CityEngine 2021.1 Release Notes

 

Drawing and editing of shapes and streets

Transform tools 

• Removed the locked coordinate system functionality in the transform tools and replaced it with custom reference systems.
• Added a new tool to define custom reference systems in the viewport located under Edit in the main menu.
• Extended snapping functionality to geometry for the reposition and reorient handle of all transform tools.
• Fixed the ToolTips for the reference system in all transform tools.
• Fixed a bug in which the scale tool handle got distorted using the object coordinate system.

Guides

• You can now snap to intersection points of guides and faces.
• Fixed a bug in which snapping didn't work correctly when using the force planar mode or orthogonal snapping.

Snapping

• Fixed a bug in which snapping didn't work correctly for faces in combination with a length constraint.
• Fixed multiple bugs to improve snapping when using arcs.

Selection

• You can now store the current selection as a selection set using the tool option window of the Selection tool.
• You can store and load dynamic shapes in selection sets.
• When creating a selection set, you now have the option to overwrite an existing one.

Shapes

• The shape creation tools have a new Force New Shape tool option.
• The Push Pull Tool has a new Force New Edges tool option.
• Fixed several bugs with the Push Pull Tool related to shapes with holes.
• Fixed a bug in the Push Pull Tool that prevented the removal of side-planes when reducing the extrusion to zero.
• Fixed a bug that caused crashes when using the Push Pull Tool on edges.
• Fixed a bug in the Rectangular Shape Creation Tool that prevented the creation of a hole in existing shapes.
• Fixed a bug that led to extra vertices when creating a hole on a shape with a coplanar model.
• Fixed a bug that caused a rule not to be automatically assigned to street nodes.
• The Street Creation tools are now grouped as subtools in the tool options.

Miscellaneous

• The Offset tool arrow handle is now easier to grab.
• Undo/Redo is now more robust when using shape creation tools.
• The tool options now have a vertical scroll bar.
• Fixed a bug in the measurement tool in which the endpoint periodically could not be repositioned.

Terrain editing

• Added the new Smooth Range function that creates a smooth transition between the edited and the original terrain.
• Added the new Constant Gradient function that creates a transition with a constant steep slope between the edited and the original terrain.
• The Smooth Range and Constant Gradient functions are available when aligning terrains to shapes.
• Added a hot key for the elevation picker in the terrain editing tool for easier access.
• Made improvements in the internal storage and handling of terrain edits that lead to smoother and more precise results.
• Fixed a bug in which terrains with duplicate names were not selectable in the Align Terrain to Shapes dialog box.
• Fixed a bug in which editing the resolution of a terrain reverted all elevation edits.

User interface

Dashboards

• You can now duplicate and move Dashboards cards to other Dashboard pages.
• You can now duplicate entire Dashboard pages.
• Dashboard cards now show an error when referencing reports that are no longer present instead of silently using the alphabetically next report.

Viewport

• The viewport now renders shapes correctly with very small faces.
• Improved render quality of models with normal maps.
• Fixed an issue that caused render artifacts when shapes are self-intersecting.

Inspector

• Sliders for street shape parameters work reliably now.

Miscellaneous

• Added the new Epic Games Unreal Editor mouse scheme (Preferences > General > Navigation Devices > Mouse).
• You can now use the Crop Image tool when a scene isn't open.
• All algorithms that use map layers, such as align terrain to shapes, are now considering the scenario settings.
• Added missing translations for some preferences.
• Improved the visual quality of the CityEngine application icon in the taskbar on Windows.

Import and export

All exporters

• CityEngine no longer exports “No data” areas of terrains to 3D geometry formats.
• The Merge Vertices option no longer removes very small faces when exporting to 3D geometry formats.

BIM/CAD support: IFC support

• Added the buildingSMART IFC importer and exporter to enable visualization of BIM data.
• The Autodesk DWG importer now reads vertex normals when present.
• The Autodesk DWG importer now reads textures with absolute paths.
• Fixed a bug in which Autodesk DWG wasn't listed in the import dialog box.
• Fixed a crash when importing an Autodesk DWG file with certain spline configurations.

OSM: Better buildings in Get Map Data

• Improved the OSM importer to support the OSM 3D buildings with more advanced geometry consisting of multiple parts and relations.
• OSM buildings are now represented in a neutral white shading by default.
• Fixed a bug in which a coordinate system wasn't suggested for the scene when importing OSM files only containing relations.

Datasmith (Unreal Engine)

• The Datasmith exporter now stores metadata with finer granularity on instanced Static Mesh Actors. The parent actor still receives all the metadata.
• Improved the heuristic of setting the blend mode for transparent materials, resulting in fewer rendering artifacts in unreal.
• Fixed a bug in which the UV coordinates for dirt maps were not exported to Datasmith.

360 VR

• Polygon edges on static model street center lines and street node handles are now set to invisible by default on export.
• Create 360 VR experiences with nondefault render settings using the 3D viewport render settings. 

Miscellaneous

• Fixed a bug in which graph layers with names longer than 31 characters couldn't be exported to DXF.
• The FBX importer now supports embedded textures on binary FBX files and applies opacity maps.
• Fixed a bug in the FBX importer in which assets created by 3DS Max were sometimes wrongly composited.
• The USD exporter now has an option to triangulate the exported meshes.
• The SLPK exporter now handles transparent materials correctly; there are no more rendering artifacts in transparent materials when zooming out.

Procedural modeling language (CGA)

• The new CityEngine CGA Material Encoder exports each material of a generated model to a folder containing a *.cgamat file and all used textures.
• The new readMaterial function reads CGA material definitions (.cgamat files).
• Added support for reading assets in the (.ifc) format. The structure of the elements in .ifc files is retained as much as possible and encoded in the group names.
• The envelope, scatter, and splitArea operations now preserve groups; all CGA operations keep the group names and structure. This enables advanced visualization workflows, such as when working with .ifc files.
• The new sortIndices and sortRowIndices functions allow you to sort elements in an array.
• The new setElems function sets individual elements in an array.
• Extended the string concatenation operator. You can now concatenate strings with arrays.
• Fixed a wrong resulting scope translation for the envelope operation.
• Fixed a rare crash in the split, trim, and insertAlongUV operations when face materials are present.

See the 2021.1 CGA changelog for a comprehensive list of changes and bug fixes.

CGA editor

• Added the new Find Unused Declarations feature to the context menu which reports unused attributes, functions, const functions, and rules in the search view.

CGA compiler

• Unused rules and functions are no longer written to the CGB. This reduces file size and maximizes compatibility with older procedural runtime versions.
• Removed warnings for unused declarations. The new Find Unused Declarations option is available in the CGA Editor.
• Fixed a bug in which nonmatching return types across styles were not detected on imports. This resulted in a crash when switching styles.
• Fixed a bug that led to an unhandled error in rare cases when a recursive function was also defined in another style.

RPK creation

• Fixed a bug in RPK creation in which asset search queries containing single quotes were not handled correctly in automatic asset detection.
• Fixed a bug in which assets with uppercase file extensions were not handled correctly in automatic asset detection.

Python

• Added IFCExportModelSettings and IFCImportSettings to export and import IFC files.
• Added CGAMATExportModelSettings to export materials to the cgamat material format.

See the 2021.1 Python changelog for a comprehensive list of changes and bug fixes.

Tutorials

• Released the new CityEngine Tour tutorial. This tutorial serves as an introduction to the CityEngine urban design capabilities and is intended for new users.
• Updated Tutorial 10: Python scripting and it now works with the latest Autodesk Maya.
• Updated the screenshots in Tutorial 17: Desert city to match the current plant library.
• Updated Tutorial 18: Handles to match the latest UI changes.
• Fixed Tutorial 19: VFX Workflows with Alembic to correctly generate the included temple model.
• Improved the documentation of Tutorial 20: Local edits to better explain the local edits workflow and use.
• Updated various tutorials to remove deprecated CGA syntax.

ESRI.lib

• The Building_From_OpenStreetMap.cga rule now supports building parts and relations and uses the new OSM import design from this release.
• The Urban rule is updated to version 1.3.0.

Licensing

• Fixed a bug in the Software Authorization component for RHEL 8 when using the Single Use license type. Note that support for RHEL 8 is still experimental in CityEngine 2021.1.