For those who don’t know the event: ICE.ART 3D Environment Conference 2026.I is a free online environment conference hosted by VRBN and delivered via GoTo Webinar. No lock in, no big fuss, just a very specific kind of nerd joy.

ICE.ART 3D Environment Conference 2026.I kicks off April 7, 2026, running 5:00 PM to 8:30 PM CEST as a live webinar on GoTo Webinar. Day I runs under the Physics Simulations banner, with an intro, two talks with Q and A, prizes, a panel discussion, and an open community chat. Registration is free of charge on the event site, so the only real cost is admitting you enjoy hearing other people talk about creativity, technology and physics. Bring a headset and a mildly disciplined browser tab situation.

Goran Pavles brings blockbuster sim scars to Ice.Art

Goran Pavles is a Visual Effects Supervisor at Stormborn VFX. He leads a team at Stormborn Studios, an Emmy and VES Award winning visual effects company based in Vancouver. He has over 15 years of experience in VFX and specializes in complex FX driven sequences for film and television, including 2012, Man of Steel, and 300: Rise of an Empire, plus series work on Yu Yu Hakusho, 5 Days at Memorial, and The Penguin. On the agenda, he is slated to present Artdirecting Physics Simulations for Hollywood Blockbusters, with Q and A.

André Thomas lives at the intersection of games and real sets

Prof. Dr André Thomas is Co-Head of the Immersive Realities Research Lab at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He founded Triseum in 2014, where he serves as CEO and leads the creation of award winning academic video games. He has more than 30 years in CGI production and has worked on video games, live action feature films, and commercials, including being Head of Graphics for EA SPORTS Football titles and contributing graphics for films including Men in Black, Con Air, Independence Day, Valiant, Ant Bully, and Tomorrow Never Dies. On the schedule image, he appears on Day II with Planning Physical Studios: Managing Business and Creativity.

Tobias Hauck bridges film instincts and GIS scale

Tobias Hauck is a Software Development Lead at the Esri Stuttgart Research and Development Center. His work focuses on Reality Mapping, turning imagery and laser scans into accurate large scale 3D meshes and Gaussian splats for GIS and digital twin workflows. He is with Esri since 2016, previously worked in feature film visual effects, and brings a passion for rendering, computer animation, and 3D environment creation. On the agenda , he is listed on Day II with Geospatial Gaussian Splats: Creating 3D Maps of Large Envrionments, with Q and A.

Come hang out, learn something, maybe win something

The agenda includes prizes and a panel discussion. By the way, the webinar puts attendees in listen-only mode (You are muted automatically). The invite is simple: register, block the evenings, and bring at least one question you have been saving for a day when someone else has to answer it.

Homepage: https://www.ice.art/
Registration: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/96699203094794328

P.S: Afterwards, some or all of the talks will go online in full length on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/@ice_conference

The post Today: ICE.ART 2026.I kicks off on April 7 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The CEUM 2025 recordings are now available to stream. The CityEngine User Meeting, hosted by the ICE.ART 3D Environment Conference, delivers a compact tour through current procedural-city workflows, ArcGIS-driven planning pipelines, and emerging production use cases in urban-scale visualization.

The lineup includes case studies such as “ArcGIS as a Planning System,” a deep dive into “Parisian shapes,” and a demonstration of how procedural modeling supports real-world planning tasks in projects like downtown Wake Forest.

A key technical highlight is the updated Python 3 support in CityEngine, presented with a focus on integration scenarios for automation, data pipelines, and asset generation. Esri’s Professional Services team also breaks down utilization trends and typical deployment patterns seen across planning offices and visualization studios.

All talks, intro to outro, are now online on the CEUM website and the official YouTube playlist.

The organizers also confirmed the next CityEngine User Meeting for 2 April 2026, giving everyone enough time to procedurally generate travel plans.

The post CEUM 2025 Recordings Online: Cities, Pipelines & Python first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Tomorrow (Thursday), the CityEngine User Meeting 2025 goes live at 5 p.m. Central European Time (8 a.m. Pacific / 11 a.m. Eastern). It’s a free online event for professionals and enthusiasts working with CityEngine and related tools. The session is hosted by the same organiser behind the IceArt events, known for bringing together a precise mix of artists, designers, and developers. Attendance is free but registration is required via GoToWebinar.

Devin Lavigne, Partner, Houseal Lavigne, X: @devlavigne
A Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP), Lavigne is cofounder of Houseal Lavigne, known for its GIS-driven 3D planning projects. He integrates ArcGIS, CityEngine, SketchUp, Unreal Engine, and Omniverse to visualise urban data. He has led more than 200 plans worldwide and received the APA National Excellence Award, Esri’s Most Innovative Partner Award, and five Esri SAG Awards. Lavigne regularly presents at Esri UC and the Geodesign Summit, focusing on pragmatic, production-ready digital-twin workflows.

Dr. Leilei Duan, 3D Technical Consultant, Esri
Duan holds a PhD in Design, Construction, and Planning from the University of Florida and previously taught at the Spatial Sciences Institute at USC. At Esri, she advises clients on advanced 3D spatial solutions and emerging applications for CityEngine and ArcGIS Urban.

Romain Janil, Founder & CEO, romainjanil.com X: @RomainJanil
Janil is a designer specialising in 3D environment production across realtime, offline, and hybrid workflows — including simulation, games, and VFX. Known for procedural innovation and strong visual sensibility, he bridges the design and technical domains, making procedural design accessible to production artists.

Silvia Casas, Senior Product Manager, Esri
Casas manages ArcGIS Urban and CityEngine product development. With degrees in urban planning and architecture, she joined Esri in 2004 and has since led multiple 3D city and planning initiatives. She coordinates user requirements and development priorities for both ArcGIS Urban and CityEngine, translating feedback into stable production features. Expect insights from her on current roadmap directions and the practical challenges of balancing R&D and user stability.

Simon Haegler, Principal Software Developer, Esri
Haegler is a core developer at Esri R&D Zurich and one of the technical architects behind CityEngine. Trained in electrical engineering, he specialises in procedural 3D city modelling for media and AEC workflows. His work bridges the tool’s procedural engine with modern rendering and pipeline integration.
Haegler often presents detailed looks at CGA rule systems and interoperability between CityEngine and realtime tools.

For City Planners, TDs, and VFX Generalists Alike

CityEngine sits at the intersection of visual effects, realtime visualisation, and urban simulation. Whether used in city planning, game environments, or film previsualisation, its rule-based modelling workflow continues to attract a technically minded audience. The organisers describe the event as “fun”, a welcome rarity for a tool better known for geometry than parties. Expect a few seasoned users to show tips, scripts, and workflows not usually found in documentation.

Why It Matters

For production artists already relying on procedural assets, this event is a chance to catch up directly with the tool’s developers and early adopters. With contributors from both academia and production, it bridges the gap between R&D and daily use.

The post Procedural Thursday: CityEngine Users Meet Online Tomorrow first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Esri has released CityEngine 2025.0 and added a long-requested feature for technical artists, urbanists, and VFX supervisors: the Street Designer. Finally, precise lane-by-lane city sculpting, directly in the viewport, no extra plugins, no custom code required (unless you want it).

The new Street Designer enables per-lane editing—vehicle, parking, bike, sidewalk, buffer, vegetation, and public transport—each with procedural markings, furnishings, and foliage. Street cross-sections can be built or tweaked interactively, with custom configurations saved and reused. The default Esri.lib now ships with a “Generic_Street_Configurations.cej” demo scene plus preset lane templates, so no more wild west sidewalk hacks or guessing how a European avenue should look in CG.

For developers and TDs, a Python API exposes lane and segment functions (CE.addLane, CE.moveLane, CE.createStreetConfiguration, among others) for procedural street control, batch setup, and automated asset prep. CGA rule support gets expanded for referencing and managing these new lane types.

Visual CGA Editor: Node Clarity at Last

The Visual CGA Editor, CityEngine’s node-based, non-linear rule editing environment, receives overdue ergonomic upgrades. There’s a new “Find Node” dialog, cleaned-up slot visuals, clear annotation widgets, and actual lock indicators for read-only files. Node connections are visually decluttered. Compilation speed in heavy graphs gets a measurable boost. The editor now supports right-mouse panning—a small tweak that will save cumulative hours and wrists across projects.

Procedural Scripting and Geometry: More Boolean, Less Crash

The CGA language itself gains streamlined 3D Boolean syntax, automatic tagging of intersections, and better sequential programming with improved inline rules and comp splits. Numeric stability gets a tune-up: cleaner handling of non-planar geometry, reduced split errors, and a fix for convexify crashers. These improvements matter in heavy production pipelines where edge-case geometry was, until now, a daily headache.

Viewport and UI: Shadows, Snapshots, and Usability Polish

Default anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are now switched on, cleaning up texture edges and lines out of the box. Shadow rendering for snapshots improves—useful for dailies and quick looks. Snapshot resolution is capped at 10,000 × 10,000 pixels, which should keep both marketing and pipeline artists happy. Material assignment is now instant with a double-click in the Material Browser, and numeric input is more strictly validated across tools. Copy-on-move via Ctrl-drag and new toolbar icons also feature, but won’t disrupt muscle memory. Dark mode dashboard alignment and usability tweaks round out the UI changes—nothing flashy, but a collection of workflow splinters removed.

File I/O and SDK: Industry Standard, Now With TGA

CityEngine 2025.0 brings fixes and updates for USD, FBX, and Collada import/export, finally squashing some persistent opacity bugs. TGA file support is added. Under the hood, third-party libraries (ArcGIS Maps SDK, Chromium, FileGDB, OpenUSD, OpenDesign SDK for IFC/DWG, libpng, libtiff) have been updated, ensuring compliance and futureproofing.

DCC integration is unchanged: export supports OBJ, DXF, FBX, Alembic, and USD, keeping CityEngine interoperable with Houdini, Maya, Max, C4D, Blender, Unreal Engine 5, and similar tools.

Platform Support and System Requirements

The software now supports 64-bit Windows 10+, Windows Server 2016+, RHEL/AlmaLinux/Rocky Linux 8+, and adds official support for Windows Server 2025. No word on major macOS support changes—see the documentation for current OS specifics.

Licensing: Perpetual is Dead, Long Live Rental

With this release, Esri ends perpetual licensing for CityEngine. From June 2025 onward, only subscription access via ArcGIS Professional ($2,200/year) or Professional Plus ($4,200/year) is available. Existing annual license users must migrate; no grandfathering or extensions for perpetuals. This is now rental software—plan your budgets accordingly.

Test First, Deploy Later

As with all major tool updates, users should test new workflows and features on staging assets before pushing CityEngine 2025.0 into live production pipelines. The Street Designer is powerful, but trust—never rely—on the demo scene alone.

CityEngine 2025.0 Release Notes

CityEngine company homepage // Esri CityEngine

The post CityEngine 2025.0: Street Designer Arrives, Perpetual Licensing Leaves first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

If you missed CEUM 2025.I—short for CityEngine User Meeting—you can now play catch-up. The full video set from the event has been uploaded to the 3D Environment hub: www.3d-env.tech.

Esri, the company behind CityEngine, supported the event, and several speakers contributed presentations—though again, specifics aren’t listed in this release. Still, if you use or explore procedural urban design, it’s worth a watch.

Dr. Michael Bieri [Esri Inc.]

Devin Lavigne [Houseal Lavigne]

Dmitry Kudinov [Esri Inc.]

CEUM 2025.II: Save the Date

Looking ahead: CEUM 2025.II is already scheduled. The second CityEngine User Meeting of the year takes place on 17 September 2025. If you’re planning to speak at the event, organiser Matt is open for submissions—reach out to get involved.

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The post CEUM 2025.1 Videos are online :) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

ICE 2025.II—also known as the 3D Environment Conference—is heading your way on 21 and 22 May 2025. Organised by the ICE.ART team, the event promises two days of 3D-centric knowledge exchange. The call to action is clear: registration is live, and it’s happening via the official website.

While the announcement doesn’t list topics or speakers yet, ICE conferences are typically known for bringing together professionals working in 3D environments, simulation, modelling, and real-time graphics. Still, no assumptions—what’s not explicitly listed stays out. The only certainty is: you can now register, and if you care about digital environments, you probably should. Check directly with the organisers via the official ICE site.

CEUM 2025.II: Save the Date

Looking ahead: CEUM 2025.II is already scheduled. The second CityEngine User Meeting of the year takes place on 17 September 2025. If you’re planning to speak at the event, organiser Matt is open for submissions—reach out to get involved.

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The post Mark Your Calendars: ICE & CEUM Return first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

The CityEngine User Meeting 2025 (CEUM) is now open for registration. The annual event, focused on 3D environments, procedural modeling, and urban planning, takes place online on April 16, 2025, from 5–8 pm CEST (8–11 am PDT / 11 am–2 pm EDT). Participants can expect a mix of presentations, discussions, and insights from professionals in the field.

Call for Speakers

Got expertise in CityEngine and procedural 3D environments? The CEUM team is looking for speakers to share their knowledge with the community. Interested presenters can reach out via the official event page: www.3d-env.tech.

Join the 3D Environment Community

CEUM 2025 is an opportunity to connect with other CityEngine users, discuss workflows, and explore the latest in procedural modeling and urban design. Whether you’re a longtime user or just getting started, the event provides valuable insights into the tool’s applications in VFX, game development, and architecture.

The post CityEngine User Meeting 2025: Registration Open for CEUM first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

The latest version of CityEngine, 2024.0, is now available and offers a host of new features and improvements for VFX artists. This version brings significant updates that simplify workflows and improve integration with other tools and platforms.

Visual CGA Editor

The Visual CGA Editor has left the beta phase and is now available to all users. This tool significantly simplifies workflows and allows users – especially those without programming skills – to edit models more easily. The integrated content library also offers new components for terrain division and mass modelling.

Integration with ArcGIS Urban

Integration with ArcGIS Urban has been improved so that CityEngine users can now edit the elevation or terrain of a plan directly in ArcGIS Urban. When importing an ArcGIS Urban plan into CityEngine, these layers are automatically imported as separate terrain layers. The intuitive terrain editing makes it possible to perfectly adapt the terrain to the scenario and upload the changes back to ArcGIS Urban.

Share web scenes

With the new “Share as Web Scenes” feature, users can export their 3D scenes directly from CityEngine to ArcGIS Online and view them in the Scene Viewer. This feature makes sharing, exploring and organising multiple scenes much easier.

Material collection and browser

CityEngine 2024.0 offers an extensive collection of high-quality materials that can be used to texture buildings and open spaces. Users can browse and apply these materials via a dedicated browser.

Supported file formats

CityEngine 2024.0 supports a variety of file formats, including .obj, .dae, .fbx, .gdb and .shp, allowing for flexible and versatile use. It is recommended to carefully review all new features before using them in current projects.

Links to

CityEngine documentation

ArcGIS Blog about the new features

The post Here comes the new Cityengine first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.

The protagonist, Ember, is a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman, whose friendship with a
fun, sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade sets up shenanigans with the world they live in – the movie was directed by Peter Sohn (“The Good Dinosaur”), and he had help – among others – by Sanjay Bakshi as Visual Effects Supervisor and TD Markus Kranzler. And with the latter two, we had a sit down!

DP: Elemental looks like there is loads of CG-work in every scene – to get a reference, how big was your team?
Sanjay Bakshi: That changes throughout the production – and how many there were at the peak of production I can‘t say – hundreds across all kinds of department, and (this is just my impression) more then at the usual Pixar movies, because of the scope of the work.

DP: When you first saw the characters and script: What were your preparations, since simulation would be characters (With fire and water as protagonists), the environment would be either drowning or be on fire a lot of the time, and let‘s not even talk about water vapour for people …?
Sanjay Bakshi: Yeah, there is definitely “that” moment at the start – but we knew practically from the start how to change our “regular” pipeline – and that we would have to invest, so that not every shot would be “linear” though the classic pipeline. For example: Not every shot does have to go to an FX artist to work on – because that would be every shot of the movie.
We created technology, that animation artists could do some FX as well – where Ember isn‘t doing a lot besides subtle motion, an animator could do the work, and the fire simulation would happen automatically and behave in a predictable way, so that we would render it out and evaluate, “Oh, this one actually is fine, it can go through to the next department” or, “She does some non-standard stuff there, let‘s give it to an FX artist”. So, we built an automation for the fire simulation and the water simulation that allowed some percentage of the shots to go through without having a lot of FX, while still being made up of FX.

DP: I assume the simulation was done in Houdini?
Sanjay Bakshi: Yeah, Houdini was the backbone for our VFX pipeline. For fluid sims we use a lot of custom work – that‘s the nice thing about Houdini, you can customize so much and built your own tools inside of it.
For the flames, we used “Neural style transfer” – basically machine learning to stylize the flames. Stylized flames because when simulation runs, it‘s a realistic fire. And the Style transfer “organized” the flames, so to speak, into more stylistic patterns, that are simpler and more pleasing for characters – so that was all custom work. And then we developed the “HEXport” – the Houdini Export – when an animator checks in the shot, the simulation automatically runs.

DP: How do you do automatic simulation?
Sanjay Bakshi: Once we got the visual look for Ember, we asked animation to do a bunch of motion tests for us – like walking slowly, walking fast, jumping, sitting down, the generic stuff. Then we ran the simulations for those tests and saw where it behaved, where it didn‘t, and then tuned the parameters of the simulation – and in many instanced, we declared motions a “special case”. For example, when she is moving fast, we dialled down how many tear-offs occur. It was a bunch of hand tuning and a bunch of iteration, to get the parameter space in a place where standard motion would behave nicely.

DP: And with that development for Elemental, do you think of using those style transfers for upcoming movies to save time?
Sanjay Bakshi: In this case, it didn‘t save any time – we‘re still running the simulation and we‘re organizing it, just using these ML algorithms. It actually costs a lot if we use GPUs for it and it increased the amount
of time it takes for us to get our renders back. We didn‘t look at it as an optimization technique, but as a tool to get the look we needed.
But, speaking more broadly, we have other machine learning tools of in our pipeline for denoising and path tracing. So, we‘re always looking for ways that new algorithms and new developments can help us. I‘m sure considering the amount of activity in that space, that there will be other places we‘ll find tedious work to “offload”. There‘s no doubt that generative AI will be used to make something.

DP: Let‘s get to the Elementals itself: How did that work? Are there personal favourites?
Sanjay Bakshi: The fire was really hard to figure out and took a lot of time. And water as well – we spent as much time on Wade (The “Water” protagonist) as on Ember.
We spent a lot of time to on Wade when he was speaking – to create ripples on his face for every kind of mouth shape he made. But those ripples would capture reflections from the environment. And adding to that, we have a lot of bubbles going on. And then on his top of his head, we had a waterfall wave. Yeah, Wade wasn‘t easy.

Initially we were kind of seduced by all of those techniques. And Peter (Sohn) was really loving it because he really wanted Wade to feel water-y. We had all of those things in it, and then we thought we were done and we went to animation and they animated the first scene and they were really concerned.
We couldn‘t see those subtle acting performances we‘re doing, because there‘s so much going on inside of Wade that was detracting from the performance (in terms of the reflections and the bubbles). So even though we had spent as much time on Amber and Wade, we actually had to stop production for a minute and dial back some of those things.
They‘re all still there, but for balance, we had to dial them back. An example: You might notice that the bubbles aren‘t really in the centre Wade‘s face. They‘re more on the sides and in his body. The number of ripples that get produced is really subtle now. And the reflections are really curated to be in specific parts of his body. So, in the end, I think water was more complicated. The other thing is that water is hard to light and looks so different in different lighting en­vironments – it‘s inherently invisible. Fire always looks the same – it‘s emissive, so that was another for our lighting team: Amber always looked great and Wade was very challenging to make look appealing.
On the other end, we really needed it to be “correct” in a way – there is good story reasons for the effects, like when fire characters get close to water characters, the water characters react, they start to boil, they start to steam up. And it‘s trying to show that these elements don‘t get along for physical reasons. Ember doesn‘t fit into this world and she has an effect on them that makes them feel uncomfortable. And that‘s why she wants to stay in fire town and not explore as much. So it was integral to the story that this was done in a simulated way.

DP: Did you use procedural modelling – like with Zootopia and the CityEngine in Elemental?
Sanjay Bakshi: Yeah, we used procedural building for the artwork of the city, when
we were dialling in the look and feel of the districts, not so much in the final frames.

DP: Like all the previous Pixar Movies, there is stuff happening in the background – I always imagined that gets added by some artists on a Friday afternoon, because it is funny. How do you put in those jokes?
Sanjay Bakshi: Well, that depends – usually those ideas come from all over the team – everyone who thinks they have an idea approaches and asks “Should I put that in?” and that gets curated. But our crowds team has a little bit more liberty. They‘re doing a lot of stuff in the background and sometimes they don‘t ask. Sometimes they‘ll do something just to make their jobs more interesting and will get away with it, and so it‘ll go through and then they‘ll tell us “Oh, we added that thing back there”.

DP: Hallo Markus! Woran hast du bei Elemental gearbeitet?
Markus Kranzler: Dieses Mal war ich hauptsächlich an den Wasser- und Luftcharakteren beteiligt. Und diesmal war es auch eine sehr enge Zusammenarbeit mit der FX-­Abteilung, denn letztendlich sind die Charaktere ja Effekte. Das heißt, ein Teil ihres Wissens, wie sich Volumes und Fluids verhalten, wurde direkt bei uns angewendet. Das war diesmal ein Prozess, wo sehr viele Leute und sehr viele Parteien involviert waren und zusammengearbeitet haben. Das macht es natürlich interessant – wer will schon immer das Gleiche machen?

DP: Die Pipeline wurde also einfach komplett durcheinandergewirbelt?
Markus Kranzler: Im Prinzip ja – natürlich haben wir nun sehr belastbare Pipes, vor allem weil wir auf USD gesetzt haben – aber Optimierungsbedarf gibt es immer, vor allem wenn man mit solchen Datenmengen arbeitet. Die Zeitverzögerung zwischen „Ich habe die Charaktergeometrie“ und „Ich kann es zum Rendern schicken“ war doch recht … groß. ziemlich groß. Und es gab einige Reifen, durch die man springen musste – einige der Tools sind erst entstanden, als wir sie brauchten. Dementsprechend gab es am
Ende der Produktion einige Stellen, an denen man es auch anders hätte machen können. Aber jetzt wissen wir, was wir bei den nächsten Filmen streamlinen können!

DP: Die Charaktere – vor allem Ember, die Feuer-Protagonistin – tragen eine Art Kettenhemd. Da darunter aber alles „Simulation“ ist, wie bekommt man das im Shading sauber hin?
Markus Kranzler: Normalerweise wäre das einfach eine Surface Map gewesen – mit Transparenz und so weiter hätte man das über die Shader „nachgebaut“. Da aber darunter etwas passiert, mussten wir die einzelnen Kettenhemdringe tatsächlich als Geometrie aufbauen und shaden. Also Instanzen in Houdini, in unserem Fall.

DP: Die Szenen sind also extrem klein, übersichtlich und einfach zu handhaben?
Markus Kranzler: (lacht) Ja, natürlich. Bei Elemental waren die generierten Daten sogar ein neuer Größenrekord für Pixar-Produktionen.

DP: Wenn es also um Geometrie und nicht um „Solid Surface“ geht, muss man dann auch für das Shading animieren? Wenn die Figuren atmen, ändert sich ja die Lichtemission?
Markus Kranzler: Da haben wir tatsächlich die Kollegen aus dem Rigging unterstützt und für bestimmte Signale Parameter in das Rigging eingebaut. Diese Signale konnten die Animatoren dann steuern und wir haben im Shading dieses Signal ausgelesen. Bei Ember ist das sehr offensichtlich – sie ändert ihre Farbe, wenn sie wütend wird. Und das ist ein Parameter, der im Rig gesteuert wird, und so bekommen die Animatoren ein visuelles Feedback, und wir haben ein Signal, das wir auslesen, in diesem Fall die Fuel Source der Feuersimulation.

DP: Aber wenn die Feuermenge variabel ist, wie kontrolliert ihr das über die Zeit?
Markus Kranzler: Das kann man sich vorstellen wie Compositing in 3D – also wir haben die Geometrie modelliert und animiert, darauf aufbauend die Simulation in Houdini, aus der wir verschiedene Elemente extrahieren und diese separat behandeln. Also, wie viel Einfluss hat dieser Arm auf die Gesamtmenge der Elemente zum Beispiel. Wobei wir da – dank der Signale im Rig – an manchen Stellen auch schon vorher eingegriffen haben, bevor es ein richtiges Volumen war. Das war notwendig, um zum Beispiel bei Feuer die Outlines, also den roten Rand um die Grenzen des Characters, herauszuarbeiten. Also wirklich so, wie man es aus dem 2D-Compositing kennt: Bestimmte Signale werden in ihren Ebenen verändert.

DP: Und wie habt ihr das gemacht?
Markus Kranzler: Das war ein riesiges Knotennetz in Houdini und hat pro Bild Stunden gedauert. Ach ja, wir haben die Daten für die Charaktere pro Bild generiert, nicht in Sequenzen.

DP: Man sollte meinen, dass das Gebiet ideal für maschinelles Lernen ist …
Markus Kranzler: Ja, punktuell setzen wir das schon ein – den Denoiser in Renderman zum Beispiel. Aber auf der Filmseite wird es immer auf das einzelne Projekt ankommen – die Neural Style Transfers zum Beispiel hängen davon ab, wie stilisiert der einzelne Film ist. Aber bei Pixar ist das nur ein weiteres Tool in der Kiste, das wir benutzen, wenn wir es brauchen – aber im Moment sehe ich keinen Druck, Projekte zu starten, die mehr R&D darauf verwenden.

DP: Und wie viel Zeit hat euch das bei Elemental gespart?
Markus Kranzler: Wir hatten schon einige Iterationen. Der Vorteil war, dass wir eine gewisse Technologie von Disney Research bekommen haben und dementsprechend eine solide Basis hatten, auf der wir experimentieren konnten und mit der wir die Styles entwickelt haben. Bei Elemtal hatten wir natürlich eine große Auswahl, was wir dem Algorithmus als Input geben, aber es hat eine Weile gedauert, bis wir die richtige Balance zwischen stilisiert und realistisch gefunden haben, und wir haben oft mit Pete Sohn zusammengesessen, bis es „richtig“ aussah.

The post Elementary! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Still not enough? We test the “Stable Release” from Cascadeur, play hands-on with an RTX 4090, Graden Remote with Colourfront & Pharos, test Creation FX and see whether Insta360 version 3 is finally “good”. We also talk about dinosaurs, Omniverse, Daniel2 and dinosaurs. Is that enough to get you out of hibernation?

Trash, Dance & Robots: What’s the story behind the tin mate on the cover? It’s a first-semester (!) project at the HFF – and there’s a lot behind it! A robot invites you to dance. (S. 128)

DP is looking for colleagues!

Do you have ideas about which stories are still important for every issue of Digital Production? Are you tired of the daily grind of production and want to tell stories instead? Then send me your application – DP is looking for an editor! Mail to: ichwillkatzenbilder@digitalproduction.com

The post Digital Production 2023, the second! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ArcGIS CityEngine from Esri is a procedural city planning system – to put it simply. One of its strengths is the integration of many building blocks, such as the import of architectural and geographic data (including Openstreet Maps), the easy application of scripts of any complexity and an extremely user-friendly way of working – anyone can build with it as they wish. Click here for the trial version: is.gd/cityengine_trial. At the same time, it was one of the first connectors to the Omniverse – and we’ll just ask about it, and if you want to get started right away, a 30-day trial version is available here: is.gd/omniverse_test. And if you want to install everything straight away, you can get in touch with our friends at DVE Advanced Systems(is.gd/dveas_omniverse) and PNY(is.gd/pny_omniverse). Of course with enterprise support and all kinds of extras, including professionals in the support team who understand the whole thing much better.

DP: How much does a normal CityEngine user have to “rethink” if they want to work in USD?
Simon Haegler: In contrast to traditional formats such as FBX, USD emphasises the concept of reference. In practice, this means that a CityEngine USD export consists of several geometry files that reference each other.

This is intentional: We write CityEngine layers and inserted assets that have not been modified by CGA back into separate USD files. This enables the user to mute individual CityEngine layers and buildings, for example, or to exchange individual assets (e.g. vegetation) without having to perform a new export. The whole thing is held together by a lightweight “root” file, which then loads the entire model during import.

DP: Let’s go the other way round: What can I already display from the Omniverse Library in CityEngine?
Simon Haegler: Using an Omniverse server as an asset source is currently still in the internal experimentation phase. Since the Omniverse Asset Library is basically “only” a collection of USD files, you can copy them into a CityEngine project and integrate them like normal assets (but you must observe the Nvidia terms of use here). The integration works as usual via the CGA “insert” command or as a single “static model”. One limitation is that CityEngine currently only understands the “USD Preview Surface” PBR material and cannot yet display MDL materials.

DP: Does the “Live” work in both directions, or do I still have to export manually?
Simon Haegler: The export direction is semi-live, you have to start the export with just a few clicks, the connected Omniverse apps are then automatically updated if their “live” mode is activated. The import is currently still manual. In order to be able to offer a fully “bidirectional” connector, there is still some homework ahead of us, especially to enable a good UX in dealing with external, “live” USD assets in the context of CGA and Rule Packages (RPK).

DP: CityEngine is already very flexible when it comes to file formats – is Omniverse the bridge to the other 3D and video workflows?
Simon Haegler: The messaging from Nvidia to Omniverse has changed slightly over the last few years. Omniverse is not easy to understand from a user perspective because it has this universal functional claim and consists of so many components in very different expansion stages. From CityEngine’s point of view, Omniverse is above all a convenient way of rendering complex city scenes efficiently and with high quality and combining them with other content. In the medium term, the simulation tools (Physics) are of course also interesting. We have already experimented with “micro-services” within Omniverse, e.g. to realistically demolish individual CityEngine buildings, but we and Nvidia still have some work to do.

DP: As a programmer, how good is the SDK from Nvidia, and how much effort did it take for the CE team to implement the connector?
Simon Haegler: My answer here is somewhat coloured, as I started with the connector when Omniverse was still in the preview stage and there was no official SDK, let alone developer documentation, i.e. I reverse-engineered access with the support of Nvidia. However, the actual Connector API (C ) was solidly designed from the start and straight-forward to use.

In the meantime, other APIs have been added (Python), for example to install your own micro-services on the Omniverse server or to build entire desktop apps based on the Omniverse UI Toolkit. Where there is still a bit of a problem is the publication process of custom connectors on the Omniverse launcher, where Nvidia is still “finding its way” and it takes some communication effort until the installer and documentation files are in the right place. The CityEngine team is definitely a “very early adopter” of Omniverse here.

DP: And if we look to tomorrow – CityEngine 2030, or Omniverse 2030 – what features do you think are on the horizon, and what topic will we no longer be interested in by then?
Simon Haegler: Seven years is an extremely long time in this context and it’s difficult to make a prediction, especially with the current focus on AI/ML. I’m thinking of image generators (Dall-E and the like) as well as NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields) and inverse rendering research. It may be that by 2030 we will no longer need 3D formats at all, as everything will be in the ML models and the scenes will be rendered directly from text or sketches (concept art).

But it is also possible that in 2030 we will still be descending into the depths of the production pipelines and be annoyed that a render has failed because there is a non-supported Unicode character in the texture name.

The post CityEngine meets Omniverse first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.

In nuce: Esri, the company behind the architecture software CityEngine, has published a new tutorial that demonstrates how to revitalise an Unreal Engine environment using automated assets. More specifically, readers are introduced to a workflow that can be used to replace assets in the Unreal Engine – after importing an ArcGIS CityEngine Datasmith scene. The tutorial was published on esri.com on 2 November this year. The authors of the tutorial are Avonlea Fotheringham and Benjamin Neukom. To illustrate the processes shown in the tutorial, the two authors use a concrete application example – the authors have linked the corresponding assets.

The authors of the tutorial: Avonlea Fotheringham is Esri Product Manager for ArcGIS CityEngine. She has been part of the Esri team for over three and a half years, joining as Social Media Manager. Avonlea holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from Carleton University in Canada. Benjamin Neukom is a software developer within the CityEngine Research & Development team in Zurich. Benjamin has been part of the Esri team for five years now. He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science, both from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.

Click further: To the tutorial on the ArcGIS blog. Digital Production last reported on City Engine on 18 November this year ; at that time it was the User Meeting 2022, which was held for the sixth time this year. Five videos were made available as a follow-up – including one in which Benjamin Neukom talks about CityEngine Datasmith and plugins (see also below).

CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “Newest features in CityEngine 2022.1 – Part 2

The post How to connect CityEngine with the Unreal Engine? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: This year’s CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) took place online on Thursday, 10 November. This marked the sixth anniversary of the virtual urban planning event. As a follow-up to CEUM 2022, the video presentations have now been published on YouTube, as detailed in an announcement on 3d-env.tech . The video material comprises five videos with a total length of around 100 minutes.

CEUM 2023 is to take place at the US software manufacturer Esri in Redlands, a neighbourhood in California. More precisely, the CEUM 2023 is to be organised as part of the Geodesign Summit at Esri’s headquarters in Redlands. The Geodesign Summit is scheduled for 11th & 12th April 2023. The manufacturer Esri focuses on geoinformation systems and is the developer of the CityEngine software, which can be used to generate 3D cities.

In toto: Below are all five videos. The first video deserves special attention, as production designer Romain Janil presents his Cube World here – Romain also does this in our DP 05 : 2020 issue on page 8, where Bela Beier interviewed him under the title Square Worlds.

• CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “How to rule them all”

• CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “Historical, digital 3D models of Zurich”

• CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “Virtual Heritage: The Roman Forum”

• CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “Newest features in CityEngine 2022.1 – Part 1”

• CityEngine User Meeting (CEUM) 2022: “Newest features in CityEngine 2022.1 – Part 2”

The post CityEngine User Meeting 2022 as video stream! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: As a follow-up to this year’s Siggraph, at which Maxon was present with its The 3D and Motion Design Show, the associated live recordings have now been released as YouTube videos – among the prominent personnel is: Bahnoor Barry. The video, which lasts around three quarters of an hour, focuses on Cinema 4D R26 and Red Giant Tools. The highlight: Bahnoor uses the animated title sequence from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis film as an application example (see below). The tutorial is primarily aimed at beginners who are looking to get started with Cinema 4D. The following points will be dealt with in the course of the tutorial:

Bahnoor Barry is a 2D & 3D motion graphics artist, originally from Pakistan, currently working in Miami, Florida. For a little over a year, Mahnoor has been employed as a Motion Graphic Designer at Fox Television Stations (focusing on broadcasting, news formats, sports programmes and intros for TV shows). The image below shows some of Bahnoor’s motion graphics work. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics from Art Institutes and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Animation from Lynn University.

Click to continue: Mahnoor will be presented by Elly Wade, who also gave a presentation on Redshift at Siggraph (Digital Production reported on 14 September 2022).

Mahnoor Barry @ The 3D and Motion Design Show Siggraph 2022, Day 2

Elvis – 10 Minute Preview – Warner Bros. UK & Ireland

The post How to recreate the title sequence from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis film? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Gigantomaniac alien spaceships disintegrate cities around the world: in the sci-fi sequel Independence Day: Resurgence. But instead of relying on model and miniature buildings, as in the first part of the extraterrestrial disaster film gem, the second part of the alien invasion uses CityEngine to provide the orgy of destruction so urgently needed for the big screen spectacle. And now the tool for (virtual) city construction and demolition is entering the next round – because: Esri has released CityEngine version 2022.0, back in June of this year. CityEngine is software that can be used to generate 3D cities – with the help of a procedural process. With CityEngine, Esri is primarily targeting architects and urban planners as a clientele. However, the software is also supplied with connections to common DCC tools and game engines.

New functions: A special feature that will please many developers of entertainment formats: CityEngine can now be used to export data to Twinmotion. Twinmotion is the real-time visualisation tool from Epic Games. Here are some other new functions.

• New lasso selection tool (Lasso Selection Tool)
• Rotate or scale multiple objects individually – around their centre point
• Simplified Street Inspector: Used to create street plans
• Revised Get Started screen: Should now help users to get used to the most important functions of the software more quickly
• Revised CGA: This is the procedural modelling language of CityEngine

Clicked further: Related announcement “What’s New in ArcGIS City Engine 2022.0” by Avonlea Fotheringham (Esri Product Marketing Manager) and Taisha Fabricius (Esri Product Manager). Further information can be found in the corresponding publication note. Digital Production last reported on CityEngine almost a year ago(16.11.2021). At that time about the software in version 2021.1. The video right here below familiarises interested users with the handling of the software.

Urban Design with CityEngine 2022

The post Esri releases new version of CityEngine! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.