Inverse design of urban procedural models

Abstract

We propose a framework that enables adding intuitive high level control to an existing urban procedural model. In particular, we provide a mechanism to interactively edit urban models, a task which is important to stakeholders in gaming, urban planning, mapping, and navigation services. Procedural modeling allows a quick creation of large complex 3D models, but controlling the output is a well-known open problem. Thus, while forward procedural modeling has thrived, in this paper we add to the arsenal an inverse modeling tool. Users, unaware of the rules of the underlying urban procedural model, can alternatively specify arbitrary target indicators to control the modeling process. The system itself will discover how to alter the parameters of the urban procedural model so as to produce the desired 3D output. We label this process inverse design.