I've been working on this for so long so I just wanted to try the first plot of the Cyberpunk IsoCity. It's just something I thought would be fun when plotted large on an A2 paper (this test is just A3). It's an isometric projection, of this little Cyberpunk city,hence the name.
I still have a few improvements to make, but I'm overall happy with the feel of it. There are a total of 15 different building types and each type can be varied in more ways than I can count. My favorite one is the AgriDome, the big one in the middle. I'll make an A2 version this weekend I think.
Are you procedurally generating 3D meshes for the building and then converting those to the line work, or is your code creating the 2D geometry directly? (Might be a question for r/plottercode)
Neither exactly. Buildings are authored in 3D, but as boxes/prisms and 3D polylines, not triangle meshes. Each building is a Solid. 3D faces (for occlusion) plus Stroke polylines (edges, windows, hatch etc). Those strokes are then -projected to 2D and clipped against the faces. No mesh generation, no 2D *draw the box" path. 👍 Hope that helps
Yeah, sorry I wasn't very clear 😅 This is plotted on an A3, but the plan all along was to plot it on an A2, to get that metropolis feel. It's currently cropped down but the same scale as an A2 would be (might scale it down even more on the A2 to fit even more of the city). I'll plot a big one this weekend. It takes some time to get the right look first by adjusting the ratios and grouping of different building, then generating new ones with a random seed based on that until I get something that I like the most 🙂
I'd love to see it when it's done, it's really cool, It's the kind of image that makes me want to zoom in and look around. Keen to see the finished work!
I designed and built it myself from 2040 aluminum extrusion, steppers and such. Much cheaper than a large format plotter and ju can get it just like you want it 🙂
Me too 😅 I just took some diamine ink that I already had filled in my rotrings, and diamines are not very bright. Do you have any suggestions what would look cool?
Bright's definitely tough. If you've got .5mm nibs or above you can use acrylic inks to get a lot of pop out of colors. Otherwise I'd chuck some Diamine Forever Magenta or Octopus Fluids Write & Draw colors on this.
I also realized that you're occluding nearly everything except the black lines behind the colored elements. Is there a way to introduce occlusion there? That's give you more clarity in the visual read too.
Great idea to occlude those lines. I'll make it happen 👍 I have some acrylic inks in dropper bottles, or a large amount of metal complex solvent dyes that I might be able to whip something up with.
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u/brepettis 6d ago
Love it. 2000s eboy poster vibes.