I’ve been thinking about how ESRI will integrate CityEngine with ArcGIS… either they are going to embed CityEngine functions within the core product, not ArcGIS basic but maybe standard or pro versions.  Perhaps as a procedural modeller toolbox?   Alternatively they are going to produce an industry specific product.

Personally I hate products being chopped up for different industries (I’m looking at you Autodesk and Adobe), but in some cases it can make sense.  For example urban designers have different requirements to geologists, so why would they want the same tools or have to pay for them?    Of course  I would point point out that limiting features based on profession can mean we won’t be able to learn from others!

Personally I think the name CityEngine is limiting your product, this is a procedural modeller which can just as easily do trees and agriculture as houses and skyscrapers.  So what will it be ESRI?

My choice?  ArcGIS Planning Engine…. what’s yours?

UPDATE 

Okay I got it completely wrong if anything it won’t be ArcGIS Planning Engine, it will be ArcGIS Geodesigner and here are a few reasons why:

• Geodesign Wiki
• Geodesign by ESRI
• Geodesign Summit
• Geodesign Gathers Momentum
• Can Geodesign Help Us Adapt to Climate Change?
• Spatial Roundtable : GeoDesign for Climate Change Adaptation

So will it be this?

• Is it there advanced capabilities?
• Or is it because of their 3D visualisation possibilities?
• Perhaps it’s because they work nicely with other file formats?

The answer is in part yes to all of the above, but there is something more fundamental going on and it is in part due to a tool called SketchUp.

When you work in three dimensions everything becomes a little more complicated, yes you can visualise your buildings nicely and see what you are designing, but there is an added layer of complication, for myself it is viewpoints.

If you must use it you need to export all maps as an image (jpg, tiff etc…)

Otherwise your text will look like this:

Now have you learnt your lesson?

Do people really still use the old HP DesignJet 500?  How do people not know how to export attribute tables to Excel in ArcGIS?   That Feature Construction toolbar must piss people off, yes?!

This months (12th March – 11th April) top pages are very similar to last months:

ESRI’s User Conference is fast approaching in San Diego, and I’m presenting a paper (okay a 15-20 minute presentation) there in the Urban Planning in 3D session.   More details will follow, hopefully with extra information and resources!  For now here is what I know about where I am:

• Paper : #668 The Instant City – A future for City Master Planning
• Session Title: Urban Planning in 3D
• Date : 26th July 2012
• Room : Room 27B

It’s along journey for 15 minutes but I’m hoping to be at the whole conference, please feel to drop me an email or tweet if you want to meet up!

The paper/presentation will cover similar ground to my ESRIUK user conference presentations last year.   But hopefully you will see that I’ve moved on a little from there and have found CityEngine to be a compelling tool for master planning cities.

Posts on previous the ESRI UK 2011 conference:

1. I’m presenting at ESRI UK’s annual conference.
2. Attending the ESRI UK Conference
3. ESRI UK Conference – Day 1
4. ESRI UK Conference – Day 2
5. ESRI UK Conference – My Presentations
6. ESRI UK Conference – Thoughts for the Future, suggestions for ESRI UK 
7. ESRI UK Conference – People I met

UPDATED 16/05/2012 – I’ve had to withdraw my presentation due to work commitments, maybe another year….

Here it is ESRIUC 2012.

See you there?

So here is what you need for what I’m about to do, there’s a lot of different ways of achieving the same thing and at different costs.  Inevitably if you have lots of money the steps are more streamlined.

• ArcGIS or QGIS for creating and exporting your GIS data to …
• SketchUp Pro (to export as FBX files) or SketchUp Free (plus the OBJ importer/exporter and AutoDesk FBX convertor)
• CityEngine (no free alternative for this as far as I am aware but there’s educational licensing)
• Unity (I’m using the free version but Pro works as well!)
• Unity Web player (for running around your model in a web browser)

Okay this will be a very quick run down as I’m not going to go into the details.  I suggest you familiarise yourself with each piece of software paying attention to the import export functionalities of each.

This guide, as the blog is in general, primarily a notebook of workflows for myself so I don’t have to remember them all!

Recommended reading? Digital Urban and this “Google SketchUp for Game Design: Beginner’s Guide”

1. Create City Streets or download from OpenStreetMap
2. Edit data in ArcGIS or QGIS (and save as shapefile) or even use SketchUp pro and export as dxf
3. Import data (edited in ArcGIS/QGIS or otherwise…) into CityEngine shapefiles/DXF/GDB/OSM/DAE/OBJ *or you can import OSM data directly*
4. Generate your city using various ‘assets’, for example, city streets and plots from a GIS or straight from Open Street Map data.   Using rules you can create your own building models as well.
5. Once complete export your city model to a FBX format, in CityEngine FBX export dialog box I change the Misc Options Global Offset and click the ‘Center‘ button
7. You can also create more more models (signs, trees etc) that can be placed in Unity separately.   In SketchUp Pro its just a case of exporting as an FBX file, but if you have SketchUp Free use the OBJ exporter  and AutoDesks free FBX converter.
8. Either you have exported the city model to the correct Asset folder for your Unity project or you can click on the Assets menu in Unity and select Import New Asset
    
9. In Unity select your newly imported model and using the Inspector window change the scale factor to 1 select Generate Colliders and Import Materials choosing the right Material Naming and Material Search options. The click apply and wait while your model is prepared.
   
10. Once complete drag your model from the Project window into the Scene window and position. Now drag from the Standard Assets–>Character Controllers folder drag and drop the ‘First Person Controller’ onto your model.
    
11. Add a light by selecting the menu GameObject–>Create Other –> Directional Light and then position it in over your model in the Scene window. If you can’t find it double click on the Directional Light heading in the Hierarchy window.
    
12. Add a SkyBox (yes with nice fluffy clouds) by selecting the Edit–>Render Settings menu heading and clickin the little circle to the right of the SkyBox Material heading in the Inspector. In the Select Material dialog box type ‘sky’ and a list of the skyboxes will appear. Select one of these.
    
13. To create a standalone playable demo of your model first make sure it all works click the play button, if you fall off your model press the play button again to stop and make sure the First Person Controller is placed above your model and that you selected the create colliders on your imported model in the Inspector window.
    
14. Select File Build Settings, click “Add Current” to build the scene you are working on. Now click on Web Player (or PC and Mac Standalone) and click Build and Run
15. Navigate to the folder where the HTML file has been created an double click on it, if you have installed the Unity Web Player your model walkthrough should load up just as if you had pressed play within Unity itself..
    

I’ve already outlined a way to allocate landuses based on a static shape layer, as we get nearer placing buildings on our plots we need to ensure that the “lots” are the correct size and shape.

This following rule can be adapted to test a Lot’s area (in sqm) and then onto the next rule depending on its area. I’ve used this to place different building types on a lot depending on it’s area but you could just as easily tie this into the woodland rule set above…

//the descriptive names can be changed and are more of a guide really change or add more areas for your needs
attr areatest =
	case geometry.area < 100 : "100orLess"
	case geometry.area < 200 && geometry.area > 100 : "100to200"
	case geometry.area < 300 && geometry.area > 200 : "200to300"
	case geometry.area < 400 && geometry.area > 300 : "300to400"
	case geometry.area < 500 && geometry.area > 400 : "400to500"
	case geometry.area < 600 && geometry.area > 500 : "500to600"
	case geometry.area < 700 && geometry.area > 600 : "600to700"
	case geometry.area < 800 && geometry.area > 700 : "700to800"
	case geometry.area < 900 && geometry.area > 800 : "800to900"
	case geometry.area < 1000 && geometry.area > 900 : "900to1000"
	case geometry.area > 1000 : "1000orMore"
	else : "0"

Lot-->
   res_areatest

//this directs the rule to the appropriate model depending on the area size
res_areatest-->
	case areatest == "100orless" : res_100orless
	case areatest == "100to200" : res_100to200
	case areatest == "200to300" : res_200to300
	case areatest == "400to500" : res_400to500
	case areatest == "500to600" : res_500to600
	case areatest == "600to700" : res_600to700
	case areatest == "700to800" : res_700to800
	case areatest == "800to900" : res_800to900
	case areatest == "900to1000" : res_900to1000
	case areatest == "1000orMore" : res_1000orMore
	else : stop.	

res_100orless-->
	extrude(5) report("1000", geometry.area())
//etc....

As usual does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/corrections?

I know roads don't really look like that...

A quick CGA rule share here! This one allows you to place randomly a selection of tree models on a lot (with start rule “woodland”). In my city model I wanted to place some trees in open areas by a river so this was a quick solution. This places a number of random trees (100) of different sizes and ranges, I’ve also allowed for a setback so when the lot fronts a road the trees are not right up against it.

Obviously you can change the names of the rules to what you use and you could combine this with the landuses code I posted first in this discussion thread.

If you need a tree you could use SketchUp and if you have the free version you might want this OBJ exporter plugin

tree_asset = fileRandom("trees/tree*.obj") // you could just have *.obj and it would randomly pick any obj file in this directory, you can use sketchup to create an obj
attr treenumber = 100 //change this depending on your lot size, or maybe run an area test on the lot to determine the density of your woodland!
attr treeminheight = 5 // know your tree to get that realistic height, perhaps wiki it?
attr treemaxheight = 15
attr woodlandsetback = 5

woodland-->
	setback(woodlandsetback) { streetSide : woodlandborder | remainder : trees} 

trees-->
	scatter(surface, treenumber, uniform) { palmtree }
	woodlandground

singletree-->
	t(0,0,0) // you can change these numbers as well if you didn't want to place the tree at the scatter point centre
	s(0,rand(treeminheight ,treemaxheight ),0)
	r(0,rand(0,360),0) // rotates tree at a random rotation
	i(tree_asset)	

woodlandborder-->
	 extrude(1) woodlandbordercolor

woodlandground-->color("#005B00")

woodlandbordercolor-->color("#AAAA55")

As usual if anyone has any suggestions/thoughts/modifications please reply!

mmm LBCS Codes

This is duplicate post of a discussion I started on ESRI’s CityEngine support forum

Since my first post has produced such an amazing response  I shall continue and start a thread on using GIS data on landuses.

What I have been doing is using my road network in ArcGIS and importing it into CityEngine where I make a suitable road network, this I use to create blocks that are not sub-divided.   I then export these block shapes as a shapefile back into ArcGIS where I add new fields (like an LBCS or landuse Code).   I can then make an outline landuse plan from these in ArcGIS and symbolise them.

So we start back again in CityEngine with some static shapes with an object attribute for the landuse (in my case I’ve called it LBCSCode).

The layer attributes code would look like this :

attr landuse = getObjectAttr("LBCS_Code")

Then to colour the static shapes I could use the following code (don’t forget to apply the rule file!):

attr landuse = "0" // this just initialises the attribute that we have in our layer attributes
Lot-->  //I didn't use LotInner as this example doesn't create a subdivision

case landuse == "1000" : color("#FFFF00") report("1000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "2000" : color("#FF0000") report("2000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "3000" : color("#A020F0") report("3000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "4000" : color("#0000FF") report("4000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "5000" : color("#BEBEBE") report("5000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "6000" : color("#2F4F4F") report("6000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "7000" : color("#90EE90") report("7000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "8000" : color("#228B22") report("8000", geometry.area())
case landuse == "9000" : color("#FFFFFF") report("9000", geometry.area())
else : color("#000000")

You can also see that I’ve used the report operation to produce a summary of the land areas (helpful when doing landuse plans!)

Lovely reporting!

So would anyone do this differently?  Thoughts/suggestions/corrections?

The next post will cover using this static shape layer to inform a dynamic model so change landuses in the object attributes here will change what happens in the dynamic model.