The new Alembic Exporter now makes it possible to process tens of thousands of building geometries at the highest level of detail in batches and visualise them in a renderer without requiring a complicated production pipeline. Alembic can be read by all common 3D tools, such as Houdini, Katana or Maya.
Get Map Data
The new “Get Map Data” interface allows 3D mockups of cities around the world to be created in just a few minutes. Users with an ArcGIS Online subscription can use it to clip and import georeferenced satellite imagery and 3D terrain. Street and building footprints from OpenStreetMap (OSM), if available, can also be downloaded conveniently into the scene and imported. The “Get Map Data” feature has made previous steps such as reprojection, transformation and cleaning of source data unnecessary.
Sharing Content
The 3D Object Layers of a 3D city model can now be exported as Scene Layer Packages (SPK). These SPKs can then be uploaded to ArcGIS Online or the Portal for ArcGIS, where a 3D streaming service is hosted. Once published, the 3D Scene Layers can be combined and viewed with other Web Layers in the browser-based ArcGIS Scene Viewer and used across platforms. CityEngine 2016 writes either local or global scenes.
Improved Procedural Modelling
Procedural modelling in the EsriEngine is based on CGA—in the 2016 version, numerous new operations and modes have been introduced that are intended to make the CGA user experience easier. For example, inner rectangles can now be generated and accurate building instances placed within parcels; there are new parameters for the insert process, new operations for creating 3D primitives and more.
Availability & Compatibility
A free 30-day trial version is available here; anyone wishing to update to the current 2016 version can do so on My Esri. CityEngine is compatible with Windows, OS X and Linux. For pricing information, you can contact Esri.
The complete release-data overview for Esri CityEngine 2016 can be found here.
Incidentally, Esri is sponsoring our animago AWARD category “Best Visual Effects” this year.
Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 28, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Das sieht alles sehr schick aus :-) Allerdings sollte man auch bedenken, dass die OpenStreetMap-Daten natürlich eine Lizenz haben (ODbL), welche sich dann auf das ganze Projekt auswirkt (copyleft).
Ja, das Problem ist allgemein bekannt – je nach Datensatz kann sich das Durchzuiehen. Aber Cityengine gehört ja zu Esri (www.esri.de), die im Geodatenbereich, Vermessung, Geodäsie und so ganz vorne dabei sind – ich vermute mal, die können einem Helfen bei sowas :D
Naja, es ist ja auch einfach nur fair, dass man der Community etwas zurück gibt. ESRI mag das bekannt sein, aber jeder Modeller ist ja selbst Autor und bekommt u.U. dann Probleme.