Open-source tool Infinigen Indoors generates procedural 3D interiors

Originally posted on 26 June 2024, and updated with details of new Infinigen-Sim toolkit.

Researchers at Princeton University have released Infinigen Indoors, a free Blender-based procedural tool for generating interior 3D scenes.

It generates a 3D interior – from a single room to entire house – as a .blend file, complete with architectural elements, furniture and home furnishings.

Individual assets can then be exported in standard 3D file formast, including OBJ, FBX and USD, for use in other DCC apps and game engines like Unreal Engine.

The functionality is available inside Infinigen, the open-source procedural generator for 3D natural environments, from Infinigen 1.4.0 onwards.

Generate detailed 3D environments based on a set of procedural rules
First released in 2023, Infinigen is an open-source tool for generating 3D environments procedurally using “Math rules only. Zero AI. Just graphics.”

The original version generated 3D terrain, distributing objects like rocks and vegetation over the ground surface to create complete 3D environments.

The environments can include dynamic water, generated using FLIP fluid simulation, and particle-based rain, snow, fire and smoke.

Infinigen can also generate rigged 3D creatures, including carnivores, herbivores, birds, beetles and fish, complete with fur grooms and skin folding.

You can find more details in our original story on Infinigen 1.0.

Now generates man-made interiors as well as natural environments
Infinigen Indoors takes that workflow and applied it to man-made environments.

The toolset generates indoor 3D scenes based on a library of 3D assets, including architectural elements like furniture and home furnishings.

A constraint-based arrangement system arranges the assets into configurations that make sense as actual rooms; and a floorplan generator combines the rooms into entire houses, with rooms connected by passages, and floors connected by stairs.

You can find a tutorial on generating a room in the online documentation.

Works with both procedural and imported static 3D assets
In the initial release, it was only possible to use Infinigen’s procedural assets to generate rooms, but it is also now possible to import static assets from other DCC software and asset libraries.

The update increases the diversity and realism of the interiors that Infigen can generate, making it possible to place models that would be difficult to generate procedurally, like sculptures.

Another new toolset, Infinigen-Sim, makes it possible to generate articulated assets, like openable doors or cupboards, or white goods with animatable switches.

Although they could be used in animated visualizations, they’re mainly intended for industrial and robotics simulations, to which they can be exported in MJCF, URDF and USD formats.

How detailed are the interiors that Infinigen Indoors generates?
The Infinigen Indoors research paper shows a range of environments generated with the toolset.

They’re relatively detailed: not to the point where you could use them as readymade architectural visualizations, but enough to be useful for ideation, or as scenes that could be refined manually for use in illustrations, motion graphics or animations.

Outside the entertainment market, the paper also shows environments exported to Unreal Engine and Isaac Sim, NVIDIA’s Omniverse-based robotics simulation system.

How easy is it to use Infinigen?
Although Infinigen began as a research project, its creators have been actively inviting contributions from the wider Blender community, and it has become more user-friendly.

In particular, it is now possible to install Infinigen as a Blender Python script, making it possible to use it interactively inside a standard installation of Blender.

Inside Blender, Infinigen runs in minimal installation mode, meaning that you can manipulate assets; but to generate a full scene, you still need to install it as a separate Python module, outside the Blender UI.

Can you use the assets that Infinigen generates in other CG software?
It is also now possible to export individual assets from the .blend file that Infinigen generates in OBJ, FBX, STL, PLY or USD format, and full scenes in USD format.

To export individual assets, Infinigen has to bake the procedural elements, so it doesn’t use Blender’s built-in exporter, and there are number of limitations.

License and system requirements
Infinigen Indoors is available as part of Infinigen 1.4+, and Infinigen-Sim as part of Infinigen 1.15+, under a 3-Clause BSD license.

Infinigen can be installed as a Python module, or as a Python script within Blender with more limited functionality: you can find installation instructions here.

Both options support Linux and macOS, including both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

There is only experimental support for Windows, and only in minimal installation mode, though Windows users can run Infinigen in a Linux environment via WSL.

Scene generation is GPU-accelerated via CUDA on NVIDIA GPUs only.

Read more about Infinigen Indoors on the Infinigen project website

Download Infinigen from GitHub

Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.