Latest Contributions by SimonHaegler

Apologies for the late answer. CityEngine SDK can indeed only operate on faces. A workaround is to export the street shapes generated by CityEngine as OBJ (or Collada or FBX) and then use these files as input to your CE SDK based app. I hope this works for you & kind regards, Simon ... View more

Hi Abhishek, the -Xmx switch controls how much main memory is reserved for the CityEngine UI (the rest will be used by the generated models and batch export). This switch has nothing to do with the GPU. Your operating system and/or GPU vendor should provide tools to control how the GPU uses memory. Hope this helps, Simon ... View more

Hi Javier, allow me to add a few technical details: prt4cmd uses prt::InitialShapeBuilder::resolveGeometry to read the initial shape geometry. resolveGeometry in turn can only read formats which have a decoder available in PRT. relevant decoders in PRT 1.10.4198 are: - obj - dae (collada) - fbx full list: https://esri.github.io/esri-cityengine-sdk/html/esri_prt_codecs.html#aDecoders Best, Simon ... View more

You can directly assign a RPK to a shape instead of a CGA file. Best, Simon ... View more

Hi, technically, the current Datasmith export in CE 2018.1 is already compatible with UE 4.21. CityEngine 2019.0 (expected in Q2) will have native 4.21 Datasmith export. The "Model Loader" template project can be used with 4.21 already (via the "switch version" menu item on .uproject file). Unfortunately, there is currently a bug in UE 4.21 which prevents us to port the "CityEngine VR Experience" project to 4.21. We are in contact with Epic and hope to update the templates soon. Best, Simon ... View more

Thanks for the feedback. We have PBR support on our roadmap and did already a number of investigations - support for it will definitely come in one of the next releases, no promises though when exactly We also have good contacts with the Arnold guys within Autodesk and will definitely look into supporting it more directly. Best, Simon PS: Maybe Houdini (free learning edition) could be an alternative in the mean time? Alembic import is great and there is a small spare-time project I do with a friend: GitHub - Esri/palladio: Palladio enables the execution of Esri CityEngine CGA rules inside of SideFX Houdini.  ... View more

Hi Abele, In the docs there is a diagram how we attach the CityEngine/CGA material properties (and arbitrary attributes/reports) to the Alembic tree: Alembic ABC Export  I did not yet work with Arnold and Alembic. Based on my experience with Houdini/Mantra and Maya/VRay, the workflow actually requires that there is a translation step from the Alembic (material) properties to the Arnold materials. For example, in Maya/VRay this is done by the included python script in the tutorial. I guess this section of the arnold for maya guide should get you started: Modifying an Alembic Procedural Using Operators - Arnold for Maya User Guide 5 - Arnold Renderer  Best, Simon ... View more

Hi, Yes, Alembic files support texturing. I assume you are expecting to see textured models in the Maya OpenGL viewport? This is not by default supported by the Alembic plugin in Maya (at least not in our tests with Maya 2016 a while ago). The screenshot in the tutorial with textures actually shows the Vray render window and not the Maya OpenGL viewport. The idea of the Alembic workflow is to only load the textures at the very end in the renderer (Renderman, Arnold, Vray, etc). In this way, Maya can display large scenes in preview mode interactively with overloading the GPU and system memory. This workflow is mainly designed for large VFX production scenes or high-end architectural visualization. In theory one could write a script to extract the textures from the Alembic file and attach it to the Maya OpenGL preview materials, but this is quite involved. I suggest you work with the Arnold IPR rendering mode if you need to work with the textures before final render. I hope this helps & best, Simon ... View more

Hi, sorry for the very late response. Is this still an issue for you? In your code snippet, you probably wanted to write prt::addLogHandler(lh), right? Best, Simon ... View more

makes perfect sense. i've added the requirement to our backlog, i.e. to export a generated model of one shape into a single mesh using per-face material assignments. best, simon ... View more

hi LR trying to better understand your workflow: is the requirement to merge all meshes from a shape only motivated to have a simple way to assign the attributes from the csv file? or is this actually a requirement of unity itself? one reason i am asking is that by merging all meshes you have potentially a mesh with multiple materials which might also have undesired consequences... you could also assign the attributes to all sub-meshes individually, right? best, simon ... View more

hi tom (?) the install_fnp.sh script needs to be run as root - did you try that? what error message did you get? best, simon ... View more

dave, joseph, please accept our apologies for the late reply on this. i just confirmed with the installation team and unfortunately silent authorization (= running the license administrator utility) is not implemented for windows yet (it is available on linux). i've logged a feature request for CityEngine 2018.0. sorry about the mixed news & kind regards, simon ... View more

hi marek apologies for the late response. it indeed looks like that the export dialog is leaking OS handles, i hope there is time to fix this for 2017.1. for now, let's look at the possible workarounds: increase OS handles: there seems to be some advanced ways to increase the OS handle limit (e.g. What's the upper limit on GDI objects for one process in Windows 7? - Stack Overflow ). i doubt you'll be able to tweak your system to get up to 500k exports. also, this is not an CityEngine setting, it is an OS setting and might have undesired side-effects on your workstation. restarting CE (part 1): looks like the best workaround for now (although slow). if a script called "startup.py" is present in the workspace root, it will execute automatically at startup (Help). you can use system properties to communicate with the script (e.g. to specify where to continue working): for example, you start CityEngine with: "CityEngine -vmargs -Dfoo=bar" in python, run this: from java.lang import System print System.getProperty("foo") # this will print "bar" restarting CE (part 2): to shutdown CE correctly please use this script (we are working on a more convenient way): from java import lang from org.corebounce.threads import ExecDomain from org.corebounce.threads import Exec from org.eclipse.swt import SWT from org.corebounce.rcp import Restart class SWTThread(lang.Runnable):      def run(unused):          doit() def swt(cmd):      global doit      doit = cmd      ExecDomain.SWT.schedule(SWTThread(), Exec.SYNC) # shutdown swt(lambda: Restart.saveAndExit(False)) changing your workflow: is there a way you can increase the number of objects (500) per exporter run to decrease the number of export runs? hope this helps a bit, simon ps: if you are interested in new things in CE 2017.1, feel free to sign up to the 2017.1 beta program: Welcome to our Feedback Community  ... View more

hi mehmet thanks for your interest in CityEngine! the error entry in the log is a known issue and will be fixed for CE 2017.1. you should still be able to export? what does the dialog say if you double click on the log entry titled "The batch export completed but at least..."? best, simon ... View more