Your first city

Before you start

One thing to carry through the whole tutorial: your city is not your .blend. It lives in a separate engine process that the addon starts, and it is saved by the header S button into a folder under Documents/iCity 2. Blender's own save does not reach it. How iCity fits with Blender explains why, and it is worth ten minutes before you lose anything.

Everything up to the theme step is free. Generating a theme spends credits, and the theme section says how many before you press anything.

Open the workspace and sign in

1. Start Blender and click the iCity 2 tab in the workspace bar at the top of the window. The addon adds that tab when you enable it, and puts it back after a file load.
2. In the iCity Editor header, click Login. Your browser opens auth.parametra.net.

   first-city-header-login.png

   Close crop of the full iCity Editor header bar in a signed-out session, showing the Login button and, to its left, the S save button and the DRAFT / DESIGN toggle in its locked state. No project open.

   /docs-shots/blender/

3. Sign in with your Parametra account. The browser tab reads Login successful and tells you to return to Blender; Blender reports Signed in as <your email>.
4. To abandon a sign-in that is taking too long, press Cancel beside the header's waiting icon.

You only do this once per machine. The addon keeps a refresh token and restores the session silently the next time Blender starts.

Make a project

1. On the launch screen press New Project.
2. Type a Project name. It is required — without one the form answers “Give the project a name first.”
3. Add a Description if you want one. It is optional, and it becomes the body of the project's README.md.

   first-city-new-project-form.png

   The New Project form open, with the Project name field filled in, a line of text in the Description field, the Start with the default theme checkbox visible, and the Create button at the bottom.

   /docs-shots/blender/

4. Press Create. The folder appears at Documents/iCity 2/<name>, holding a README.md, and the project is registered on Parametra. A name already taken on your account is refused, and the folder is left unregistered until you fix it from the footer's red ! button.

What a project is lists every file that folder ends up holding.

Build a city

A new project shows the guided Start screen: one green Start with default button over a Draw road / Download OSM pair. Take the default for now — drawing your own roads is the subject of Draft, and you can rebuild this city from scratch later.

1. Press Start with default. The engine starts and builds a default city; the workspace replaces the Start screen once the scene holds one.
2. Orbit and zoom with Blender's own navigation. Nothing about the viewport changes.
3. Try the mode tabs on the left rail: Alt+1 Graph, Alt+2 Roads, Alt+3 Blocks, Alt+4 Lots, Alt+5 Massing. Click a road or a building to see its handles.

Dress it in Design

Flip the DRAFT / DESIGN toggle at the right of the header. It stays locked until you are signed in and the scene holds a city — both are true now. The first tab on the rail reads Theme, and it asks how the city should be dressed.

1. Press Start with default theme.
2. The addon copies the bundled theme files — outputs.csv, outputs.usd, assets.json and send/ — into your project and links them. The dressed city arrives in a collection called iCity2 Front End.

To generate one, go back to the Theme tab and press Generate theme.

1. Describe the city you want. Press Enter or the ↑ button to send. You can attach up to ten reference images first.
2. The project is saved, the city is exported and uploaded, and the thread starts reporting steps. The send button becomes a stop button while the job runs.
3. If CHOOSE A THEME opens, the cloud found matching library themes: Use this theme adopts one without generating, Generate new ignores them.
4. When THEME GUIDES opens, page the seeds with the ‹ › arrows beside the images, then press Approve to continue with the one on screen — or Regenerate for a fresh set.

   first-city-theme-guides.png

   The THEME GUIDES popup open on a real generated seed, showing the guide images, the ‹ › paging arrows beside them, and the Approve and Regenerate buttons. Capture it while the job is genuinely paused for the decision.

   /docs-shots/blender/

5. Assets download into your library, the outputs land in the project, and the city is dressed for you when the job completes.

Generating a theme walks the same run in detail, and Credits & plans covers what everything else costs.

Save it, then put it on Parametra

These are two different actions with two different buttons, and they are the pair people conflate most. S in the header writes the city to this machine. Sync in the footer uploads the folder to Parametra.

1. Press S in the iCity Editor header. It writes the current city into Documents/iCity 2/<name> and clears the asterisk beside the project name.
2. Press the sync button — the circular-arrows icon in the left corner of the editor footer, beside the project name. The SYNC dialog opens and asks “What did you do?”.

   first-city-sync-dialog.png

   The SYNC dialog open over the editor, showing the “What did you do?” prompt, an empty message field, and the Sync button. Include enough of the footer beneath it that the circular-arrows sync button beside the project name is in frame.

   /docs-shots/blender/

3. Type a line and press Sync. The folder is uploaded and your message lands in the current version's history.

Saving, syncing, versioning separates the three verbs properly, including what a version is for.

What next

You now have a saved, dressed, uploaded city. The two big parts of the manual take it from here.

• —The engine — start, stop, and what to do when it stops itself.
• —Selecting & editing — how picking works, and why Blender's own click does nothing on a city object.
• —Themes — the three ways in, including taking a theme from another project on this machine.
• —Re-dressing after a change — what City sync does automatically once you go back to Draft and change something.
• —What is in your .blend after a dress and What survives a re-dress — read both before you hand-edit anything the cloud made.
• —Troubleshooting — sorted by the symptom you can see.