The following are the basic steps to export a model:
- Select the objects to export in the Viewport window or Scene Editor window.
- Click File > Export Models from the main menu or press Ctrl + E.
- Select the file format.
Note:
The model exporter is independent of the generated models in the current scene and can export large scenes. This means that you do not need to generate a scene before exporting a model.
Supported formats
The supported 3D formats are described in the following table:
3D format | Description |
---|---|
An open, interchange framework designed for VFX content production pipelines. | |
Loads a large number of DCC tools and rendering engines with support for asset instancing, layered textures, and file referencing. | |
Provides simple data transfer from CityEngine into the Unreal Engine Editor and Twinmotion. It supports modern materials (PBR) as well as geometry instancing. | |
A proprietary 3D geometry format native to Autodesk AutoCAD. It doesn't have modern material support but is widely used in the BIM and CAD industries. | |
Provides export into Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, and other DCC tools equipped with an FBX importer. It Includes support for layered textures (multitexture) and per-texture UVW transformations (scale, translation, and rotation). | |
A recent JSON-based 3D geometry delivery format. It supports modern materials (PBR) as well as geometry instancing and is supported by many desktop and web apps. Currently it is the recommended exchange format for new projects. | |
An open-source 3D geometry exchange format used to describe building elements. It is mainly used in the BIM and CAD industries to store project information for design, procurement, and construction phases as well as reference for operations. CityEngine only supports version 2x3. | |
Transfers models with solid coloring or single texture layers to a DCC tool or rendering engine. The material definitions are exported into accompanying .mtl files. It does not support instancing. | |
Stores large CityEngine scenes with minimal loss of information, which makes it suitable as an interchange format for further processing in VFX pipelines. | |
A native object format for polygonal meshes of e-on software's VUE product. CityEngine supports VUE 8.5 and later. It is recommended that you use the latest version. |
The supported 3D GIS formats are described in the following table:
3D GIS format | Description |
---|---|
A common file format for GIS workflows. Export multipatch, multipoint, point, and polyline geometry types into a file geodatabase. Textures are supported. | |
Exports into georeferenced earth browsers such as ArcGlobe and ArcGIS Earth. The models can be shared, for example, in Google Warehouse. |
The supported ArcGIS Online formats are described in the following table:
ArcGIS Online format | Description |
---|---|
A mobile scene package (.mspk file) is a custom, web-optimized file type that can be used to share complete scenes on the ArcGIS Platform. | |
A scene layer package (.slpk file) is a custom, web-optimized format that can be shared and published on ArcGIS Online and viewed with Scene Viewer. | |
Exports panoramic photos of CityEngine scenes. |
The supported CGA Material format is described in the following table:
Material format | Description |
---|---|
CGA Material | The material descriptions of a CGA model are collected and written into individual subdirectories. Each subdirectory contains all the material—including the used textures—which can be copied into a folder of assets, for example. The name of the subdirectory and the .cgamat file is the material.name attribute but is made unique if there are several materials with the same name. The <matName>.cgamat file is in CSV format, as is the result of the CGA function: getMaterial(used, changed). |
The supported custom export format is described in the following table:
Custom export format | Description |
---|---|
Allows Python commands to be arbitrarily run during batch export. |
General export options
The general options can be used for all export file formats. Certain formats contain additional options, which are described in the corresponding subsection below.
Note:
- In the Export Wizard, each export option displays a ToolTip with a description.
- To compare the material and shading functionality of the various formats, see the Format feature comparison section below. .
General options
The general options are described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Output Path | The path to the export location. The path must exist. |
Base Name | The base name of the exported files. A suffix will be appended depending on the other export option settings. |
Export Geometry |
|
Terrain Layers |
|
Simplify Terrain Meshes | The reduceGeometry operation is used to simplify the terrain geometry prior to export. This can take a long time, especially for higher resolution terrains. |
Terrain Mesh Resolution | Determines the number of terrain mesh vertices in the U and V directions to export. Depending on the quality of the terrain resolution, you can have the following options:
|
Granularity options
The granularity options are described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Memory Budget | The maximum memory consumption in megabytes. The geometry data is written to a single file if Memory Budget is zero. Otherwise, a new file is written to disk whenever the memory budget is reached.
|
Mesh Granularity |
|
Feature Granularity |
|
Geometry options
The geometry options are described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Vertex Normals |
|
Normals Indexing | Choose between indexed polygon normals or separated normal copies per polygon. |
Texture Coordinates |
|
Local Offset | Local offset is only active when File Granularity is set to One File per start shape, as it is computed for each individual shape.
|
Global Offset | The global offset for generated geometry. Set the offset for the x, y and z axes (Cartesian coordinate values). |
Vertex Precision | Use these values to reduce the floating point precision of different geometry data prior to the file output (used to reduce file size in OBJ). |
Merge within precision | Coordinates (vertices, normals, and texture coordinates) that have a Euclidean distance equal to or less than precision are merged and their corresponding indexes are updated. |
Triangulate Meshes | All faces are converted to triangles. |
Faces with holes |
|
Materials options
The materials option is described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Include Materials | When enabled, material definitions (for example, diffuse color) and textures are included in the export. Otherwise, the default material is referenced (if required by the format). |
Texture options
Texture options are described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Create Texture Atlas | Texture atlases that combine a set of textures into one are created, reducing the number of textures and materials. All textures except color maps are removed. For more information, see CGA material attribute. Note:In case of repetition (that is, UV coordinates outside [0,1]), textures can not be put into an atlas. |
Texture Atlas Max Dimension (2^n) | Specifies the maximum dimension of the texture atlases in powers of two pixels, for example, a value of 11 gives a 2048x2048 atlas. |
Texture Atlas Border | A border of pixels that repeat the texture content is added to prevent incorrect scaling of artifacts. |
Advanced options
Advanced options are described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
File Type | Choose binary- or text (ASCII)-based file creation. |
Embed Textures | Reference the file path (the default) or embed the texture files in the binary file. |
Shape Name Delimiter | The specified character is used to resolve duplicate shape names. For example, a delimiter of "_" resolves {"shape", "shape", "shape"} to {"shape", "shape_1", "shape_2"}. Existing suffixes such as "_1" are recognized. Note:To use the name resolver manually for a selection of shapes, click Edit > Make Names Unique. |
Existing Files |
|
Additional options
One addition option is described in the following table:
Option | Description |
---|---|
Script | A workspace path to a python script for additional python operation parallel to export. |
Format feature comparison
The features in the table below reference the output of CityEngine, not the theoretical features of the individual format. Compare this list with the known interoperability limitations and recommendations in the Format recommendations section of the Model export application notes topic.
Format | Instancing | Shader | Multitexture | Tex Trafo | Triangulation | Referencing |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ABC | Yes | No 2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
DAE | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes 1 | Yes |
DWG | No | No | No | No | No | No |
DATASMITH | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes 4 | No |
FBX | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
FileGDB | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
glTF | Yes | No | No | No | No 3 | No |
KMZ / KML | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes 1 | Yes |
OBJ | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
SLPK | No | No | No | No | No | No |
USD | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
- 1. Triangulation is necessary when exporting to ArcGIS Earth. See the Format recommendations section of the Model export application notes topic for more information.
- 2. Alembic does not store shaders, but you can use CGA reports to write out a shader name as a property and bind it in a downstream tool.
- 3. The glTF format only allows triangulated geometry.
- 4. CityEngine always passes triangulated geometry to DATASMITH.
Feature types
Supported feature types are described in the following table:
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Instancing | Supports instancing of geometry. Typically, the assets are stored separately in an unmodified state from the nodes and transformation data. |
Shader | Supports custom shader names. |
Multitexture | Supports multiple texture channels. |
Tex Trafo | Supports separate texture coordinate transformations independent from the texture coordinates stored in the meshes (for example, texture rotation). |
Triangulation | Confirm whether the exporter supports optional triangulation on export. |
Referencing | Confirm whether referencing of entities between files is supported. This allows the definition of a primary file to combine all scene elements. |