Procedural Inc., a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, has announced that it will exhibit its CityEngine software with a 3D recreation of ancient Rome at the Rome Reborn booth in computer graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2008 (August 11-15; Los Angeles, CA)

CityEngine is targeted for use by a wide range of markets -- interactive and filmed entertainment, architecture, simulation, archeology and the "3D internet." According to Procedural, the software allows developers to create buildings and city scenes ten times more efficiently than existing solutions, saving overhead costs and enabling 3D designers to focus on their creative creation process.

The Rome Reborn project seeks to bring together content providers, graphics technology vendors, and interactive display researchers to recreate a full-scale, high-detail, and historically accurate 3D model of the ancient city. The representation is meant to provide an engaging and educational tour of ancient Rome.

Said Rome Reborn director Bernard Frischer: “The CityEngine is a perfect match for the Rome Reborn project. Our project involves the complete virtual reconstruction of the city at its zenith under Emperor Constantine, when it had about one million residents. To build by hand the corresponding 7,000 apartment buildings, family houses, public buildings and temples would have taken us forever; but CityEngine's power and flexibility made the process amazingly quick without sacrificing detail or quality. This allowed us to concentrate on modeling the unique monuments. The CityEngine also helps to quickly change the model as new scholarship or discoveries warrant.”