Well they sprung this one on us a little by surprise and just before a new update to ArcGIS Online too! Following on from the beta CityEngine 2018.1 has been release with some significant additions and fixes.
Headline features are for me the revised drawing tools, boundary/fencing rules in ESRI.lib, and proper terrain support in the form of TPK exports. Oh, and initial support for terrain export for Unreal Engine…
The draw tools now make CityEngine a viable place you can start to do more ground work, this fits nicely in with being able to update feature layers hosted in ArcGIS Online (which incidentally has better support of large layers this release) .
They’ve finally added to the ESRI.lib directory, I’ve written about this before. It’s hard to write generic rule files that make a majority of users happy (unless you’re a certain David Wasserman doing Compete Streets), but you can’t go wrong sticking with some of the basics people want, vegetation to start with and now boundary treatment!
Finally the new support of exported terrains as TPKs allows us CityEngine users to modify terrain and export those changes to ArcGIS Online. This is fantastic and I think now all we need is a comparable swipe tool (like in the old CityEngine Web Viewer) and we’ll feel complete!
Finally it looks like they’ve added some preliminary support, their words “Added preliminary terrain export.”, which suggest it’s very much in beta! Great news for anyone wanting to hit the ground running using Unreal Engine, I’ve yet to test this out so who knows whether it works, fingers-crossed.
I’ll have to agree with Taisha here, this release has
exciting improvements that not only set a great precedent for things to come, but are sure to make you love CityEngine even more
Taisha Waeny – CityEngine 2018.1 Release Highlights
Great job Esri CityEngine team, you’re showing us a direction of travel for planners and urban designers here 🙂
One final note Garsdale Design’s exclusive CityEngine training is being updated to reflect this new release. Did you know we were the first to offer CityEngine training and consultancy worldwide, and are official EsriUK CityEngine trainers? Visit my company’s website for more details and methods to contact us!