Model Export

The CityEngine has very advanced functionalities to export generated 3d models for any kind of application. Samples can be downloaded here. Please note that the CityEngine export works like a batch export. That means every building is generated individually and afterwards exported. Therefore, no memory constraints are given and the only limits concerning model size are set by your hard-disk.

The following formats are available:

Format	Features/Typical Usage
OBJ	Transfer simple models with single texture to any DCC tool or rendering engine. Our exporter supports writing each entity to a separate file or exporting a complete scene to a single file.
FBX	Provides export into Maya, Max, MotionBuilder and other DCC tools equipped with an FBX importer. Includes layered-texture support.
COLLADA DAE	Exports into a large number of DCC tools and rendering engines with support for asset-instancing, layered-textures & file-referencing.
MentalRay MI	Direct export into MentalRay or RealityServer with support for instanced assets, flexible shaders and file-referencing.
Renderman RIB	Direct export into any Renderman compatible renderer with support for delayed RIB loading, flexible shader calls and multi-texturing.

To meet all different production pipeline requirements, a variety of export options are available as depicted in the Collada export dialog below. For example, the user can choose if he wishes to export each building as a seperate file, or he can invoke that the involved textures are collected in the specified folder, or he can decide to combine meshes of the same material (instead of having asset instances) etc. etc.

The following export options available:

Option	Description
One Mesh Per Shape	Triggers a mesh merge: each exported building or street segment will consist of one mesh per rule symbol.
One Mesh Per Material	Triggers a mesh merge: each exported building or street segment will consist of one mesh per assigned material.
Merge Duplicate Vertices	Each mesh will be scanned for duplicate vertices (= identical position) and obsolete vertices will be removed.
Vertex Normals	Vertex normals will be included in the export.
Texture Coordinates	Texture coordinates (uv sets) will be included in the export.
Materials	Material definitions will be included (if supported by format). Else/if needed, the default material will be referenced.
Collect Textures	All referenced textures will be exported into the export target folder and the references will be adapted.
Skip existing files	Existing files will not be overwritten, and the corresponding initial shape will be ignored for export.
Add option postfix	Adds an postfix for each of these export options to the filenames - useful to quickly see what content is in a geometry file.
Dry run	No generation nor export will be triggered. Useful to check if all initial shapes have a valid rule file assigned.
Binary Format	(if supported) The file is stored in binary (native) format.

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