03/15/2023 at 1:15 p.m. by Thilo Bayer – A Youtuber has managed to realize one of his city creations in Cities Skylines as a 3D print. The end result is impressive and hints at an exciting feature for City Skylines 2.
Amazing creations can now be produced using 3D printing – it doesn’t have to be a rocket, a water-cooled steam deck is also possible. If you want to immortalize your urban planning products, you can do that with some effort.
City building with 3D printer
PC Gamer reports on the YouTube channel Akruas and its unusual 3D printing project. In the end, the user managed to 3D print part of his impressive city. This is exciting insofar as you can vividly present the cities you have built up with a lot of love and time in this way. The implementation was not really easy, as you can read on Twitter. Cities Skylines (buy now €23.99) does not offer an export function for a 3D file – but maybe that will come in Cities Skylines 2?
Recommended editorial contentHere you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external links are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on “Load all external content”:Load all external contentI agree that external content is displayed to me. Personal data is thus transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy.
In order to realize the digital city, Akruas first tried photogrammetry, i.e. using screenshots and appropriate software. But that didn’t work, so the city was sliced up and a lot of 5K screenshots had to be taken. Then the city had to be modified: wires had to be removed, the LOD turned down, all the holes in the terrain plugged and the FOV set as low as possible to get an isometric view. It also helped make the city a bit darker. The screenshots were then converted to vector graphics with Inkscape so they were scalable.
In the next step, the PNGs were transferred to 3D Slicer, a medical software for CT scans, and a 3D model was reconstructed from them, which was exported in STL format. With some work in Blender, you had usable STL files for the 3D printer, although some errors were still visible. For a first try, the 3D printing city has certainly become appealing.
Have you ever experimented with a 3D printer? Use the comment function and let us know what you think. You must be logged in to PCGH.de or the Extreme forum to comment. If you don’t have an account yet, you could consider registering, which has many advantages.