San Francisco OSM data plus CyberCity3D real world data plus CGA model
San Francisco OSM data plus CyberCity3D real world data plus CGA model, plus Lidar, plus a building split by floors, plus satellite imagery!

Without getting into too much detail now (I’m running out of time today) but you can get Lidar data into CityEngine with a bit of work, read on….

The workflow

Basically you convert your LAS data to a multipoint file then convert from multipart to singlepart (in ArcGIS) and import the point data into CityEngine.   (was that the worlds shortest workflow?!)

ce_2013_LIDAR_in_CityEngine_SanFran2
In CityEngine the model performs fine, lots of small polygons don’t seem to bother it

Now CityEngine does support points, it imports this but converts it into little polygon squares.  These squares can then have rules run on them, normally I would insert trees on 2D point data, but that would look odd if I did it on a point cloud.   

ce_2013_LIDAR_in_CityEngine_SanFran3_webscen
This webscene took a long time to export…..

A word of warning point: clouds turn into massive numbers of polygons, you need to bare this in mind when working.   CityEngine handles it okay but the export can be very slow…

That's a lot of points....argh
That’s a lot of points….argh

 

 

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2 Comments

  1. Dear Friend i Have followed your workflow, but i get this message
    Layers must be raster layers or feature layers with multipatch data or 3D properties. The unsupported layer will not be included in the output Web Scene.
    It measn that singleparts are no supported, how can i fix it?
    Thank You

    • Are you using CityEngine or exporting directly from ArcGIS using the “Export to 3D Web Scene” GP tool? If so you need to import the shapefile into CityEngine first and then construct your webscene. Hope this helps!

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