Why 3D Building Models? 🏨

Nowadays, the 3D texture building model plays a big role in a variety of application domains such as game development, urban planning, Smart Cities, indoor/outdoor pedestrian navigation, environmental simulations, real estate, cultural heritage, facility management, and much more. One of the main advantages of 3D models over 2D is that it gives a better impression and understanding of the area to the users, especially when the model comes with textures.

But it is expensive… 💰

However, generate building models with textures is always pricey. You need to get high-resolution images from drones/UAV/Satellites and do long post-processing. Although it gives you a perfect model for your need, it takes time and effort (and big-budget).

Fast and Efficient Solution

If you don’t need a high accuracy model, I would like to share a way to generate 3D models anywhere in the world with the City Engine. Even if the textured models would not always match the reality, they would give the impression of how the city looks like. You can generate a model and export to various of format such as glTF, FBX, Collada, USD, SLPK, GDB, Unreal Datasmith, etc. In addition, it is very fast to do! You can finish generating models of one small city within 5–10 minutes.

Generate 3D Building Models with ArcGIS CityEngine ⭐

ArcGIS CityEngine is an advanced 3D modeling software for creating huge, interactive, and immersive urban environments in less time than traditional modeling techniques. The cities you create using CityEngine can be based on real-world GIS data or showcase a fictional city of the past, present, or future [1].

In this article, we will go through a step by step of how to create 3D building models with CityEngine (2020.1). I chose Sydney as a sample area for this area.

Step 1: Create a Scene & Get Map Data

Open CityEngine, create a new project with a new scene. Then, click on File/Get Map Data.

Search and select your bounding area.

After you click OK, CityEngine will start to fetch the GIS dataset from OSM. You can also select the data attribute to include in your final building models. Or, you may leave it as default.

After you click Finish, the map data will be rendered as 3D building models in the CityEngine software.

Step 2: Modify Your Building Models.

By default, all the 3D building models will be styled in all white color. You may change the rule of how these models are rendered e.g., by texture generated by Satellite images. You can start to do this by selecting all objects (Right-click at the Footprints layer and click Select Objects).

Then, you can select the model style based on the rule file from the right-hand side panel as shown below. This Style list came with the predefined OSM rule from the CityEngine.

You can select the style you want. In this example, I selected “GenericMediumTown” and get the result as showing below.

You may read more about how to write/add/edit the CityEngine Rule file on this link.

Step 3: Export 3D Model.

After the model is generated, you can export the 3D model in the format you want. To do this, just select all building models you want to export and press “Ctrl” + “E”. Then, you can choose the format that fits your project best.

Conclusion

This article gives a short overview of how to create 3D building models with texture by using CityEngine. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful for your project.

Be Safe and Healthy!
Thank you for Reading. 👋😄

Reference

[1] https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-cityengine/overview (Accessed 24-Jun-21)