Information about Brick3
Brick3 is the third iteration of the grand project I decided to call "Brick" and I think I have mentioned it quite a few times before, but never gone in to detail, which is the reason for this post.
I'm from the IT sector and one of the things I thought myself early is that the computer should work for me and not the other way around. In the Netherlands IT used to be called "Automation" but I'm not certain if many people still know that or try to write programs by that principle.
In the game industry we have something called procedural generation (also known as procedural content generation) which is letting the computer generate the content in game. This can be music which changes depending on the amount of danger the play can be in (adding rhythmic drumming) or textures which are generated by the computer instead of an artist. Those are all examples of generating content by the computer instead of by human.
Any process can be fully converted to logic and any logic can be programmed. A computer can be used to execute any process as long as I'm able to convert the process to logic and program that logic.
-- Wouter Lindenhof
The above quote is mine. And what I'm saying is that in time a computer should be able to replace any human, although I don't that to happen in my lifetime (and I'm young).
However the above quote is what brick3 is all about. The earlier examples were all based on the fact the design was done ahead of the actual content generation. After all the music was composed and the texture that was generated was most likely done based on an algorithm. An example for the last one but then for a mesh can be found in this blog post Donuts! (Procedural Torus in C++).
Brick3 is a bit different as it wants to let the computer do the design instead of you. It tries to generate a flat and based on requirements (you don't want a toilet in your living room) it will place the location of rooms and places the objects (lamps, light switches, paintings, trashcans et cetera). If you would use that in game like for example Grand Theft Auto you would be able to enter every house and assuming everything works correct you would have a fully designed interior while as a programmer (or artists) you hardly have to do a thing.
Anyway since a picture sometimes says more take a look the following screenshots.
This screenshot shows the minimal graphical quality I want to have. Graphics are important as they play part in deciding whether or not to buy a game. Besides that it also says a lot about the level of finish and the dedication put in the product. Although walls appear to have depth, they are flat, but using some smart programming code an illusion is created and when you look at the next screenshot I think everyone will agree that high graphical quality is a requirement for this application.
This screenshot shows the current state of the application. You will see that everything has a dummy texture and you will notice that not all walls are attached (this is because that a door is not generated and once it is does it will show a nice door frame). Both rooms have the same function and the big room that is directly in front of the camera is a test room (it is 27 by 27 by 27 meters big).
Besides the obvious issues the application is reaching its completion. There are some minor issues with placement and I need to improve the performance at some points but after that I only need to add some new models (the furniture is not procedural generated) and I will give some extra requirements and the application should design a room according to my specification.
Although I have to admit it doesn't look like much at this point, I think many people will be surprised once the end result is ready. Not only will it be able to generate fully random interiors of flats, buildings and rooms but it will do so as if it was designed by a human and only I have to do is hit one key to generate a complete new result.