Esri introduces CityEngine 2015.0! This robust release adds exciting new features where you can create 3D city models faster than ever and share them easily via ArcGIS Online.
Key features
- Introducing 'Procedural Handles’ for unique and intuitive 3D design experience.
- Modernized layer management with new easy-to-use Scene Editor.
- Enhanced real-time shadows based on daytime and location.
- Faster data export and better publishing workflows.
- Advanced support for Esri file geodatabase (FileGDB).
Enhancements
Introducing ‘Procedural Handles’ for a unique and intuitive 3D editing experience
- Novel system for displaying and manipulating CGA attributes directly in the 3D Viewport.
- Handles are configurable UI components for editing distances, lengths, angles, states, or colors.
- Handles can adapt to the camera view to automatically provide an optimal, intuitive UI layout.
- The CGA rule author can attach handles to a procedural model and customize their position and interactive behavior through an expansive annotation syntax.
- A step-by-step guideline for the creation of handles can be found in the novel tutorial Handles. Technical background information can be found in the related technical paper.
Modernized layer management with new easy-to-use Scene Editor
- Grouping: Organize your layers in hierarchical groups via drag-and-drop.
- Locking: Lock individual layers for viewing only.
- Colors: Apply colors to individual layers to highlight their objects in the viewport (not for export).
- Multi selection: Select many layers or groups to change the visibility/lock/color state.
- Frame: Double click on any element in the Scene Editor to frame the element in the Viewport.
- Rename: Quickly rename a layer or a group directly in the Scene Editor.
- Search: Search for layers, objects, attribute names or attribute values.
Enhanced real-time shadows based on daytime and location
- New light and panorama configuration tools that can be opened via main tool bar.
- New sun mode allowing for real-world shadows based on georeferenced location and date/time.
- Much faster shadows that can be used on large scenes without performance breakdown.
- Upgraded, more accurate visual quality of the indirect shadows (ambient occlusion).
- Progressive rendering to guarantee interactive frame rates even on Ultrabooks.
Faster data export and better publishing workflows
- Substantial speed up of the 3D format exporters for OBJ, FBX, Collada/KML, VUE, RIB and 3WS.
- The terrain exporter supports now also grayscale imagery as well as TIF (including 32bit).
- DXF import and export is now layer-aware to allow for a better interoperability with CAD tools.
- ArcGIS Online items can now be updated: It is now possible to overwrite an existing CityEngine Web Scene (3WS) or a rule package (RPK) on ArcGIS Online. Therefore, the item’s URL stays persistent.
Advanced support for Esri File Geodatabase (FileGDB)
- Relationship classes are fully supported now, allowing for an import/edit/export round-trip workflow.
- Related field data can be edited using the improved Table Editor in the Inspector.
- FileGDB feature class field information like data types and domains are now persistently stored.
Miscellaneous enhancements
- Significant performance improvements in CGA model generation provide a more interactive user experience when changing rule attributes on one or many objects (+ additional speed up of export).
- Street graph segments with zero width are now fully supported. Inserting such segments is a practical tool to manually adjust the procedural subdivision of blocks into parcels (by staying dynamic).
- The latest Mac OS X versions, Yosemite (10.10) & Mavericks (10.9), are now officially supported.
Fixes
CGA procedural modeling language
- The ‘split’ syntax does not allow splits without size value anymore. Note that this fix might have impact on existing rules in case the CGA author took advantage of the missing check. Such rules can be typically fixed by inserting the floating distance ‘~1’. Please see CGA Changelog for details.
- In the ‘split’ syntax, expressions/formulas for the size value do not need extra parentheses anymore.
- Geometry operations ‘offset’, ‘roofGable’ and ‘roofHip’ are now stable on polygons with co-linear vertices and illegal holes. Furthermore, a related memory issue (which led to crashes) got fixed.
- In the operation ‘cleanupGeometry’, edge cleanup on geometries with per-face-materials do not disarrange material assignments anymore.
- New function ‘getTreeKey()’ to get a unique identifier for a shape (the ‘uid’ shape attribute has been deprecated).
- New function ‘isNull()’ to check for special float or string values (typically coming from FileGDB).
- In the ‘float()’ function, the string-to-float conversion is now independent of localization.
- Rules and functions with a very large number of parameters do not hang CityEngine anymore.
- CGB decoder can now read compiled CGA files with a very large number of attributes/rules/splits.
- Fixed several issues leading to confusing CGA error markers in CGA Editor.
- The Visual CGA editor got retired in order to facilitate a better CGA editing experience.
- Assigning a rule did not always update the attributes in Inspector if a generated model was present.
- Simplified and improved ‘@Hidden’ annotation which now recursively hides imports in the Inspector.
- Better support for ‘@Range’ annotation in Inspector (custom values are handled and longer menus).
CGA Style Manager in Inspector
- Opening the Style Manager does not cause OpenGL rendering artefacts in the 3D Viewport anymore.
- Several issues in the functionality for creating a new style and removing styles have been fixed.
- Fixed an issue which led to mixed-up styles in the compiled CGB files (already in 2014.1 hotfix 1).
Terrain
- If terrain export is disabled, the simplified terrain will not be computed anymore (= faster export).
- Float-encoded terrains with negative values are now rendered correctly.
- Fixed an issue in internal terrain conversion.
- Aligning streets or shapes to the terrain using y=0 positions geometry now correctly.
Streets and blocks
- Street intersections with one or many incoming zero-width segments no longer generate fragmentary sidewalk shapes and generate clean block boundaries (e.g. on Roundabouts).
- Improved the street crossing center shape (e.g. takes ‘minArcRadius’ better into account).
- Fixed an issue in which the ‘valency’ object attribute was incorrectly set on junction geometry.
- Fixed an issue in which the ‘streetWidth()’ function was updating incorrectly after street graph edits.
- A crash in the “Generate Bridges” command was fixed when working with more than one graph layer.
- Fixed a block layer dispose issue that led to wrong object count and visibility problems.
- Removed (unused) ‘cornerStyle’ attribute from Roundabout and Freeway graph node types.
- Fixed an issue in which lot corner shapes no longer overlap other lots.
FileGDB
- Fixed a datatype import bug where short integers were erroneously converted to booleans (already in 2014.1 hotfix 1).
- The FileGDB import settings are now exposed through the Python API.
- The FileGDB import dialog has been extended with better input validation.
- The import option “Map shape attributes” has been renamed to “Import and map attributes” and now also allows for disabling the import of the attributes (notably e.g. for networks/streets to prevent long computation times).
- On export, the feature class field order is now always consistent.
Python
- Importing an OSM file in Python will no longer automatically run street-graph filters.
- The OBJ, FBX, DAE, VUE and RIB exporters are now exposing the generated CGA reports in the ‘finishModel()’ callback.
- Optional new argument on ‘ce.restoreBookmark’ to set camera location without animation delay.
- The Jython cache is now updated on every startup and ‘startup.py’ now works correctly.
Preferences
- The “reset” buttons in the Viewport as well as the Procedural Runtime settings are now functional.
- The Procedural Runtime settings are now reliably stored.
- The setting ‘-Dagol’ is only written to ‘application.ini’ once.
Miscellaneous fixes
- Fixed an issue in which the translate tool moved shape edges in the wrong direction.
- Fixed an issue in which Viewport settings (texture, wireframe,…) were sometimes lost.
- In case asset preview was active, opening a scene caused CityEngine to occasionally crash on OS X.
- Screenshots are now working correctly on Retina Macs.