This paper presents a method for the automatic generation of different building models to be used to populate virtual cities and a system of visualization of generated city models. The proposed method incorporates randomness but the derivation process could be steered by the help of derivation rules and assigned attributes. The derivation method is inspired by the shape grammars. During the derivation process, the floor plans of the actual cities are used to generate 3D city models. Given the city plans, the derivation rules and definitions of some basic nesnects, the system generates 3D building models and the generated city model could be visualized. © 2006 IEEE.