Drawing and editing shapes and streets
Streets and blocks
- The default type for nodes is now Crossing. The Smart node type has been removed. This avoids unwanted roundabouts at street ends when importing or drawing streets. When loading an old scene, the Smart type is replaced by the current node type.
- Changed the default type for street ends from Cul-de-sac to Crossing.
- Added the new Reverse Direction tool to the Graph menu which reverses the direction of graph segments.
- Improved the performance when drawing and editing street networks.
- When drawing a new segment onto an existing segment, the ends are added as nodes to that existing segment. This can be helpful to better align streets to the terrain.
- Added perpendicular snapping when drawing new segments.
- Added snapping to extensions of existing streets. This also works when adding new segments to a crossing.
- The Grow Streets tool now uses the scene center as the seed location when the selection is empty.
- Disabled snapping to models for the street creation tools. This makes snapping to nodes and segments easier.
- The Graph Cleanup settings no longer affect manual street creation. This makes precise street drawing smoother.
- Added the new Intersect Segments tool option in the street creation tools. It automatically creates a node where segments cross each other.
- When adding a new node and pressing Esc, the node is no longer deleted.
- Fixed a bug in which the Convert to Static Shapes tool was not available in some cases.
- Fixed a bug in which clicking outside of the context menu in the street creation tools resulted in the creation of invalid street segments.
- Fixed a bug in which drawing a segment with a fixed length didn't yield the expected result.
- Fixed a bug in which new nodes weren't added at the snapping position when using length constraints.
- Fixed a bug in which adding new segments to a street network altered the direction of existing segments.
- Fixed a bug in which the start rule and object attribute settings were lost after setting the main street width to 0.
- Fixed a bug in which the new node was not added at the intersection of the new and existing segment.
- Fixed a bug in which a new node was not added at the intersection of the new and existing segment.
Transform and selection tools
- The transform tool handles are now HiDPI aware.
- Fixed a bug in which the Selection tool allowed adding objects, edges, and faces multiple times to the same multiselection.
- Fixed a bug in which after activating a custom reference system the origin position didn't match with the object center.
- Fixed a bug in which a small cross was displayed at the center of the transform tools.
- Fixed a bug in which the selection highlight for multiselections, containing visibility tools, was not displayed correctly.
- Linux: Fixed a layout issue on the Add /Update Selection Set dialog box.
Miscellaneous tool improvements
- For the Terrain Edit Brush and the Align Terrain to Shapes tools, the Smooth Within Range setting is now applied evenly across the whole range.
- Combined the undo steps of the Separate Faces tool.
- The Polygonal Shape Creation tool now always renders the terrain projection line opaque.
- Fixed a bug in the Offset Shapes tool that caused a misalignment of its handle.
Inspector
- Added a new feature that allows you to copy and paste rule attributes from one shape to another. This makes the styling of street networks simpler.
- Added copy and paste functionality for street parameters.
- Added copy and paste functionality for object attributes.
- Improved the performance of the Inspector when working with shapes with many attributes.
- When creating styles for 2D array attributes, the actual values are now written into the rule file. Thanks for reporting, @Elliot Hartley.
- The visibility tools multiselections are now represented correctly in the Inspector.
- Fixed UX issues with the sliders when changing attribute values.
- Fixed various issues when setting the Left and Right Sidewalk Width parameters to zero.
- Fixed a bug in which the object attributes of blocks were not displayed correctly.
Viewport
- Extended the behavior when dragging a CGA file into the Viewport. When a CGA file is dragged onto the terrain, a small initial shape is automatically created and the model is generated.
- Fixed a rendering issue on latest generation AMD graphics cards in which the Viewport turns black when there are models visible.
General UI
- Added keyboard support to the Welcome Screen. Use Tab or Shift+Tab to cycle through the items.
- The new street shapes icons in the Inspector are now also used in the Scene Editor.
- The menu entry to switch the toolbar now changes the name from Hide to Show.
- Fixed a bug in which the splash screen was not displayed correctly when using certain display scale factors.
- Fixed a bug in the Navigator in which the folder names were incorrect after a search.
- Fixed a bug in the Scene Editor in which expanding a layer with many items locked the UI.
- Fixed a bug in the Welcome Screen in which the window border was not rendered correctly.
- Fixed a bug in which the Welcome Screen threw an exception in some cases.
- Fixed a bug in which the drop-down menus had unnecessary scroll bars when the Windows scaling is set to 150% or 175%.
- Fixed a bug in which opening the offline help made the Viewport unusable with certain display scale factors.
- Fixed a bug in which the CGA files were not saved when the editor closed due to perspective changes.
- Linux: Fixed a bug in which changing a toggle value in the tool options was only visible after a short delay.
- Added missing translations for various terms in the UI.
Get Map Data improvements
- You can now download basemaps and elevation maps at 8K resolution in Get Map Data.
- Schematic basemaps are selectable again for download (map availability depends on your geographic location).
- Sped up downloads and now Get Map Data avoids a download error when selecting small extents.
- Resolved a time-out issue that led to the cancellation of the download in Get Map Data.
Integration with ArcGIS Urban
- Improved the Save changes to Urban tool: it is now possible to save changes per scenario to ArcGIS Urban.
- The Save changes to Urban dialog box now shows improved error messages when there is insufficient permissions.
- The Save changes to Urban dialog box now shows a warning when the zoning and building types have been changed.
- The Navigator preview also shows meta info and a preview of ArcGIS Urban items.
- The ArcGIS Urban plan import now uses the default light gray canvas when the model has an unsupported basemap.
- Fixed a bug in the ArcGIS Urban tab in Navigator that prevented the listing of more than 50 models.
- The ArcGIS Urban tab now directly lists all available plans and projects of a model.
- The ArcGIS Urban tab no longer filters out models that require updating in the app.
- The Import of Plans option is now disabled in the context menu when requiring updating in the ArcGIS Urban app first.
- You can now search in Navigator for ArcGIS Urban models by name.
Import and export
Unreal/Datasmith
- To ensure precise artistic control, the roughness map isn’t reencoded to enforce a white metallic channel when the material has a zero metallic value. The same applies with the metallic map when there is a zero roughness value. This also applies for the glTF export.
- Fixed a bug in which terrain images were incorrectly scaled down when they exactly matched an Unreal terrain resolution.
USD
- Added an option to merge all geometry generated by an initial shape into one USD node.
- Reports, rules, and object attributes are automatically included in exports.
- USD files can now directly be exported to network shares and paths containing symlinks.
- Fixed a crash in the USD decoder if a .usdz file was encountered in a .rpk.
glTF
- To ensure precise artistic control, the roughness map isn’t reencoded to enforce a white metallic channel when the material has a zero metallic value. The same applies with the metallic map when there is a zero roughness value. This also applies for the datasmith export.
- Fixed a bug in which the same texture was exported several times. This only happened for textures computed from several input textures, such as combining roughness and metallic maps.
DXF
- You can now import files with Insert entities.
- Fixed a bug in which polyline entities were imported with the wrong coordinates.
SHP
- Improved the error message when a companion file is missing.
Procedural modeling language (CGA)
- Added the new splitAndSetbackPerimeter operation. Designed with the perimeter block development in mind, this operation splits the perimeter of a polygon into sections and applies individual setbacks for each of them. You can use this to create a set of building footprints.
- Improved the performance for rules with many attr and const parameters.
- Improved the performance for scenes and rules with intermodel context (or occlusion) queries in which the generated model does not contain labeled geometry. The Complete Street Rule is an example of this rule.
- Improved the performance for generating models with the attr rule source set to nonexisting layers.
- Fixed a crash when generating a large number of models in parallel.
- Fixed a crash when generating models with the urban rule on Linux.
See the CGA changelog for a comprehensive list of changes and bug fixes.
Python
- Fixed a rare bug in which workspace updates were not visible after ce.refreshFolder() was called.
- Fixed a bug in which having a finishExport method defined when running a Python export triggered an exception.
CGA and Python editors
- You can now detach the CGA and Python editors from the main window. This is useful when working with a secondary screen.
Miscellaneous
- Fixed a bug in which terrains that were edited with a version older than CityEngine 2021.1 were rendered at zero elevation when using the Nearest Neighbor heightmap sampling.
- Fixed an issue that prevented adding portals with long URLs.
- Fixed a performance issue with generating models when CGA attributes are linked to a layer that doesn't exist anymore.
- Uninstalling CityEngine on Windows using the control panel now opens an abbreviated uninstall wizard.
- Linux: Fixed a bug with the switching of the active portal in the drop-down menu.
Tutorials
The CityEngine tutorials were reorganized into new thematic categories: the Essentials and Classic Tutorial Series. The Essentials tutorials are presented in a storytelling format, while tutorials in the Classic Tutorial Series are structured in workflows which center around specific features of CityEngine.
New Essentials tutorials
- Work with GIS Data—Learn about taking your own GIS data such as parcels in a geodatabase, cleaning the data up, and generating 3D city models for land-use planning.
- Rule-based modeling—Learn the essential concepts of CGA rules and how to author CGA rules to generate 3D buildings from footprints.
Refurbished Classic Tutorial Series
Added streamlined workflows and new images to the following tutorials:
- Tutorial 2: Terrain and Dynamic city layouts—Learn about terrains and how to create streets on the terrain using dynamic city layout tools.
- Tutorial 3: Map control—Learn how to use maps to control attributes such as land use to drive the visualization of buildings.
- Tutorial 4: Import streets—Learn how to import streets for different data types, including DXF, OSM, and shapefile.
- Tutorial 5: Import initial shapes—Learn about importing data of different formats such as OBJ, FBX, or USD, and workflows to process them further.