Vitruvio - CityEngine Plugin for Unreal Engine 4

[#1]

Note: Vitruvio is now officially released on GitHub , where you will find the latest downloads, documentation, examples and source code.

[ZorkoSostaric1]

That's great news Stefan. Thank you for the announcement.

[JackCurran]

Exciting stuff - looking forward to getting to grips with it! However, the links to the plugin in the post appear to be broken. It's only accessible from the attachment at the bottom of the post.

[StefanArisona]

Thanks - fixed the links.

[awei]

This is really useful for my work. However, it says that the plug-in works for UE4 4.24 but I just tested 4.24.3 doesn't work. Looks like it only works with 4.24.0. This is a history version of UE4 and I'm not sure where to download it... 

[BenjaminNeukom]

Hi!

Thanks for your feedback! I tested the Project with 4.24.3 and it seems to work. Are you trying theVitruvio_Minimal_Demo.zip?

What exactly does not work for you? Can you open the project?

Best,

Benjamin

[VHolubec]

Hello,

great project! Is there a plan to put this plugin to Epic UE4 Marketplace?

Thank you.

Vladimir

[Anonymous User]

This is great UE4 plugin!   I just got around to trying it out and I wish I had discovered it sooner.  

One note to the documentation above - you can sort of save your procedurally generated meshes and textures in UE4, at least one-by-one through UE4 tools that I know of (maybe there's a batch way to do this?).  One caveat, the UV projection didn't seem to work.  But you can potentially work around this in UE4 by adding a tiling node to the material - or replace the material with one your own materials/textures.

Steps:

1. Click on the vitruvio actor you want to save as a mesh in the World Outliner or active window.
2. Right-click on selected actor to "convert to static mesh" (near the top of the list).   
3. Find the new static mesh in a new mesh folder in your "Content". Place it in active project.
4. Click on new static mesh (active window or world outliner) and go to the details pane.
5. Find the Materials section - and click on "Bake Materials" - use default settings.
6. That should create new textures and materials - but you can replace those or modify those as needed now.

UE4 screenshot with annotations

[Anonymous User]

In my very limited experience with Vitruvio, I was wondering if it was possible to attach actors to blank Vitruvio fields where we would define assets in CityEngine?     

Thanks! Brian

[BenjaminNeukom]

Hi @Anonymous User

First of all thanks for your feedback! As you might have noticed we moved the plugin to Github (https://esri.github.io/cityengine/vitruvio). We are also working on an official release on the Epic Marketplace. 

Your workaround for saving the procedurally generated meshes still seems to work but we are also working on improving that to make it easier for multiple Vitruvio Actors as well as fixing the material issues you've mentioned.

In my very limited experience with Vitruvio, I was wondering if it was possible to attach actors to blank Vitruvio fields where we would define assets in CityEngine?     

Not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean for example inserted Assets from CGA (if you use 'i("tree.fbx")') or materials?

Replacing assets is not possible at the moment, but we have also thought that. Materials can be "replaced" in the same way as with the Datasmith exporter (see CityEngine Datasmith Export Help).

Does this help?

Best,

Benjamin

[Anonymous User]

@BenjaminNeukom 

Thanks for the response!  For a clarification on my asset question, yes I was thinking that when we use @File materials/textures/static mesh assets such as CGA's i(tree.fbx) in CGA code they could pop up in Vitruvio in UE4 with associated asset parameters (actors, materials, textures), allowing for drag and drop replacement.  Note, I saw some further documentation that we could link to ready made UE4 materials by file path in CityEngine and I haven't tried that yet.   Does that work on actors (mesh+material) too?

Just another note, as a new Vitruvio user I am still thinking about various workflows and how it was intended to be used in the UE4 workflow, and how the existing export to UE4 fits into that equation.   Vitruvio adds an extra dimension of design capabilities (because we can still make model changes in UE4) which I love but it may not always be the right workflow(still thinking this through as I experiment in CE and UE4)?   I am assuming that for the demo pictures you guys made (which look amazing by the way!) that the streets shapes were imported by the standard CE means?    And then you just apply the RPK rule to the shape?

[BenjaminNeukom]

Hi @Anonymous User 

Thanks for the response!  For a clarification on my asset question, yes I was thinking that when we use @File materials/textures/static mesh assets such as CGA's i(tree.fbx) in CGA code they could pop up in Vitruvio in UE4 with associated asset parameters (actors, materials, textures), allowing for drag and drop replacement. 

Thanks for the feedback. That would indeed be very convenient. We have also thought about "similar" strategies for replacing instances/materials. I'll add it to our list.

 I am assuming that for the demo pictures you guys made (which look amazing by the way!) that the streets shapes were imported by the standard CE means?    And then you just apply the RPK rule to the shape?

Thanks! Yes the streets are just normal Datasmith exports from CityEngine (so no way to change them again in Unreal) and only the buildings use Vitruvio (eg we exported the initial shapes only and the buildings are generated in Unreal). But we were also thinking about improving that as Unreal has built in Splines support which we could use for street generation as well. We will have to look into that a bit more.

Best,

Benjamin

[Anonymous User]

@BenjaminNeukom 

Thanks for the response again!   Glad to see the progress that has already been made and excited to see where it's going. 

I was playing around with the NYC 2259 tutorial just last week and I gave it a go myself at packaging as a UE4 rulepack to see what it would like in UE4.  But today I noticed that you guys added it as a new Vitruvio rulepack.  The rulepack you guys provided is much better than mine with those custom emissive materials blueprints, which I am currently looking at to learn from.  I am also curious about the UE4 material functions setup and how that connects/speaks to CE and if that creates opportunities for new material setups.    Lots of new learning opportunities from these examples!

However, I made a bunch of custom shapes in CE that produced some really interesting buildings with the NYC2259 rule, so I am going to have to figure out how to merge those ideas with this rulepack.