topic Re: Rationalized sunlight / shadow control between CE and webGL in ArcGIS CityEngine Questions

Rationalized sunlight / shadow control between CE and webGL

AlanKlys — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 06:50:42 GMT

Hi there CE developers,

This has come up in a few conversations for me lately so I thought I'd post it here and see if anyone here might have any comments or more ideas in this area.

While handy, the solar elevation and azimuth in CE is unlike any other 3D app that I've used for shadow analysis. Sketchup, Max, Blender, Modo, Lightwave, plus a number of the renderers I have used over the years all use time / date as well as the geo location for that purpose.

Is there a reason why we have solar elevation and azimuth in CE, and then time / month and GMT values in the webGL application?

It would make a lot of sense to rationalize the two into the latter model I believe. I for one would like to do preliminary shadow studies directly in CE where tweaking parameter changes live for specific solstice times has immediate design feedback.

Which brings up the second point and request...

I like the way webGL models can be analysed in terms of shadows and sunlight via the time / month and GMT values.

What would be even better in my view is if there was a way to bookmark those values, along with camera position that we have now, so that you could do solstice studies on specific areas. At this stage you'd have to fiddle with those values per each solstice time / date and that can get rather cumbersome during meetings especially if multiple sites are involved. That would mean a bit of a rethink in terms of the way that sunlight is handled in CE but it shouldn't be too hard a task and would have quite a few benefits I believe.

Re: Rationalized sunlight / shadow control between CE and webGL

MatthiasBuehler — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 08:41:43 GMT

Hey Alan,

I'm sure this may change at one point in the upcoming future. Having a georeferenced sunsystem is quite important.

For actual numerical analysis (CE is not a simulation system), you need to use the 3D-Analyst extension for ArcGIS.

Ok?

Matt

Interested in CityEngine training or services? Contact me!

Matthias Buehler

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Re: Rationalized sunlight / shadow control between CE and webGL

AlanKlys — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 23:12:36 GMT

Hey Matt,

Cheers for the reply. This was more for quick overshadowing studies during certain times of the year rather than any numerical analysis, but good to know. Thanks a bunch