Buildify - FREE Building Creator for Blender!

In this video, we check out Buildify - a new geometry node add-on that can procedurally create buildings with modular pieces in Blender. It can also generate complete cities using the Open Street Map add-on as well!
DOWNLOAD BUILDIFY
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OSM ADD-ON TUTORIAL
• Easy CITIES IN BLENDER...
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Introduction
0:45 - How to download Buildify for free
1:10 - How to use Buildify in Blender
1:40 - How Buildify uses geometry to create buildings
3:00 - How to apply the modifier to a new shape
3:39 - How the modular parts of the building create a full building
5:23 - Using modular buildings from other sources
5:53 - Creating buildings with Open Street Map data and Buildify
7:56 - Randomizing the OSM buildings

[@TheCGEssentials]

Hi everyone! Let me know what you think about Buildify in the comments below! :)

[@ayu_anime]

Where is your (whatssss uuup guys) in the intro? I literally subscribed because of that, btw thank you for sharing this stuff, cheers :)

[@ebelesaurus2]

5:30 *_YES PLEASE_* there’s a desert town adobe clay house pack on blender I bought on blendermarket place a few years back that would work so well with this lol. Actually I think there’s a clip of the assets in the pack being used at the beginning of video and even in the thumbnail.

[@irocklalot]

how do you export fo fbx? can´t find how to do it

[@deadmikehun]

When i apply the modifier on a plane that i generated a building from, it leaves me only with a plane. I was trying to use a couple of generated buildings for a particle system but i only get the base planes. Any idea how to fix that? Thank you!

[@peterbelanger4094]

UGH, OMG, this thing is terrible!!! It's not a proper add-on, load the blend file, it messes up the UI, the documentation is really weak. i think it's just a marketing trick to get people to buy megascans stuff. How about a proper add-on, that operates like all the others. This thing sucks!!!

[@radioactiveag2531]

It's free but toss that creator at least a cup of coffee. This tool set is totally worth it.

[@TheCGEssentials]

TOTALLY!

[@esochibuike8477]

Sure

[@Juvxii]

I'm good

[@AnalogueRecall]

Thanks Justin. I was initially confused with this not being an add-on but your video made it clear for me. Im hoping to create a number of different city styles with this tool. A great opportunity for world creators.

[@hyoungrockkwon964]

So cool! Thanks for introducing i'll give it a try !

[@travissmith7471]

I can see a future use for Buildify in my work... Thanks for sharing...

[@AKFFPV]

Wow! Huge game changer in creating maps etc. Need to try this it really looks simple to use and modify 🤟🏼

[@TheCGEssentials]

It's not bad - I may circle back to it after the Blender Market sale ends this week :)

[@jamesmurphy7115]

I was finally able to get the Materials to export to FBX. Add a "Realize Instances" Node between the last 2 nodes.. between the Join Geometry and Group Output. Then once you have the building selected in Object Mode choose Object, Convert to Mesh. Then File, Export and Choose FBX.. change Path Mode to Copy and click the little button next to that drop down to Embed Textures and click Selected Objects under Include. Great job on this video, I love your work !!

[@irocklalot]

you sir are a champion. spent a lot of time investigating why it didn´t work. it´s dumb that it doesn´t work from the beginning

[@antonis2029]

Thank you so much! :D

[@zubyyynaijaaa2677]

I just heard about this one couple days ago. I think it's better than the other addon you talked about not only cause it's free but because of the blender osm partnership

[@pavelolivaart]

Thank you so much Justin for making this video! ❤

[@TheCGEssentials]

Thanks for an awesome tool - this is really great! :)

[@darkdoom907]

Thank you mister for your AWESOME TOOL!!!!!!!!

[@akentiev]

Your video is very powerful. Thank you.

[@JeromeADavis]

Excellent tool, going to use this to create a small island for a game prototype. Changing the base assets is rather time consuming but worth it.

[@chuctanundaspiderbone5407]

This is fantastic, thanks. I would love to make my own assets to plug into this. I am definitely going to try it out.

[@TheCGEssentials]

Love to hear how it goes!

[@carlamarieromano4319]

Hey! Thanks so much for this video!

[@learntobecomeananimator]

amazing information in this tutorial .. Thanks 😍

[@anigroove]

Would be great if you could do a tutorial on Buildify and how to replace and modify buildings with Quixel modular building parts. Keep up the good work!

[@anigroove]

I figured it out, its mainly import and move the part to the corresponding collection, then apply the scale to 1, scale it to fit and make sure your pivot point is at the bottom center. It is quite time consuming. Wonder if there is an optimal workflow in this.

[@ebelesaurus2]

@@anigroove hey we’re you able to figure out the orientation? I through in some walls from a modular desert pack and their rotation is all over the place.

[@avatr7109]

@@anigroove For me the Quixel models don't import inside blender

[@thenoobdev]

@@avatr7109 you could import them free in UE, and export as fbx 😊

[@muhammadsamit6487]

@@ebelesaurus2 same here, some walls from a modular desert pack and their rotation is all over the place. 1

[@wolfiedgr8t]

This is just too cool 😎

[@ZUnknownFox]

I'd like to see a tutorial or guide to creating custom building types with this, so instead of just uniform style buildings that look so bland what if we wanted like custom houses or buildings that aren't the standard cube like for example a church or something with some variety.

[@BrownHuman]

Exactly what i was thinking. As for a simple workaround i can think of is to delete manually a few blocks from the city layout and then add another geonodes setup in those missing parts which uses different modular assets. But if you need really niche and stylistic buildings like churches and stuff maybe thats a bit too complicated to build procedurally

[@kevinlapierre7889]

Thanks Justin

[@dakotagarcia997]

I’d love to see a quick breakdown and tutorial on how this could be used to generate custom layouts with custom architectural kits like Kitbash 3D or what have you

[@MG619Day]

How do you export the buildings as an object? I tried exporting it as fbx and gltf files but I don’t get the building. I only get the pieces inside the middle of the building.

[@ishakatan5544]

I feel you!

[@lemapp]

More on replacing the building modules would be great. Perhaps even different types of roofs. Like Mansard for a Paris style look.

[@pavelolivaart]

All about module replacement is described in the documentation. Buildify does only support flat roofs for now :)

[@sebastianosewolf2367]

@@pavelolivaart of course but tbh it would be way more easier also for beginners who are not so familiar to see some examples of replacement in a video instead of reading and try to understand

[@sebastianosewolf2367]

@@pavelolivaart btw i figured out after some testing, I put another Pillar to the collection but after this ( scale rotation is applied and pivot point is set) the ground_floor_pillar_CV_0.5m is out of bounce a bit and now I have gaps on the corners I changed the walls and this works well so far

[@HarryClipz]

@@pavelolivaart It would be better to make video tutorials on your KZbin channel on how to better use your addon and how you combined the addon Buildify with the Blender-OSM addon. You have a good addon but without any video tutorials people like me who are more visual won't know how to use it. I saw that you have it all in the documentation but it's recommended to make videos

[@pavelolivaart]

@@HarryClipz Hello Harry, I am sure it would be better, unfortunatelly I didnt found much time to make one as making tutorials for me as a non-nativ speaker takes a lot of effort.

[@maha23]

That's awesome 🤩✨✨✨✨

[@TheCGEssentials]

Thank you 🤗

[@jacksaripper]

I would love some more tips on working with Buildify!

[@RoniStudio]

Awesome!

[@TheCGEssentials]

Glad you think so!

[@sudharsansaravanan5401]

I have an unreal license for megascans. Thank you for reminding me bro. Love your work 👍🎁

[@TheCGEssentials]

Note that those are only licensed for free for use inside of Unreal Engine itself. If you're getting them straight for Blender, the license terms state that you need to pay for them

[@sudharsansaravanan5401]

@@TheCGEssentials I am not stating that I use megascans assets with that license in blender for making final render. But I use them in blender to make assets and import them into unreal engine and make final renders. Is what I am doing correct❓❔

[@TheCGEssentials]

@@sudharsansaravanan5401 Good question - I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give you a definitive answer. Based on this response on their QA (help.quixel.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003457057-I-am-on-the-Unreal-Unlimited-plan-Can-I-use-tools-other-than-Unreal-Engine-) I think you're probably ok as your final output would be coming out of Unreal, but I don't know that for sure.

[@paulmay7946]

Here's a request for an "Incorporation of Megascans Models in Blender" tutorial. I liked the Buildify tutorial. You made procedural model generation digestible. I am experiencing mixed results when leveraging Megascans assets, however. I hope you get more requests to make creation of that tutorial, worthwhile.

[@Breznak]

Don't worry, you pronounced Pavel's name correctly. Thanks for the review!

[@theforest8882]

Nice

[@jamshidm2218]

Thanks for the tip, can you make full tutorial on building a city based on OSM premium and Buildify ? please

[@ifoundmyfingerboard]

I would like more videos of this please.

[@robertlauzon1910]

i must say you are the best at explaining ,my problem is when i duplicate the building and i want to select one both are selected in the same time,how can i do that

[@kimopuppy]

How did they make the Node area look so neat and organized

[@alan.smitheeee]

I'd love to see how this works with Megascans!

[@jonggoon51]

Thank you for creating a useful geometry node! But I tried to fix the sign on the window, but it's too hard because I'm not good at it. Could you please modify it so that it is created only for that wall instance if you insert a regular empty wall or a specific wall object instead of a window?

[@nickfai9301]

Thanks for sharing about this add-ons. My I know, can I randomized the buildings color?

[@additiveartificer9365]

Ohhh me god i dont need to make it from Skratch now Thank you

[@seanli2184]

Hi, Thank you for the fantastic tutorial, I try to use the osm method to create the city but with every step, I followed, the building just doesn't generate at all, but many chimneys were placed in the building area. Does anyone have clue about that? I am using 3.2 blender

[@actiongamemaster8082]

I wonder if we can model custom assets for this to recreate things like mount beanpole from Super Mario 3D World?

[@afrosymphony8207]

like you said, you need to do a seperate video on the modular pieces especially using your own modules...i tried using mine nd oh boy i ran into some fristrations

[@breadop67]

When exporting as a FBX, the buildings show up as floating and 2d, how would I fix this? (I'm on 3.2.1)

[@sempreblu_official]

Hi, I like your lecture very much. I have a question. Is there a way to bring up a building made like in a lecture from a sketchup? As a result, only the floor squares are extracted.

[@thesoundfromthestudio3567]

Absolutely love this, would be great to see it's integration with Unreal which I guess is already a part of the licensing issues with Quixel. Would it be possibly to use Unreal Marketplace modular content with this tool?

[@TheCGEssentials]

I doesn't INTEGRATE with anything. It WORKS with any prefab assets, including Quixel assets, but in no way does it imply any kind of license to use those assets without paying for them.

[@thesoundfromthestudio3567]

@@TheCGEssentials sorry if I have the impression I was wanting to use pirated assets, that isn’t the case. It seems a remarkable tool.

[@StevenFrancois-or9nz]

Hello thanks for the video ! One thing where can i change the roof for add gabled, hipped or others roof form please ?

[@aleemmohammed7794]

This looks great, how do you use the megascans assets with it? I would like to use it with Unreal Engine.

[@kevinc.k9728]

yessir

[@TheCGEssentials]

:)

[@erdbeerbus]

thank you for the nice introduction. great! only in rendermode my building appears in red ... using the normal preset blender file frm that guy ... is that an issue at my graphiccard? thx in advance!

[@MadioxxUE]

Is there a tutorial on how to add the created city to Unreal? From just the documentation I can't seem to fix it.

[@spittingame4241]

*Yes* , can you make a video about how you add the modular pieces in

[@TheCGEssentials]

Trying to get one made

[@spittingame4241]

@@TheCGEssentials that's cool. We need that one

[@wraithship]

I've been wanting to make a fantasy city render and this tool looks awesome for that Do you have a tutorial for How you could make/use your own city layouts rather than using OSM?

[@TheCGEssentials]

Probably just draw a bunch of 2D boxes and add the modifier to them?

[@wraithship]

@@TheCGEssentials yep that makes sense

[@tjeezyAYE]

I'm using blender 3.2 and the geometry node setting is not showing in the osm tab as shown in tutorial. Please help

[@azuretooth]

can I change style of others prob?

[@OfficialGooseGames]

When I export this as an object It just shows up as a 2D flat bottom of the building. how do I export this as an object?

[@protraxaudioentertainment112]

My Buildify does not have the example file.. lol has the others if you tick the display off but no erxample building

[@SolusArcticWolf]

How can I append the buildify blend file to an existing project?

[@KseniaZaks-cr6mq]

can someone tell me if this tool is useful for archviz? can i change the the look of the building? I mean replacing the windows\doors? thanks

[@graysontheovercomer]

For some reason, when I extrude, it messes up the building and it doesn't generate more mesh. Any answers for that?

[@roboforce4397]

How to permanent the changes and export them?

[@MurderMittenGame]

can you please make trap houses and Urban Looking Houses, Apartments! ID BUY IT ASAP

[@03urukhai76]

When i try to apply addon it generates flat plane into the scene. And i tried to export without applying modifier it still looks like flat plane in Unreal Engine. I'm stuck.

[@ninjogo5338]

Can you make medieval buildings as well?

[@abdullahaloudi]

Colosol order can use this

[@NirLondon-gl9cy]

for some reason the osm doesnt work when i press import.. it says (A valid directory for data in the addon preferences isnt set) can someone help ?

[@dookie7299]

Why do I have to open the file to get this add-on to work? Its not showing up in my add-ons.

[@user-yw1ey8tx7j]

how do i add a light to the window?

[@DayZcustomMods]

"extruding" what is that what keys are being pressed to do that how do i apply textures to this so i can export it as an fbx. this way i can again modify it in object builder and upload to dayz

[@kareemtamer4559]

when I open it the example building is not visible

[@bobafett877]

when I export it as fbx,it only show the basic assets..

[@pavelolivaart]

Hello, in the documentation enclosed within the file there's a topic how to do it :)

[@heresmynovel331]

Hi How can I use it in ue5???? 😕😕😕

[@joshcal7370]

Is there a way to set it up so it only creates one door and you can control it's placement?

[@TheCGEssentials]

Not really - you'd probably have to use a boolean and add your own manually

[@blakestrikelander]

nova york is now a thing to make

[@vetaramudu2147]

How to plugin new assets

[@Instant_Nerf]

Blackshark ai is using Maxar very high imagery to build a digital earth every time you fly in Microsoft flight simulator. And it looks gorgeous. Right now they are working on driving thru any street in high quality 3D models never before seen in real time. All the pipelines are being built right now. Very exciting. Would it be possible to use a photo kind of what facebuilder does for making a 3D head and build a house and buildings .. or is there a addon that does “housebuilder” using phots so that we can create digital doubles.. any suggestions ? My project includes thousands of homes :/ waiting in black shark to release their unreal engine addon.

[@Salvag3dHalos]

would like to see how to plug in other stuff

[@TheCGEssentials]

Thanks!

[@Pizzacake20]

how do you export the buildings as a 3d model?

[@PersonalAccountIndeed]

Did you figure this out? When exporting as FBX it only exports the rooftops. This is due to the modifiers being applied and for whatever reason that removes all of the actual meshes other than the plane.

[@joelalvarez5322]

the building_base mesh is the same as it is in the video and the modules are where theyshould be but the building mesh is just not apearing,does anyone else have this problem?

[@danielespinoza5633]

same problem cant get it to work

[@joelalvarez5322]

@@danielespinoza5633 I figured it out,you're probably using a too old version of blender,it should work on a newer one

[@yuikaplays2261]

How do you apply it?

[@unhelpfullmedic4758]

this looks like a wonderful tool...... but I need to make insides of buildings too.......

[@oldmemories987]

In my characters animation there were can't see keyframe

[@SoulSync16]

Hi! When I open the blender file there's no building at all, does anyone know why? it's the latest version of blender

[@enricciardi]

Not working on Blender 3.3 or 3.4: I see just the base and the modules; no building at all. Any hint?

[@TheCGEssentials]

No idea - when I tested this it was on Blender 3.2. Check back and see if there's a new version?

[@enricciardi]

@@TheCGEssentials tnx for kind reply. I got the latest available... Maybe I'll check the nodes for some missing link! Cheers.

[@lucian6172]

Download is not working.

[@thenoobdev]

Amazing tool! Though, for the OSM data most buildings will get imported like a mess :( Been trying different locations, and all of them have issues with it... Still, amazing tool and would also suggest to donate towards the developer, he/they really deserves it! =D

[@asifsolanki2667]

Hi, can I use them in my youtube videos? Are they NCS components? Thanks

[@darkdoom907]

Make our own custom modular assets for Buildify

[@Nadz203]

How is this tech not integrated into City Skylines 2?

[@ccjmusic]

Has anyone actually rendered anything with this? I can see all of the elements in the viewport, but when I try rendering, I see nothing at all, no matter what rendering engine I use. Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I am using Blender 3.2.2

[@Ver2ion]

everthing is pink. it it colored when the lighting is turned off but goes pink when i render or turn lighting on

[@hussarion6297]

Go to World -> Surface, and change to Background. I had pink as well and this solved my problem.

[@baljazz]

Can you 3d print it?

[@pavelolivaart]

Yes, check the documentation ;)

[@johnnierockit5302]

I am not sure if I am missing something but when I try to edit bottom shape - it only lets me select faces and not edges - anyone else having this problem? Thanks for the video too!

[@Znop]

I had this problem, I just switched back to the layout tab

[@TheCGEssentials]

Are you in edge select mode inside of edit mode?

[@bcxstudio8048]

i havent started eqarning .. if i will make a donation soon to the devloper...

[@trxcksterr]

Could you import these buildings into unreal engine?

[@tamtrily]

When I opened up the file the props were there but I couldn't see the building. I tried turning on and off the display in the modifier window but it didn't work. Anyone else have this issue or have a fix?

[@Auzyyyyyy]

same

[@Auzyyyyyy]

actually just realized we probably have an older version of blender i think it said it needs to be blender 3.2 or higher I was on 2.9

[@tamtrily]

I’m on the latest blender.

[@pavelolivaart]

Hello, maker sure to use Blender version 3.2

[@tamtrily]

Whoops it turns out I was on the wrong version of Blender. Thanks.

[@betjoy]

um its broken when I go into blender☹

[@muhammadsamit6487]

Please make a video on using dessert kit with Buildify 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[@Shattered3582]

my buildify isn't working 😠. it keeps hiding the house and won't let me add one. could someone tell me what is going on

[@pavelolivaart]

make sure to use Blender 3.2

[@Shattered3582]

@@pavelolivaart thanks

[@evilkoolade]

Would be great if you could do a tutorial on Buildify and changing the assets I see its been figured out but i learn best by watching

[@user-mb3ug9iq2k]

my buildify isn't working :(

[@TheCGEssentials]

Not enough info

[@dez7852]

0:01 I feel cheated!!! No "hhhhhhwhat's up guys!?!?" Cheated!!

[@progettazione_case_moderne]

Buildify ??