CityEngine, LiDAR, building footprints and roof modelling

[AmitKokje2]

I am aware that CityEngine is not yet supporting LiDAR (LAS/ ASCII/ XYZ etc.) data directly, I managed to import a small set of     LiDAR data as File GDB into CityEngine with attributes (elevation)

I have building polygons footprints data available and imported simultaneously with LiDAR GDB. (image attached ).

With standard arcGIS procedure (spatial join) it is easy to calculate and join the Avg. building height derived from LiDAR data to     building polygons. But that will give very flat roofs for all the buildings.

Is it possible to model exact roofs façades (shape, orientation, aspect and slope) based on LiDAR information available?

Existing methods and rules  in CityEngine are  great to generate roofs at random, but what if we want to replicate existing city

using the available information?.

Is there any method to achieve this using LiDAR information available?

I am more interested in replicating roofs.

Thanks.

CityEngine usage level: Beginner

[DanielHedges]

Hi Derek,

Are you seeing the error that Emilia and Ryan were seeing, or the one Javad was running into?

Please see Ryan and Javad's solutions to these issues and give those a try. If you are still getting an error, feel free to send me a sample of your data so I can test.

Thanks,

Dan

[Gert_van_Maren]

Hi Derek,

If Ryan's comment did not fix it, please send me some sample data so we can debug it.

Thanks Gert

[ArthurCrawford]

Here's an example using the Local Government Scenes for Fort Bend County, TX.  It's about 260,000 buildings.   Colors were added using a tool from my blog.  Buildings were extracted using mosaic datasets built with classified lidar in a las dataset (filter for code 6 buildings) and run through the Regularized Building Footprint tool.

Scene: http://arcg.is/2efGXQj

Thanks,

Arthur

[DuliniRatnayake]

Hi Arthur, 

Can I create these scenes using ArcMap 10.4

Thank you.

Dulini

[BrianOevermann]

Dulini,

The python scripts appear to be written specifically for ArcGIS Pro, as they are in AGP Toolboxes. [Disclaimer: I am still on v 10.3, so if v 10.4 of Desktop can now "see" into Pro toolboxes I am unaware.]

I have, so far, been able to work around not having an ArcInfo license, but it hasn't been a straightforward experience. My suggestion is to open up the scripts within AGP and take a look at what processes are within it. Many of the tools are "out-of-the-box" 3D Analyst or Spatial Analyst (or regular Desktop) tools, so you may be able to either modify the script accordingly or run tools manually. Be forewarned, at the UC this summer staff were mentioning that some tools related to CityEngine/3D "stuff" were either only available in Pro or otherwise limited on the Desktop side, so Arthur's answer may likely be 'no'.

[ArthurCrawford]

Hello Dulini,

Currently, I'm doing my building extraction in ArcGIS Desktop 10.4.   To make the buildings 3d with the Local Government Scenes, you do need ArcGIS Pro.   I'm moving over to ArcGIS Pro with the building extraction, but Brian is correct in the process to make the buildings 3D requires ArcGIS Pro.

Arthur Crawford - Esri Content

[DuliniRatnayake]

Thank you Brian

[DevonReid]

Hi there!
I see there have been some changes in the package since the original post.  Now the changes have been made with 1.4 and I am having trouble with the burn building footprints into digital terrain model task.  As soon as I try to run it the program crashes.  I can run zonal stats by itself just fine, but thats where it hangs when I run the script.  I can not edit the script in 1.3 (?).  Is there something in the tasks now that only functions in 1.4? The problem is in Modify DTM.  

thanks! I'm sure it is something easy - like I dont know where to enable arcpy, since I am new to arcgis pro.

Devon