topic Re: Terrain import clipping? in ArcGIS CityEngine Questions

Terrain import clipping?

DrewGroeger — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 19:08:24 GMT

Why do all of my height map imports for the Terrain Layer come out looking like this? The higher elevations all get "clipped" down.

Re: Terrain import clipping?

ThomasFuchs — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 09:28:21 GMT

Hello Drew,

can you please provide additional information on the DEM regarding:

image format (tiff,png,..)
bit depth (8,16,32)
number of channels (grey-scale (1), RGB (3), RGB + transparency (4))

Re: Terrain import clipping?

DrewGroeger — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:49:05 GMT

Thomas, thanks for the reply.

It's not a DEM file, the height map was created using World Creator. The file itself is a 16-bit TIF (4096px x 4096px) with 1 channel (grey). Hope this helps.

Re: Terrain import clipping?

AjitkumarBabar — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:14:03 GMT

Hi drew,

Try this, it might help you.

http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=298dba18a9494abc9da1342f59aa456e

Re: Terrain import clipping?

DrewGroeger — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 19:05:24 GMT

It doesn't but thanks. It's not that the values are inverted, its that CityEngine shows the terrain data correctly up to a certain height, then it drops everything down to zero (presumably) and then continues to build the terrain correctly from there (as shown in my original image). It's as if it can read everything fine to a point, then "resets" the values.

Re: Terrain import clipping?

ThomasFuchs — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 09:23:32 GMT

Drew, thank you for the reply.

My tests with World Creator have shown, that it may help to convert the 16bit Tiff from grey-scale to RGB.

For data with 16bit per channel, an image tool that can handle this bit depth is required. If there is no 16bit editing support, most of the tools will downsample the data to 8bit on import.

Re: Terrain import clipping?

DrewGroeger — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 20:00:51 GMT

(sorry for the delay, I was out last week)

This worked, thank you. converting the TIF to RGB and the terrain imports fine into CityEngine.