The HDA automates the creation of diverse urban structures — from three-story buildings to high-rises —offering customizable options that allow you to set as many details as needed for each building design. The generator is highly optimized — all of the props and geometry have been created within Houdini, are free from intersections, and use an instancing system under the hood to handle buildings of any size.

As you can see, it all starts with basic building blocks such as window count and size, props like air conditioners, drying racks, and other real-life elements. However, the combination — always slightly different — is powerful and creates the impression of something unique and non-repetitive. At the same time, the props are not completely random and don’t give off a fake or artificial look.

By default every building that gets created is symmetrical. HDA allows you to chose between three different options:

1. With Symmetry on the X axis

2. With Symmetry on the Z axis

3. And without any symmetry

Example on the right shows how the same building cycles throw each of the mode —>

The parameters UI offers a lot of control without overwhelming the user. It's split into three main parts. Let's go over each of them, starting from the top:

1. Base Parameters — control the base shape of the building, such as the number of floors, building width on both sides, and the building's global seed. These parameters alone are more than sufficient to achieve a nice result. However, if you want more control, there are additional tabs responsible for various parts of the building.

2. Balcony — seed affects the overall randomness of the props but doesn’t impact the main shape. The 'Open Windows' toggle activates an additional random seed, determining which windows will be open and which will be closed. The 'Less/More' parameter controls the number of windows that are open, where 0 indicates all are closed, and 1 means all are open.

3. Roof — applies only to roof props. The 'Less/More' parameter (set at 0.5 when disabled) adjusts the probability and number of antennas placed on the roof.

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