topic Re: CityEngine Terrain Map in ArcGIS CityEngine Questions

CityEngine Terrain Map

AvgiSotiropoulou — Wed, 29 May 2013 08:44:25 GMT

Hi, 🙂

I have some issues in creating a terrain in city engine. I have create a New Scene and add some data from OSM then I follow the
steps that are described in Tutorial 2/Part 1, using as Heightmap a georeferenced DEM image and as Texture a georeferenced image
from OSM. But, althougn in Arcmap they are correct in CityEngine I receive the following error: The data is located too far from
the current scene's contents. Either edit the (geo-)location of the data, choose an adequate projection, or import it into a new
empty CityEngine scene.
I have done the opposite, to create a New Scene create first the Terrain and add after the data, but I received again
the error above.

I really cant find out what is going wrong

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

Anonymous User — Wed, 29 May 2013 14:15:32 GMT

Without seeing your data I would assume that the georeference on your DEM and your OSM street data are not the same. Try two scenes - one where you import the DEM first, another where you import the OSM first. Then pay attention to where these two scenes are geographically, and if they are the same then that is a problem we can look at. Let us know if these two data are in same or different location, and we can go from there.

Chris

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

AvgiSotiropoulou — Fri, 31 May 2013 05:44:12 GMT

I tried that but it didn't work :/, I received the same error. Yes the data are all from the same location. It is strange that the data do
overlap in ArcMap, but do not in city engine ..I have attached you the the scene from ArcMap.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:17:57 GMT

Hi !

Did you get this working ?

Did you check the import tutorials ?

Let me know ..

Matt

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JeffShih — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:34:07 GMT

Make sure that the heightmap is georeferenced. The texture file does not need to be, but it should have the same aspect ratio. When you import the heightmap, leave all the settings default. The min/max elevation, x-size and x-offset should auto populated. DO NOT change any of these values (remove the existing terrain layer first if you've already altered the values prior or it won't auto populate). When you click finish, you may not see anything on the screen, just hit 'A' to frame the extent.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

AvgiSotiropoulou — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 13:55:40 GMT

Hi!!
Thanks a lot for the response 🙂 I finally worked it out!! The terrain map that I was using had a resolution 1653 x 1124 so
I thought that it wouldn't be there the problem. After trying all the possible options, like inserting first the image and
then the data an the other way around and saw that I was still getting an error. I decided to use an image with an even
smaller resolution (849 x 925) and that actually worked! When I am using an image with a resolution smaller than
1000 x 1000 it accepts it.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:20:28 GMT

I'm getting this exact problem, but without any use of Arcmap. Tried to get OSM data online, used the same exact coordinates to download heightmap data, from several different sources in Geotiff format.

I even opened a larger slice of DEM data up in 3DEM (http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem) Cropped it to the coordinates and set the coordinate system to the same as the OSM data and it's still giving me this error if it gives me anything at all.

I can get the terrain to show up fine, or I can get the OSM data to show up fine, but not both together. And they're both set to the same coordinate system (WGS1984 UTM Zone 18N) and lat/lon coordinates.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 21:54:32 GMT

hmm.

what's the file sizes ? ( resolutions, actual file size ? )

how much RAM does your graphics card have ?

m.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:45:48 GMT

My memory should definitely not be a problem. GPU has 2 gigs of memory and system has 8 gigs.

As for the geotiff and osm data resolution, where could that be found? They're both of a small area given the same coordinates that I'm using to test out the process of creating a matching heightmap, scene and then exporting them into Unity.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 07:59:03 GMT

hi,

can you post the files, maybe that's best to test for me ..

let me know ..

matt

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:05:07 GMT

Ok, here are the files, the OSM data, geotiff and jpg for the texture.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 07:23:04 GMT

I'm missing the georeferencing metadata files, like the .prj. Can you add them here ?

Note that the projection of all imported raster files need to match the target SCS ( Scene Coordinate System ) projection.

CE can reproject vector data on import, but not reproject raster files.

Let me know..

m.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:00:32 GMT

Hmm, my lacking a .prj file for the data is probably causing it then, thanks! Time to go fix that and see if that helps.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 17:33:48 GMT

Ok, that didn't help. Original data I used didn't come with a .prj file. So after digging around, I found access to the old USGS system before they got rid of geotiff, which gave me geotiff and a .prj file.

Made no difference. Moreover, now instead of being sized right, it makes the terrain a tiny point. Enlarging the size gives me the heightmap properly, though probably not scaled at all correctly. Even then trying to use the OSM data gives me the same error.

Here's the files again, with the prj file.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 08:36:57 GMT

hi !

I have not checked the new files since usually, there's more files, e.g. the 'world' file, which is also needed for correct placement.

Using -georeferenced data is tricky.

I'd recommend the following 2 things:

1] What I usually do :

- Import the .osm file. This usually works without issues.
- Zoom to the data with 'f'
- Drag and drop the texture file ( e.g. tif or jpg ) into the viewport, this triggers the terrain import dialog
- The size is set to the terrain's resolution, which is of course false in most cases, hit ok to create the terrain
- Select the terrain layer and use the w,e keys to move / scale the terrain to the correct spot ( eyeballing ). This usually is by far enough precise

2] If you have ArcGIS available
- Import osm into ArcGIS
- create basemap in the correct projection
- export the extent of interest as GeoTif. This will produce all the right metadata stuff.

Ok ?
Matt

ps. sorry for the inconvenience, but the metadata needs to be spot-on correct, otherwise the system is missing some info.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 13:28:54 GMT

Well I have all that data, it's just too large to upload here 😞

Somewhat following that process, I just imported the texture, which used the default flat heightmap and put the terrain, visibly near the graph network. Proceeded to 'eyeball' it into the same scale/location, then replaced the flat heightmap with the actual one. It works now in the sense that there's the actual heightmap and roads, but don't match up properly.

I don't have ArcGIS, as I bought cityengine for making large-scale environments for a driving sim and didn't need a full GIS suite that would be more appropriate for a government or organization who used the data for policy and analysis. I just wanted an accurate road network and heightmap.

Now it looks like I'm going to need ArcGIS and ESRI's map data just to get everything to work together without errors.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

JonathonLentine — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 02:05:38 GMT

Update: Problem solved!

I was looking around for how to change the coordinate data in the files so they'd match and came across a program attached in another forum here. Turns out, despite having plenty of other files with meta-data, I didn't have a world (.TFW) file. Ran the program I found and it created it. Imported perfectly.

Thanks for the help!

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

FloreStuby — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 20:15:08 GMT

How to import a DEM file instrad of a heightmap?

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

MatthiasBuehler1 — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 12:07:27 GMT

Hi !

That's the same, just different terminology.

ok ?

m.

Re: CityEngine Terrain Map

DiegoLlamas — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 19:54:06 GMT

Hi Everybody. I am following this instruction Esri CityEngine Essentials 2: Build the Foundation

but for some reason i am not able to see the Texture how it suppose it does nor reflect the aerial it just a black image. I modify my tif file to 4000 by 4000 but https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7ho8t2uzl3v6hr/CALLES.shp.zip?dl=0

Here you can find my data, it seem correct, I can see it perfectly in ArcMap but when I try to see it as it suppouse in City Engine, I just see black.

Could you help me!

thanks

DLL