Latest Contributions by YuriPotawsky

Hey Karl, Any way you could post the specs of your machine? The easiest way to do this for a windows machine is to access the start/search dialogue and enter "dxdiag" which launches the Direct X tool for capturing machine specs. You can export this to a text document and attach that to your reply if possible. Try to interactively draw a few features either through the rectangular or polygonal shape creation tools and then drag and drop one of the esri.lib .CGA rule files onto these features, is the issue reproduced? Thanks, Yuri ... View more

Lana, In some instances the stair step terracing you observed can be a result of irregular neighboring cell values where resampling has taken place or smoothing of the DEM is needed. This behavior appears west and north-west of the observer point specified. Is there anyway to send along a clipped subset of the elevation model and observer point as a zipped file or a screenshot of the DEM and the raster properties dialogue? Yuri ... View more

Hi Alex, The behavior you are observing is well known and has been documented within the following defect: NIM099771 -Using the Import 3D Files tool with the placement points parameter to define a spatial reference places all models at 0,0 instead of on the points.​  You have a few options for importing the models into ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Pro. You can create 2D point data and convert these to Multipatch features. You will then be able to utilize the "Replace with Model" workflow within a 3D edit session to replace the geometry of the selected features with a 3D model file you have saved on disk. This workflow is actually referred to as "Replace Multipatch" within ArcGIS Pro and is accessed via the edit tab view. You could also import these using the 'Import 3D Files' Geoprocessing tool and use the move, rotate, and scale 3D editing tools to interactively move the converted Multipatches. You did mention that you had access to CityEngine. If this is still the case then my suggestion would be to import the COLLADA models into CE and then select the models and export them to Esri File .GDB multipatch. You should be able to directly add these into ArcGIS Pro without issue. Hope this helps, Yuri    FAQ: How do I import existing 3D modeling data?​ FAQ: How do I share 3D models within a GIS framework?​ ... View more

Hi Aida, One of the first things I noticed from the screenshot that you provided is the low number associated with free Java memory which is located in the lower right corner of the CityEngine GUI. It appears as if there is only 841MB of free Java memory for the application to consume. This, coupled with RAM consumption, can cause graphics related issues. Do you experience this issue with other .JPG's that you are using as facade textures? Do you experience the same issue as Kirsi with regard to the 'Crop Image' tool? I also wanted to inquire about the region width you are setting when you create the new facade from the image in question. Has the .JPG been imported into the current CityEngine Workspace and if you utilize the navigator pane to display the image do you experience the same rendering behavior? Thanks, Yuri ... View more

Hi Duncan, With regard to exporting extruded buildings from ArcScene, it was unclear if you had attempted to use the 'Layer 3D to Feature Class' GP tool from the 3D Analyst Toolbox. If you have set the extrusion properties at the layer properties level then converting these to Multipatches could be achieved by using the 'Layer 3d to FC' tool. I would ensure that you run this tool in the foreground as there have been documented issues with Background Geoprocessing. The 'Multipatch to COLLADA' GP tool requires multipatch input features and as such there is no way in which to input simple 2D vector geometries. That is the way the tool is designed as it cannot directly convert extruded polygons to closed 3D .DAE volumes. I would also try to stay away from exporting to VRML as that format is largely outdated and has been replaced by the X3D specification. Hope this helps. Thanks, Yuri ... View more

Hi, There are a few things that come to mind. If you are concerned with importing the shapes exported from CityEngine into ArcScene my suggestion would be to select the street shapes and export these to Esri File Geodatabase. These will be converted to multipatches which is a native format read by ArcGIS Desktop. .DAE files will have to be imported using either the 'Import 3D Files' GP tool or the 'replace with model' multipatch workflow. What is the input terrain dataset format type and did it or the streets layer have a defined coordinate system?  You can check the CE Scene coordinate system by navigating to Edit->Preferences->Scene and determine the coordinate system. If you select only the street network and export these to either shapefile of File .GDB feature class, is this operation successful? Thanks, Yuri ... View more

Hi Molly, After reading through your posts there were a few things that I wanted to pass along. The 'Add Surface Information" GP tool attributes features with spatial information from a specified surface. This tool does not convert 2D features to 3D. When you selected the point in question and exported this to a separate feature class, the Point should have preserved z-values. My suspicion is that while the shapefile prior to export had a Point-Z shape identifier, there actually were not z-values written to the points at the geometry level. Therefore my suggestion would be to utilize the 'Interpolate Shape' GP tool which interpolates z-values for a feature class based upon elevation derived from a surface. This will create true 3D features by writing elevation values to the geometry level. If you are ever unsure if these z-values are present you can begin a 3D Edit session within ArcScene->Utilize the edit vertix tool and select a point->right-click within the display->Edit vertices->launch the sketch properties dialogue from the editing toolbar. You will notice that the edit sketch properties window will contain a X,Y and Z column if true z-values are present. With regard to assigning base heights, you will be unable to specify that the feature floats on a surface as well as using elevation values in the layer's features. If you are working with a 2D feature class, utilizing the 'elevation from surfaces' options would allow these features to display on top of the elevation surface. The 'elevation from features' options make use of z-values at the geometry level to display the features in 3D space irrespective of the elevation surface. Hope this helps. Yuri ... View more

Heather, Are you aware of what the Resampling method used during display is set to? In many circumstances with Digital Raster Graphics this will default to Nearest Neighbor which is optimized to render discrete datasets.  Are the DRG's  single-band datasets rendered with a colormap or 3-Band rendered in the RGB colorspace? Is there a way in which to obtain a sample of the 9.3 .TIF Raster Datasets? Thanks ... View more

Hi Jay, What 3D symbol did you use to symbolize the Z-Enabled point feature class? There is an existing export defect for a number of the 3D symbols provided within ArcScene. My suggestion would be to either utilize a 3D Marker Symbol of your own creation or a 3D Simple Marker Symbol which includes simple 3D shapes. Another option would be to specify the 3D Symbol properties within either ArcScene or ArcGlobe which would allow you to optimize and verify the symbol appearance. The 'Layer 3D to Feature Class' Geoprocessing tool could then be employed to export these symbolized features to File Geodatabase Multipatch. You could simply add these features to ArcScene and create the .3WS which will preserve multipatches and any textures defined. Hope this helps.  ... View more

El Boukfaoui Reda, As you previously mentioned, the 'Import 3D Files' GP tool will allow you to point to the input OpenFlight models. This will create a series of output Multipatches within a File Geodatabase. This is a good option if you have only a few models to import. You could also utilize the 'Import Models' 3D editing workflow if you have already created multipatches that define the real-world position of the input files. Once these Multipatches have been created the 'Multipatch to Collada' GP tool can be used to Convert them into a collection of COLLADA (.dae) files and referenced texture image files in an output folder. CityEngine can directly import the .DAE models and also call on these in .CGA code. The OpenFlight format is not supported as a reader type in Data Interop. Hope this helps. ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2) ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2) ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2) ... View more

Yasir, Depending on the version of SketchUp that you have installed on the client machine, you will have the option to export to a number of supported inter-operable formats. For instance, SketchUp 2015 will allow you to export to the following formats:   Even older versions such as SketchUp 8 will allow you to export to the COLLADA XML (.DAE) standard which is one of the most widely used 3D modeling formats available. All versions of CityEngine will have direct import capabilities for that format. This will also ensure that the models can be utilized in other modeling platforms such as 3D Studio Max  or Blender. ... View more

Ionut, The .3WS file format cannot be natively read by ArcScene. Keep in mind that you should be able to render the City Engine Web Scene in any WebGL compatible browser without the need for a plug-in or a client install of CityEngine. However, my suggestion going forward would be to subset the 3D content present within the scene to write a number of .3WS files of smaller total size. While the recommendation is to keep the file size limited to 50MB, files larger than this should render depending upon the complexity of the content within the scene. If you are planning on sharing this with users one option would be to create a 3D layer package using ArcScene. Users with whom you are sharing this data will need either ArcScene or ArcGlobe to consume the layer package. Another option would be to share each of the Visibility outputs as a feature service or tile service if they are output raster datasets to ArcGIS Online and then create an AGOL Scene that can be shared with other ArcGIS Online users of your choosing. Keep in mind that this will cost credits and will take more data preparation time than the .3WS would. In addition, Multipatches are not supported as of yet within the Scene viewer. Hope this helps!        ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2) http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=38fede3935a440e49cf316dcae6aae47 ... View more

Scott, That error usually results from the fact that CityEngine was unable to continue rendering because the Microsoft Windows TDR was exceeded. The normal timeout of two seconds can be edited within the Windows Registry however be aware that the registry stores config settings that the OS calls on regularly and errors here can cause serious Windows issues. Microsoft has a great Knowledge Base article detailing GPU recovery here: Timeout Detection and Recovery of GPUs (TDR) (Windows Drivers) . You could also attempt to run CE in safe mode.  The card is obviously a NVIDIA GPU, but what series card do you have? With regard to the shapes, you may find that a cleanupGeometry Operation  allows you to cleanup similar vertices and coplanar angles to reduce the sheer number of shapes. The Cleanup Shapes interactive tool may also help out. You could then recombine the shapes afterwards. Thanks, Yuri  ... View more

Randi, After looking over your question, I wanted to pass along a few things. 1. Looks like you are on a 64-bit Win 7 machine. Can you run the "dxdiag" command from the Start Menu and provide the machine specs including CPU, RAM, and GPU specs? I am sure that you are aware that CE requires a minimum of 4GB system RAM.   System Requirements 2. Has the process been attempted when running CE in safe mode? Start-> All Programs->Esri->CityEngine (Safe Mode). 3. You mentioned that memory consumption slowly rises during the exporting process. If you visual inspect the Free memory dialogue within the lower right corner of the CE Viewport, what are those values? ** As Matthias mentioned in an older post these values represent the following: - left value: JAVA memory - right value: Native memory (under 64 bit, this value actually shows the rest of the available system memory) 4. If you try to write out the models to File Geodatabase Multipatch are you observing the same behavior? 5. Do smaller model selection sets export without error? This would allow you to determine if the issue is related to large model envelopes which is my suspicion.  6. Can you send along a screenshot of the model format exporting Dialogue? Thanks, Yuri ... View more