the number one requested feature for the City Kit and we are happy to deliver it in v1.2. This is a free update for existing customers. Existing City Kit customers will get an email with a link to get the new version. Of course, all future customers of the City Kit will automatically get the new version starting today.

So, What’s new in City Kit v1.2?

City Kit 1.2 is updated and optimized for Cinema 4D R13, but of course it still works great with verison 11 and above. It features the new “Shape City” rig which allows you to place a city on any shape creating city-scapes never imagines in real life. v1.2 also features a new “Blue Sky” lighting preset and the new City Shape Presets that are ready-to-render versions of the new City Shape rigs. Some of the new presets can be seen below.

Thanks as always for using and checking out the Greyscalegorilla Kits and Packs. We design these products to help you build Great looking renders in Cinema 4D and to make lighting and modeling more fun and easy for 3D artists.

Learn More About City Kit for Cinema 4D

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73 Comments

  1. Kerem

    You are doing super cool stuff! I’m a C4D user too and switched from Maya long ago. Really like it…

    Reply

  2. Puia Darius

    YESSSSSSSSSSS FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

    HDRI Kit Pro + shape City Kit = Win

    Reply

  6. Nelson

    Really like the rendering with the simplified buildings. Has a cartoon feel to it. Nick keep up the great work! You are a great guy.

    Reply

  7. Melondy

    Chris Schmidt is a rockstar.

    * throws panties on stage *

    Reply

  8. Brad

    Great update! I tried putting a city on a letter, but couldn’t figure it out. I wanted the city to be on the top of my text.
    It would be a killer tutorial for the future!

    Reply

      • Simon

        That would be cool, I saw someone do something similar on youtube but cannot find the clip/link now

        It works really well with the sound effector.
        I’m going to see if I can get the sound effector or xpresso to animate brightness of window/lights in time to music as well.

        Reply

  10. ZlimDesigns

    Awesome, Nick.
    Great Update.
    Combined with the HDRI Light Kit, that Thing just blows your Mind.

    Greetings from Germany,
    Zlim

    Reply

  11. Telepati

    I love this kit but this is not realistic you know! In this city there is no any grass or tree ;)

    Reply

    • Chris Schmidt

      That’s the show that inspired me to get into 3D!

      Reply

  13. rroobboo

    very cool! but my computer will explode if I try to load this in C4D

    Reply

  15. Cameron

    having trouble getting the tutorial videos to load past the password screen on vimeo. Anyone else?

    Reply

    • Cameron

      Has anyone been able to access the tutorials on vimeo?

      Reply

  17. brandon

    i don’t know whether to be excited or mad. I’m torn between the two! Now I have a faster way to create a small world, that’s the exciting thing. The mad part is if I don’t use this, now everyone will think I did use the city kit. blast you for making great things! in a sarcastic kinda way!

    Reply

  19. Frank C.

    Would it be possible to do a death star type fly through using this kit?

    Reply

  20. BobLoblaw

    Good stuff nick, big fan. Can you apply the city kit to text objects?

    Reply

  23. Frank

    Did you already send out all of the update links for previous costumers? Did not get any ’till now :-)

    Cheers! Keep it up!

    Reply

  24. Shoney

    Woooo, Looks amazing!

    A quick question, i used an old email address, that doesn’t exist anymore,when buying the city kit, is there a way of swapping email address?

    ive got all the details to prove that i brought it!!!

    thanks

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Sure. Just drop us the details on our support page form and we will update your email and get you the update.

      Reply

  26. Steve

    Will this now be included in the Ultimate GSG C4D Bundle currently advertised on your site for $249?

    Reply

  30. Lorenz

    Do you can tell me whats the name of the Intro-Sound?

    Reply

  32. Happyrender

    Hey Nick!

    Great update, been looking forward to this.
    Here’s a question:
    http://vimeo.com/29771545
    Take a look at this bending city Inception thing (which is probably the first thing everybody rendered once they got your kit ;) )
    and tell me, can I stop the city building geometry from changing as the bend takes place?
    I assume the kit is calculating downtown buildings and so forth and adapts to the changes in the base mesh (ground mesh) and so scales and changes the building geometry accordingly.
    Problem is that with an example like mine is that I’d like to keep the city intact throughout the animation.
    Does that make sense?
    I think making the city editable would probably help, but would it screw up the xpresso used to keep the buildings attached to the base mesh?

    I know, I’m being a smartass right away :D Sorry!

    (As to the animation, it’s a test done on my office machine that lacks Frischluft tools, so be gentle with the depth map ;) )

    All the best, mate!

    Onni
    @ LOMA Graphics Ltd

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Hi,

      I think I know what is happening. The “Downtown” section of the plugin tells what buildings to be big and small. I think that the placement of that downtown area is causing the changing of the building. Try moving that and turning up random buildings instead. I will do some tests here too. Sorry about the problems.

      Cheers,
      Nick

      Reply

      • Happyrender

        Hey, Nick!

        Thanks for the reply, I appreciate your taking interest in the solution.
        I played around and tried the downtown width/height options and got it to work. Thanks!
        On another issue, though… Sometimes I can’t get the preview or the high poly city visible when I’m using a custom shape. It renders okay, but the viewer stays empty. Ideas?

        Thanks, mate.

        Onni
        @ LOMA Graphics Ltd

        Reply

      • Neil

        Nick,

        Can you be a little more specific about this workaround. I am animating the city around a shape and have run into the same problem where the buidlings keep changing. I’ve messed with the “downtown” settings but to no avail.

        Thanks!

        Reply

  35. Matthew

    Looks Awesome! Minor correction; in the post you say “allows you to place a city on any shape creating city-scapes never IMAGINES in real life”, when it should be “never IMAGINED in real life”. Keep up the great work!

    Reply

  36. Chao

    Hi Nick,

    I tried to find the tutorials when the City Kit 1.1 just came out. I found 2 tutorials which are “City Kit Demo” and “Tips and Tricks”. However, I remember few months ago I watched more then 2 tutorials about City Kit. Maybe 4 or 5 tutorials and some of them are really talked in depth of how to use it. Do you still have them? If yes Where I can I find it? I really want to watch it again?

    Thanks

    Chao

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      You bet. There is an HTML file that came with your download of the city kit that had links to all the tutorials and the password. Let me know if you find it.

      Reply

      • Chao

        Hi Nick,

        I know you are a very busy people but you reply my post so fast !! Thank you so much. Yes, now I remember where did I see those tutorials.

        I have one question and hope you can help me out here. From the city kit tutorial, I feel that your computer must be a very fast Mac Pro with custom graphic card. Am I right?

        My company gave me a 12 core Mac Pro with a Quadro FX4800 card. For my opinion it supposed to be a good setup. However, when I pull out the city kit I found it is kind of hard to just control the camera or move / rotate the whole city. From the tutorials it seems you can move / rotate or do whatever you want without any hassle.

        I don’t understand where might be the problem, especially in the “city text” rig, it really hard rotate a single inch. Would you be able to tell me where might be the problem or how I can improve my speed? I am very appreciate your kindly help or input.

        This is my computer hardware:

        Mac Pro 12 core with latest OSX
        250G SSD Hard drive with 1TB backup hard drive
        NVIDIA Quadro FX4800
        ATI 5770 HD
        24G RAM

        My computer is currently installed C4D R12

        again, thank you so much, with my best respect

        Reply

  37. Anil

    Hi, I just wanted to how can i use this city kit in maya. i mean once i created one city in cinema 4d. how to import that in maya 11? is it possible?

    Reply

  38. Anil

    Hi, I just wanted to know how can i use this city kit in maya. i mean once i created one city in cinema 4d. how to import that in maya 11? is it possible?

    Reply

  40. Bart

    I purchased City Kit last week and have had a chance to play around with it over the last couple of days. I was really happy to find that with a little extra work I was able to add my own buildings to match the character of my scene, bake my cities down to polygons for manual trimming, and figure out the rig controls fairly easily. Great job GSG!

    Reply

  41. Sean Cusson

    I’m trying to add City Kit to my scene. I already have objects scaled to a size I’m happy with. The problem I have is that the city is coming in far too small in relation so my scene. I tried grabbing the city null and scaling it up but the buildings scale up individually. Is there any way I can scale the city up as a whole?

    Reply

    • Sean Cusson

      This went by without an answer so I’m hoping this will bump it. I’m having the same challenge I had back in October. I have a city built but now I need to scale it down (a lot). How can I go about scaling the entire city up or down?

      Reply

  42. Drew Grimmett

    Hey guys,

    just started using the city kit and im not sure if i have done something wrong but when i load up the city shape presets the buildings are on the otherside of the object, ie they dont point up they point down… Does this make sense?

    cheers,

    Drew

    Reply

  44. Brian

    Sorry dude but I don’t like the kit much. Well I do like lots of things about it but the rigid grid array kills it for me. Even if I create large tiles of buildings by hand, and use the kit to clone those my eye is drawn straight to the grid pattern. And to be honest that’s easy to do without the kit.

    These limitations are easy to see after viewing the videos tuts but you don’t get to see those until after purchase.

    Paul Everett did some nice work on CityGen 2 but I think it has been abandoned
    Esri City Engine is cool but the basic version does not support instancing and the advanced version is aimed at the GIS market and is far too expensive for visuals.

    Your site is top notch & all the training you provide easily covers the cost of the kit – so hopefully no hard feelings.

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Thanks for the feedback, Brian. We are trying to make the City Kit better with every release. We hope to make more random cities that aren’t on a grid in future versions. Let me know if you want a refund. I want my customers to be 100% happy.

      Reply

      • Brian

        Thanks for your generous offer.

        As I said, I don’t feel out of pocket as what you do is such a valuable resource for people who use Cinema 4D. Whilst the kit is not very useful for me right now I’m sure it will evolve & I’m pleased that you are working on making the plugin produce more organic results.
        I knew before purchase that your products are more broadcast centric than for visualisation etc but was kind of desperate as CityEngine is generating too much data for Cinema to handle well.

        Best regards

        Reply

  45. Laurel

    I want this! … however render time is a consideration.
    What computer (size) are you using, since your images render so quickly. I have a dual core (purchased maxed out), and at school we have a quad cores – still the renders are lengthy. Any advice for the best value for power rendering?

    Reply

  46. Simon Spencer-Harvey

    Hi Nick

    Thought you would find this interesting from a developer point of view:
    http://arnaud.ile.nc/sce/
    Your kit is way cooler though

    If you ever develop a 1.3 version I have a small wish list:
    -Some short of simple street texture, perhaps park/green are for larger gaps
    -More control on style of buildings even if only a limited selection of presets (traditional building, scifi, etc)
    -More control over city grid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SphGom6KOFo)
    -Animated traffic procedural material or even better a xref emitter where cars/trucks that follow paths and can be swapped from xref proxy to actual model if required

    thanks

    Simon

    Reply

  47. Simon

    Has anyone tried using the GSG City pack to create a tron, mirror’s-edge or a pixel-art-style version?

    Reply

  49. Phookajoe

    Is it possible to have the city on color, like white? But also have the lights on all buildings? How would I do this?

    Thanks in advance. Great Plugin!

    Reply

  50. cheap replica sunglasses oakley

    You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I to find this topic to be actually one thing which I feel I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m taking a look ahead in your next publish, I will attempt to get the hold of it!

    Reply

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