changelog.md

CITYENGINE SDK 3.2.10650 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.2.10352.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 3.2.10650 is used in CityEngine 2024.1.10650.

PRT API

• prt::Attributable::toXML(): fixed a bug where some float numbers were converted to wrong string values in rare cases. Further, the maximum number of digits in the string representation was reduced by 1.

PRTX API

• prtx::EncodePreparator: fixed a bug in merge-by-material setups where vertex normals for faces with holes were wrong when meshes with vertex nomals were merged with meshes without vertex normals.

CGA

• New features:
  • inline keyword: Allows to immediately generate a rule and continue working on the resulting shape(s). This means any rule can be used like a builtin shape operation.
  • union, subtract, intersect keywords: added Boolean 3D operations.
  • extrude operation: Added support to extrude edges.
• New operations:
  • tag operation
• Changes to existing features:
  • i operation: The new parameter cleanupMode allows for disabling the numerical geometry cleanup for inserted asset. This improves the support for assets with tiny details.
  • cleanupGeometry operation: Removing coplanar edges now preserves the first edge.
  • Floating point precision:
    • All internal geometry processing was switched form float to double precision. The numerical behaviour is more accurate now. It is possible that some rules change behaviour because e.g a float value comparison gives a different result now.
    • Float to string conversion (e.g. str() function and print() operation): fixed wrong string values in rare cases. Further, the maximum number of digits in the string representation was reduced by 1.

Built-In Codecs

• ShapeBuffer Encoder:
  • Disabled vertex / normal / uv merging. This preserves small geometric details and improves performance.
• USD Decoder:
  • Fixed a race condition which led to decode failures if multiple assets with the same ResolveMap key were decoded at the same time.

CITYENGINE SDK 3.2.10352 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.2.10211.

General Info

• The focus of this release is to fix some issues which are important for certain client applications such as ArcGIS Pro. There is no CityEngine version using this version of the SDK.

PRT API

• prt::RuleFileInfo: fixed wrong rule parameter names (i.e., prt::RuleFileInfo::Parameter::getName() and prt::RuleFileInfo::toXML()).

PRTX API

• No changes.

CGA

• New operations:
  • copyUV operation
• New functions:
  • geometry.hasUVs function

Built-In Codecs

• IFC, DWG Decoders, Encoders:
  • Fixed a rare deadlock if run in a multithreaded setup.
  • Updated to ODA 25.6 library.
• IFC Decoder:
  • Added support for exotic versions (like 4x1 and 4x2).
• Shapebuffer Decoder:
  • Fixed a crash when faces had less than 3 vertices. Such faces are ignored now.
  • Fixed a bug where the first edge of triangle fans and strips was wrong.
• OBJ and GLTF Encoders:
  • Non-ASCII characters are supported now. Previously these were replaced by '_'.
  • No '_0' suffix is added to the filename anymore if the "memory budget" option is disabled.
• DAE, FBX and VOB Encoders:
  • No '_0' suffix is added to the filename anymore if the "memory budget" option is disabled.
• USD Decoder:
  • Fixed a bug where duplicate materials were created (instead of one shared material).
  • Fixed a bug where Material attribute overrides in USD meshes were ignored by the importer in some cases.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Applied security updates for libxml (2.13.3) and giflib (5.2.2).

CITYENGINE SDK 3.2.10211 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.2.9903.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 3.2.10211 is used in CityEngine 2024.0.10211.

PRT API

• prt::Object::toXML() (including all subclasses): fixed dependency on system locale and improved performance.

PRTX API

• prtx::EncodePreparator::PreparationFlags::processHoles: improved the case prtx::HoleProcessor::TRIANGULATE_FACES_WITH_HOLES. Before, it was possible that tiny gaps in the connectivity were created. Now the mesh stays watertight. However, in some cases there might be faces with more than 3 vertices now.
• prtx::MaterialBuilder::setString(): fixed a rare crash when setting the shader.

CGA

• New features:
  • A Visual CGA Design (*.vcga) can now be imported. You can call its start rule and override its attributes and extension nodes in the import statement.
  • Default extension implementation forwarding: It is now possible to reuse the default implementation of an extension rule from an imported ruleset in a new extension rule.
• New annotations:
  • @MaterialFile annotation
• Changes to existing features:
  • setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge, shapeLUO, splitAndSetbackPerimeter operations: Collinear vertices are now kept on the resulting setback edges. The setback edges will now match the initial edges.
  • convexify operation:
    • The topology of the input geometry is maintained and the resulting convex polygons are fully connected now. Note: The individual convex polygons (typically created via a subsequent component split) can contain collinear vertices now. These can be removed using the cleanupGeometry operation.
    • Existing component tags are preserved now.
  • geometry.isConcave function and general concavity classification: Improved handling of collinear vertices. Collinear vertices are now consistently classified as convex.
  • material.{colormap|...|metallicmap}.rw attribute: changed rotation center from (0.5, 0.5) to (0,0).
• Bugfixes:
  • readStringTable, readFloatTable: Fixed a crash when reading a non-existing table (Linux only).
  • setupProjection operation:
    • Fixed a bug where widthOffset and heightOffset were not correctly considered when a uv scaling was defined for the material (for example material.colormap.su).
    • Fixed a bug where offset values where not considered for projection axes scope.zx.
  • CGA Compiler:
    • Fixed incorrect handling of the @Hidden annotation for import statements. Note: In the UI of older versions of CityEngine or client apps using an older version of CityEngine SDK, hidden imports will not be hidden in RPKs created with CityEngine 2024.0.
    • Fixed a bug where annotations were not assigned to import statements but to subsequent statements.

Built-In Codecs

• GLTF Encoder:
  • Now correctly converts colors to linear space.
  • Adapted to texture trafo rotation center change from (0.5, 0.5) to (0,0).
• GLTF Decoder:
  • Now correctly converts colors from linear space.
  • Adapted to texture trafo rotation center change from (0.5, 0.5) to (0,0).
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Adapted to texture trafo rotation center change from (0.5, 0.5) to (0,0).
• USD Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" functionality - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
  • Added support for texture map trafos.
• USD Decoder:
  • Added support for texture map trafos.
• IFC Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" functionality - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
  • Fixed support for units in geo-referencing data for IFC4 (was fixed to meters).
  • Addded support for WKT in geo-referencing data for IFC4.
• OBJ Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" option - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
• Shape Buffer Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" option - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
  • Added support for "doubleSided" material attribute.
• Shape Buffer Decoder:
  • Added support for "doubleSided" material attribute.
• FBX Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" option - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
• FBX Decoder:
  • Added support for normal maps.
  • Now falls back to the first UV set when the FBX file contains a broken mapping between mesh and texture.
• CGAMat Decoder:
  • Fixed a rare crash when decoding materials.
• Collada Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" option - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
• Alembic Encoder:
  • Fixed "triangulate faces with holes" option - in some cases tiny gaps in the connectivity were created.
• TIFF Decoder:
  • Fixed a rare deadlock (which was introduced in SDK 3.2.9903).

Misc Changes and Fixes

• In the CGA and the PRT reference color spaces have been clarified. Colors are always in (non-linear) sRGB space.

CITYENGINE SDK 3.2.9903 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.1.9666.

General Info

• The focus of this release is to fix some issues which are important for certain client applications such as ArcGIS Pro. There is no CityEngine version using this version of the SDK.
• This release focuses on stability and performance for multi-threaded decode-encode usage of PRT, adds support for calling prt::init() multiple times to load additional custom encoders and introduces support for decoding IFC4 files.

PRT API

• It is now possible to call prt::init() multiple times to load (additional) custom extensions. Before, all extensions had to be loaded on the first call. Also, it is possible now to initialize PRT again after shutdown. PRT is (considered) shutdown when all library handles returned by prt::init() have been destroyed.

PRTX API

• prtx::DataBackend has been optimized for performance in a multi-threaded setup. Its internal lock usage is finer-grained now, allowing parallel decodes for multiple assets.

CGA

• New functions:
  • assetMetadata function.

Built-In Codecs

• IFC, DWG Decoders, Encoders:
  • Made them thread-safe. Before, only one of these 4 codecs could run at a time - otherwise, PRT would crash.
  • Updated to ODA 24.11 library
• IFC Decoder:
  • Added support for IFC4.
• DWG Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug where the same textures got written multiple times.
• USD Decoder, Encoder:
  • Made them thread-safe. Before, only one of the two could run at a time - otherwise, PRT would crash.
• FBX Decoder, Encoder:
  • Made them thread-safe. Before, only one of the two could run at a time - otherwise, PRT would crash.
  • The FBX codecs are in a separate shared library now (com.esri.prt.fbx.dll / .so).
  • Updated to FBX 2020.3.4 library.
  • Dropped support for FBX on 32bit.
• GLTF Encoder:
  • Fixed a crash: the encoder now ignores faces with less than 3 vertices.
  • Added support for data URIs with mime type application/gltf-buffer.
  • Updated to fx-gltf 2.0.0 and nlohmann::json 3.11.3 libraries.
• Vue Encoder:
  • Made it thread-safe.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Applied security updates for zlib (1.3.0), libtiff (4.6.0), libxml (2.12.3), boost (1.84).
• Windows: switched to MSVC 14.37.
• Linux: switched to GCC 11 including new libstdc++ ABI (_GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=1).

CITYENGINE SDK 3.1.9666 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.0.8961.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 3.1.9666 is used in CityEngine 2023.1.9666.

PRT API

• prt::init(): Now ensures the current working directory does not change when loading extension libraries.

PRTX API

• prtx::Material, prtx::MaterialBuilder: added getters, setters and keys for the new "doubleSided" attribute. The default value is true.
• prtx::Shape:
  • added keys for the new "doubleSided" material attribute.
  • switched getShapeSymbol() to in64_t and fixed a shapesymbol collision bug (repeated CGA imports).
• prtx::LogFormatter:
  • added new operator%(const std::vector< uint32_t > &v).
  • log(uint32_t const *array, size_t count) : switched count from uint32_t to size_t.

CGA

• New features:

  • With the new auto-tag feature, selected operations automatically apply semantic information to output geometry components:

    • setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge, shapeLUO, splitAndSetbackPerimeter operations: Each output edge is tagged as "setback.front", "setback.side", "setback.back" or "setback.remainder".
    • roofGable, roofHip, roofPyramid, roofRidge, roofShed operations: Each output face is tagged as "roof.bottom", "roof.side", or "roof.top".
    • extrude operation: Each output face is tagged as "extrude.bottom", "extrude.side.inner", "extrude.side.outer", or "extrude.top".
    • envelope operation: Each output face is tagged as "envelope.bottom", "envelope.side.base", "envelope.side.slope", "envelope.side.inner", or "envelope.top".
    • taper operation: Each output face is tagged as "taper.bottom" or "taper.side".

    The component tags can be queried with the new isTagged selector in the comp, setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge operations and the comp function.

• New operations:

  • deleteTags operation
  • setTagsFromEdgeAttrs operation

• New functions:

  • geometry.hasTags function
  • geometry.tags function

• New attributes:

  • material.doubleSided attribute

• Changes to existing features:

  • comp, setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge operations, comp function: Existing selectors can be combined in logical selector expressions (e.g. left || right). User-defined functions and all built-in functions can be used in logical selector expressions. Added new isTagged selector.

• Bugfixes:

  • comp operation: Fixed a bug where using the combine operator (=) created a new shape even when no components were selected.

Built-In Codecs

• Collada Decoder:
  • Now detects if a Collada file has been written by SketchUp with the "two-sided" option enabled. In this case, the decoder will set the "doubleSided" material attribute to false.
  • Made the decoder more robust against invalid Collada tags.
• USD Decoder:
  • The USD importer has been improved to accept resolve map keys for textures which represent absolute and relative paths.
• USD Encoder:
  • The USD exporter now uses separate indices for all vertex attributes. This allows for "watertight" meshes with hard edges (i.e. a shared point but different vertex normals).
  • The USD exporter has been improved to pass validation checks for default prims, stage up-axis and material binding API.
• GLTF Decoder & Encoder:
  • The glTF material attribute "doubleSided" is now handled both by the exporter and importer. It is translated to and from the CGA material attribute of same name.
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Does not change the curent working directory anymore when being loaded in prt:init().

CITYENGINE SDK 3.0.8961 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 3.0.8905.

General Info

• The focus of this release is to fix some issues which are important for certain client applications such as ArcGIS Pro. There is no CityEngine version using this version of the SDK.
• This release contains various improvements in performance and memory usage.

PRT API

• Improved the error reporting of prt::createRuleFileInfo for CGBs compiled by a more recent version of CityEngine.

PRTX API

• prtx::MeshBuilder has been optimized for performance.

CGA

• scatter operation on volumes and inside, overlaps, touches functions: Holes in triangle faces were ignored, leading to wrong results. That is fixed now.

Built-In Codecs

• OBJ Decoder:
  • Added a fallback heuristic to look for MTL files in the same directory as the OBJ, if the specified MTL path is incorrect.
• IFC Encoder:
  • Enable concurrent encoding of IFC assets by ensuring unique temporary file names.
• FBX Decoder:
  • Added support for FBX assets with upper case (.FBX) extension.
• glTF Decoder:
  • To save memory, we stop copying texture coordinates on UV set 0 to higher UV sets and rely on the "fallback to UV set 0" mechanism instead (see "Texturing: Essential knowledge" in the CGA documentation).
• glTF Encoder:
  • Improved how the material blend mode is set by analyzing the opacitymap pixel distribution.
• Collada Decoder:
  • Fixed a numerical imprecision in material opacity computation based on luminance.
  • Fixed an intermittent decoding failure with empty <source_data> and <copyright> tags.
  • Made the decoder more robust against invalid Collada tags.
• Collada Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug which prevented the encoder option "globalScalingFactor" to be actually set to 0 (and write the <unit> tag).
• USD Decoder:
  • Fixed the handling of texture paths with white spaces and/or UNC syntax.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Improved code examples in the PRT "Architecture" pdf.
• Applied security updates for libtiff (4.5.1) and libxml (2.10.4).

CITYENGINE SDK 3.0.8905 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.7.8603.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 3.0.8905 is used in CityEngine 2023.0.8905.
• Client applications must update their code to find the cgb in a rule package, see details below. It is easy though!
• The CGA Compiler was upgraded to a new major version 2.0. This leads to significant changes:
  • New rpks might contain more than one cgb file. Only one of them can be used, and a new function has been introduced to find this main cgb. See prt::ResolveMap:findCGBKey() below. The old way of iterating over all keys to find the first cgb does not work anymore since there can now be inner cgbs which must not be used. This is a breaking change - you must adapt your client code! And it is actually much more convenient to use this function, so the change is trivial.
  • Rule packages (rpks) created with CityEngine 2023.0 are not compatible with older versions of the CityEngine SDK. For minor version updates of the compiler, forward compatibility (i.e. old PRT, new rpk) is done in a best-effort manner (means: the rpk will work if no new feature of CGA is used). For major version updates this is not the case, an old PRT will refuse to use newer rpks.

PRT API

• New function prt::ResolveMap:findCGBKey(): This function must be used now to find the main cgb file key in the ResolveMap from an rpk.
• New function prt::ResolveMap:findCGBKeys(): This function is designed for advanced use cases where the ResolveMap is manged by the client application and can contain more than one main cgb.
• prt::createRuleFileInfo(): the error handling of faulty cgb files got improved. It returns a RuleFileInfo also for cgb files with unexpected errors. Before, a nullptr was returned in some cases. Note that prt::generate() will still fail on buggy cgb files.

PRTX API

• prtx::GeometryBuilder::GeometryBuilder(const prtx::Geometry& geometry): improved robustness (does not crash anymore on geometries created with prtx::DebugUtils::toGeometry())
• Windows: prtx::FileSystemAdaptor::createStream(): support for paths with length >= 260 characters.
• Fixed a bug in prtx::EncodePreparator where collecting CGA reports led to a cycle, resulting in consumption of all memory.

CGA

• New features:
  • The new dynamic import feature allows to import and initialize a ruleset at the time of rule invocation. Overrides can be configured with at-runtime evaluated values.
• New Annotations:
  • @DisplayName annotation.
• Changes to existing features:
  • offset operation: Changed the topology of the resulting offset geometry for each face: At the boundary of border faces no duplicate vertices are created anymore.
• Bugfixes:
  • setback, setbackPerEdge, setbackToArea operations:
    • Fixed wrong modulo wrapping of large negative index selectors.
    • Selectors bottom, top, object.bottom, object.top, world.down, world.up and world.side now work as expected.
  • Added support for reading assets and textures that are located at long (>= 260 chars) absolute paths in the filesystem (Windows only).

Built-In Codecs

• Unreal Encoder:
  • Updated to Datasmith 5.1.0 library. Note that Datasmith 5.X files can not be read in Datasmith 4.X based applications. Use Unreal 5.0+ or Twinmotion 2023.1+.
• USD Encoder:
  • Added support for all uv sets and texture layers specified in UsdPreviewSurface (before, only uvs 0 and the colormap were exported)
  • Added fallback to dirtmap if there is no colormap.
  • Fixed a crash in reports collection (see the fix in prtx::EncodePreparator above).
  • Windows: Fixed crash if a too long filename was used.
  • Fixed a bug where single-channel grey8 textures were not applied in materials.
• USD Decoder:
  • Added support for string-valued UsdPrimvarReader varnames (fixes Apple's USDZ sample assets where uvs / textures were missing).
  • Added support for 'varying' uv interpolation scheme.
  • Now reads uvs also if no texture is set.
  • Improved performance for reading from non-file URIs.
  • Improved robustness when reading invalid USD files (e.g. fixed a crash if invalid face indices were encountered in the USD file.)
• VOB Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug which could lead to a crash on exit.
• OBJ Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug which could lead to a crash on exit.
• Collada Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug which could lead to a crash on exit.
• CityEngine 3WS WebScene Encoder:
  • This encoder got removed. The CityEngine Web Viewer is not available anymore, it is succeeded by the ArcGIS Scene Viewer. Use the SLPK encoder to export and publish your models for ArcGIS Scene Viewer.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Windows: 3rd party symbols are now hidden in com.esri.prt.codecs.dll.
• prtx::ExtensionManger: Clarified log messages if loading an extension fails. The warning message saying that the extension could not be loaded was dominated by underlying details which were logged as errors. These details are now logged on debug level.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.7.8603 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.7.8538.

General Info

• The focus of this release is to fix some issues which are important for certain client applications such as ArcGIS Pro. There is no CityEngine version using this version of the SDK.

PRT API

• No changes.

PRTX API

• No changes.

CGA

• No changes.

Built-In Codecs

• USD Decoder
  • Ensure that all associated files of an USD asset are read through the prtx::DataBackend and can therefore make use of the PRT caching system.
  • Fixed two bugs that prevented decoding of USD assets from general URIs.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Reduced peak memory usage when loading assets (e.g. when using the CGA i operation).
• Updated 3rd-party libraries to fix security vulnerabilities:
  • zlib 1.2.13
  • libtiff 4.5.0
  • libxml2 2.10.3

CITYENGINE SDK 2.7.8538 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.6.8300.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.7.8538 is used in CityEngine 2022.1.8538.

PRT API

• prt::generate(): fixed a (rare) crash on Linux.

PRTX API

• prtx::EncodePreparator: added PrepartionFlags::meshMerging() function and MeshMerging::Action enum. ALL_OF_SAME_MATERIAL_AND_TYPE corresponds to the old mergeByMaterial() flag; ALL_OF_SAME_TYPE is new functionality and allows for merging meshes with various materials into one mesh.
• prtx::EncodePreparator: deprecated mergeByMaterial()

CGA

• New operations:
  • splitAndSetbackPerimeter operation.
• Bugfixes:
  • offset operation: Fixed wrong geometry in case the inside selector was used but no inside faces were created due to a too large (negative) offset. Now the original geometry is kept in such cases.
  • deleteHoles operation: Fixed wrong geometry when deleting holes in non-planar shapes.
  • comp operation: Fixed wrong geometry when selecting face components with non-planar holes.
  • split operation: Fixed warnings containing the wrong operation name.
  • Local Edits:
    • Fixed a rare crash in deep recursive functions.
    • split, splitArea operation: Fixed a crash in nested repeat split patterns (repeat in repeat).

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Added Decoder for Esri's lerc image format (com.esri.prt.codecs.LercDecoder).
• USD Codecs:
  • The 3rd-party libraries (usd_ms.dll and tbb.dll) are now prefixed with 'prt_' in order to prevent clashes if these libraries are already present in a host app (e.g. Autodesk Maya) with incompatible versions.
• USD Encoder:
  • Now writes the initial shape attributes (e.g. start rule, random seed, OID) to the corresponding USD nodes.
  • Now writes the CGA report values to the corresponding USD component nodes.
  • Now uses the prt::Callbacks interface to write the encoded files instead of directly writing to disk.
  • Added mesh merging option to control whether all meshes of one shape (for example a building) should be merged by material or into one single mesh (option meshMerging, values perInitialShapeByMaterial (default) and perInitialShape).
  • Fixed a bug which led to a crash if Windows network shares were used in a path via UNC (Universal Naming Convention).
• USD Decoder:
  • Fixed a crash if a usdz file was encountered in a rpk.
• GLTF Encoder:
  • Fixed a bug where multiple redundant occlusion/roughness/metallic maps were created.
  • Now avoids re-encoding of occlusion/roughness/metallic maps if possible.
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Does not combine (and thus re-encode) roughness/metallic maps anymore.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Performance optimizations to speed up prt::generate() for rules with many attributes and consts.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.6.8300 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.6.8135.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.6.8300 is used in CityEngine 2022.0.8300.

PRT API

• Fixed prt::FileLogHandler to correctly handle non-ascii characters instead of crashing.
• Fixed a crash in prt::CacheObject::CACHE_TYPE_NONREDUNDANT cache implementation (after flushing).

PRTX API

• prtx::ExtensionManager: Improved warning if a library cannot be loaded (added path to core library).

CGA

• New features:
  • Rules with start keyword can be invoked with the start identifier.
  • Rules with extension keyword can be redefined in an import statement.
• Changes to existing features:
  • resetMaterial operation: Added an overload which allows for resetting the material of the geometry.
• Bugfixes:
  • readMaterial function: Fixed empty maps (empty string means "no texture").
  • alignScopeToGeometry operation: Fixed crash when faceSelector was set to largest. This happened when the current geometry had zero area.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Unreal Encoder:
  • Fixed bugs where multiple terrains did not align.
  • Improved landscape material border handling.
  • Fixed a bug which led to undefined behaviour when mixing non-textured and textured geometry.
  • Corrected normal map amount & opacity for Base Materials / Twinmotion.
• GLTF Decoder:
  • Bugfix: Read uvs also if no texture defined in the material.
  • Bugfix: Avoid setting the material's texture trafo attributes (to the default) even if not used.
• CGAMat Decoder:
  • Fixed empty texture maps (empty string means "no texture").
• USD Codecs:
  • Fixed deadlock on startup.
  • Fixed tbb dependency loading on Linux to find library in the same folder.
• USD Decoder:
  • Implemented a "best effort" approach for reading partly unknown assets instead of just failing. This includes empty mesh nodes with non-empty child mesh nodes, assets with unknown materials or shaders, and assets with both point instances and other geometries.
  • Fixed a crash on materials which did not have a shader id attribute.
• OBJ Decoder:
  • Improved performance.
  • MTL decoder: Fixed a number reading issue on some localized systems.
• IFC Decoder:
  • Fixed a crash connected to degenerated polygons.
  • Improved geometry triangulation.
• DWG and IFC Codecs:
  • Updated to ODA 22.12 library
• VUE Codecs:
  • Added versioning info to dll.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Linux: Fixed unwanted re-export of 3rd-party symbols in our extension libraries.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.6.8135 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.5.7799.

General Info

• The focus of this release is to fix some issues which are important for certain client applications such as plugins. There is no CityEngine version using this version of the SDK.

PRTX API

• Fixed prtx::ResolveMap::anchorRelativeKey for the "key = URI" case if the anchored key contains characters that need to be percent encoded. Note that the signature changed (new ResolveMap argument).
• Fixed prtx::URI::replaceExtension() to use the correct string encoding when percent encoding.
• Improved prtx::EncodePreparator to keep the numerical precision of meshes which are far away (>10'000 m) from the initial shape's orgin. However, such meshes won't be merged to one mesh anymore if "merge by material" is enabled.
• Fixed a crash in prtx::Material::getBlindData() if an illegal key was used.
• Fixed documentation of the texture trafo (XXXmapTrafo) keys of prtx::Material.

CGA

• Changes to existing features:

  • setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge, shapeLUO operation: Setback faces are now more likely to attach to neighboring edges at convex vertices. This avoids gaps in presence of altering setback distances. If the setback face cannot be attached to an edge the respective side is cut inwards in order to avoid spikes.
  • i operation: Assets with very large coordinates (> 10'000) are now handled differently on insert and export. This greatly improves numerical precision. However, such assets are not considered instanced anymore.

• Bugfixes:

  • envelope, setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge, shapeLUO operation: Fixed wrong result and improved performance on shapes with many holes.
  • innerRectangle operation: Fixed wrong remainder in rare cases.
  • offset operation: Improved support for shapes with collinear vertices.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• All Texture Decoders:
  • Fixed a bug where textures with non-ASCII characters in their path could not be read.
• GLTF Decoder & Encoder:
  • Support for texture transform extension (mapped to CGA attributes, e.g. material.colormap.su).
• GLTF Encoder:
  • Now keeps the format of jpg images on export instead of converting all images to png.
• FBX Decoder:
  • Now correctly reads non-ASCII names (of e.g. materials, meshes and textures).
• Collada Decoder:
  • Now correctly reads non-ASCII names (of e.g. materials, meshes and textures).
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Support for exporting texture transforms (CGA attributes, e.g. material.colormap.su).
  • Added new options "Export Twinmotion Compatible" and "Use Unreal Base Materials".
  • Removed obsolete files LibRaw.dll and FreeImage317.dll from the build.
• OBJ Encoder:
  • Now, non-ASCII characters in texture names are legalized. This fixes broken mtl desfinitions.
• OBJ Decoder:
  • Improved robustness for cases where referenced MTL files contain non-ASCII charactes in their path and the OBJ was written with an unknown non-ASCII encoding: Now, many "illegal" situations can be resolved with smart heuristics.
• VUE Encoder:
  • Added support for non-ASCII strings in file names, layer names, and material names.
• IFC Encoder:
  • Now supports the "applicationName", "applicationVersion", "applicationString, "applicationVendor" and "author" encoder options.
• USD Encoder & Decoders:
  • Updated to USD 21.11 library.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Updated 3rd party libraries:
  • updated to libtiff 4.3.0 library.
  • updated to libxml2 2.9.12 library.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.5.7799 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.4.7316.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.5.7799 is used in CityEngine 2021.1.7799.

PRT API

• Enhanced the prt::FileOutputCallbacks class.
  • Added support for creating intermediate directories specified in the open function.
  • Improved robustness when closing files.
  • Fixed a small memory leak.
• Fixed wrong syntax in the output of prt::ResolveMap::toXML.

PRTX API

• Prevent the creation of small holes when merging vertices in prtx::EncodePreparator.
• Added a new utility function prtx::MaterialUtils::getMaterialAsCGAStrings to get the string representation of a prtx::Material.
• Extended the list of managed pointer types in prtx/PRTUtils.h.
• Fixed resized texure array when using prtx::MaterialBuilder::setTextureArrayItem(L"diffuseMap", 0).
• Updated the list of shader keys in the API documentation of prtx::Shader and prtx::Material.
• Added a new convenience function prtx::Material::getShaderTextureArrayKeyAndIndexFromCGAMapName() to find the shader key and array index for a given CGA map attribute.

CGA

• New functions
  • sortIndices
  • sortRowIndices
  • setElems
  • readMaterial
• Changes to existing features
  • String concatenation operator: Strings can now be concatenated with arrays.
  • envelope operation: Asset groups are now kept.
  • splitArea operation: Asset groups and asset face materials are now kept.
  • scatter operation: The group name of scattered points is set to builtin:point.
• Bug Fixes
  • envelope operation: Fixed wrong resulting scope translation. This happened on non-planar shapes with a scope rotation applied.
  • convexify, setback operations: Fixed a bug which led to wrong uv coordinates and normals in some self-touching and self-intersecting polygon situations.
  • split, trim, insertAlongUV operations: Fixed a rare crash when face materials are present.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Added a new encoder and decoder for "Industry Foundation Classes" (.ifc) with id com.esri.prt.codecs.IFCEncoder and com.esri.prt.codecs.IFCDecoder.
• Added encoder and decoder for CGA material files (.cgamat) with ids com.esri.prt.codecs.CGAMatEncoder and com.esri.prt.codecs.CGAMatDecoder.
• All Encoders
  • Assets with transparent textures imported from MultiPatches will not write unusual .jpga textures anymore but .jpg or .png instead.
• FBX Decoder
  • Added support for reading embedded textures in (binary) FBX files.
  • Added support for FBX opacity textures.
  • Fixed support for reading FBX assets from memory.
  • Do not abort decoding if a texture cannot be read.
  • Do not restrict reading of layered textures to eAdditive.
  • Fixed a bug where transformations on geometry nodes where not considered.
• DWG Decoder
  • Add support for reading vertex normals.
  • Improved the heuristic to find textures referenced in a moved DWG.
  • Fixed a crash when trying to read files with unsupported types "Spline" and "Region".
• I3S Encoder
  • Fixed handling of transparent materials in intermediate nodes.
  • Added support for the fullExtent scene object attribute.
  • Increased the written I3S version to 1.8.
• ShapeBuffer Decoder
  • Fixed a bug in the MultiPatch reader where material properties other than color and texture were likely to be ignored.
• CSV Decoder
  • Added support for reading the new .cgamat files introduced above.
• Unreal Encoder
  • Added support to add metadata to all static mesh actors, not just the initial shape nodes.
  • Fixed a regression in PRT 2.4 where exporting of "dirtmap" UVs (uv set 2) got lost.
  • Improved the heuristic to set the texture blend modes. To reduce rendering artifacts in Unreal, transparency mode for a texture is only enabled if material.opacitymap.mode is set to default and more than 98% of the pixels are transparent.
• USD Encoder
  • Added support for triangulation of the encoded meshes.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• USD 3rd-party library libusd_ms.dll: added version info to DLL.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.4.7316 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.3.6821.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.4.7316 is used in CityEngine 2021.0.7316.
• MacOS is not supported anymore.

PRT API

• We added functionality for dealing with embedded resources in general and specifically in geometry files. Modern 3D formats like glb or usdz allow for embedding all referenced data (e.g. textures) into one file. First, support for using such files in a PRT client application has been simplified (e.g., when building a ResolveMap with the ResolveMapBuilder). Second, tools for writing extensions (i.e. GeometryDecoders) which can handle embedded resources have been added to the API.

• EncoderInfo:

  • added getExtensions() function.
  • added getMerit() function.
  • added getType() function.

• DecoderInfo:

  • added canHandleEmbeddedResources() function.
  • added getMerit() function.
  • added getType() function.

• ResolveMapBuilder: addEntry() function: an optional parameter was added to control embedded resources handling (EmbeddedEntriesMode enum). By default, to-be-added entries are now inspected if they contain embeded resources, and these are automatically added to the ResolveMap. This was not the case before.

• ResolveMap: getString(): Bugfix: stat was not set to STATUS_OK if the call succeeded.

• createResolveMap():

  • This also works for content types with embedded resorces (such as glb) which was not documented before.
  • Bugfix: unpacking to file system did not work for types with embedded resources.

• Status: new status code STATUS_FILE_READ_FAILED

• FileOutputCallbacks: Bugfix: the class did not correctly handle Unicode (UTF-16) paths on windows.

• InitialShapeBuilder: setAttributes() function: added documentation about how to set up 2D array CGA attributes.

• architecture.pdf: fixed wrong function names in "Extension Lifetime" section.

PRTX API

• A general note for decoder implementors about how to deal with embedded resources: Typically, a Decoder for a format which supports embedded resources needs a matching ResolveMapProvider implementation which scans the resource and creates a ResolveMap with the embedded entries. Each entry maps a "human readable" key to a "complex" URI with the format in the scheme part. In order to decode such an URI (i.e. extracting the raw data the URI is referring to), a matching StreamAdaptor needs to be implemented and registered. Let's take the GLTFDecoder as example:
  • The GLTFDecoder decodes the actual format into a Geometry,
  • the GLTFResolveMapProvider creates the ResolveMap which contains embedded textures as entries with a key created with ResolveMap::anchorEmbeddedKey() and an URI having the "gltf" scheme, and
  • the GLTFAdaptor uses the "gltf" scheme URIs to extract the binary data of the embedded items.
• DecoderFactory: added optional canHandleER parameter to constructor. If this parameter is set to true, the Decoder can handle embedded resources and a matching ResolveMapProvider and StreamAdaptor must be registered.
• ResolveMap:
  • added anchorEmbeddedKey() function.
  • added anchorRelativeKey() function.
  • deprecated replaceLastKeySegment() function (use anchorRelativeKey() instead).
• URI: added DELIM_FRAGMENT and DELIM_QUERY constants.
• URIUtils
  • createCompositeURI():
    • replaced the two function overloads with one function with default values.
    • Bugfix: it did not work for >2 nesting levels.
  • addFragment(): Bugfix: in some cases, an empty host componet was unexpectedly added to the URI.
• EncoderInfoBuilder: added setMerit() function.
• FileExtension: Bugfix: fixed a rare crash in copy constructor / destructor.
• Shape: added documentation about how to extract the number of rows for 2D CGA array attributes.

CGA

• New features:
  • Local variables can be defined using the with keyword.
  • Support for reading DWG assets.
• New operations:
  • setMaterial operation.
  • resetMaterial operation.
  • roofRidge operation.
  • alignScopeToGeometryBBox operation.
  • footprint operation.
• New functions:
  • getMaterial function.
  • sum function.
  • listToArray, listFromArray functions.
  • geometry.groups function.
  • geometry.materials function.
  • filesSearch function: In contrast to fileSearch this function returns an array of strings instead of a stringlist.
  • assetNamingInfos function: In contrast to assetNamingInfo this function returns an array of strings instead of a stringlist.
• Changes to existing features:
  • i operation and initial shapes: Improved automatic removal of 0-area faces, 0-length edges and 0-angles. The cleanup is less invasive now.
  • roofShed operation: Negative angles are now supported. Note that face and vertex indices of a shed roof are different now.
  • USD reader: added support for USDZ files.
  • convert function: Added a version which takes the coordinate values as array.
  • assetsSortSize, assetsSortRatio, imagesSortRatio functions: Added versions which take the list of files as array of strings instead of a stringlist.
  • imageBestRatio, imageApproxRatio, assetBestSize, assetApproxSize, assetFitSize, assetBestRatio, assetApproxRatio functions: An invalid string selector does not fall back to a default value but now leads to a runtime error.
  • ceil, floor, rint, isinf, isnan, isNull functions: Support for arrays.
  • comp, offset, extrude, roofHip, roofGable, roofPyramid, roofShed, taper, split, setback, setbackPerEdge, setbackToArea, shapeLUO, innerRectangle, convexify operations: Asset groups are now kept.
  • extrude, taper, setback, setbackPerEdge, setbackToArea, shapeLUO, innerRectangle, convexify operations: Asset face materials are now kept.
  • comp(v) operation: The material of vertex components is now set to default.
• Bugfixes:
  • offset operation: In case of a failure a crash is prevented or a resulting degenerated geometry is avoided. This happened in rare cases with positive offset distance and collinear vertices.
  • geometry.angle function: Fixed wrong azimuth. It was incorrectly shifted by 180 degrees.
  • Fixed an issue where the group name of the geometry was not set to initialShape.name for initial shapes with 1 face.
  • setback, setbackToArea, setbackPerEdge operation: Avoid creating an unnecessary edge for O-shaped setback geometry.
  • roofHip, roofGable, roofPyramid, roofShed operations: Fixed a bug which led to a wrong geometry or a wrong scope in rare cases on shapes with holes.
  • roofShed operation:
    • Fixed incorrect consideration of negative indexes.
    • Fixed a bug that led to self-intersected roofs on concave faces.
  • taper operation: Fixed a wrongly aligned geometry on non-planar shapes with holes.
  • splitString function: A split of an empty string now returns [""] instead of an empty array.
  • fileSearch function: If no matching files are found the function now returns an empty string "" which is the correct representation of an empty string list. Before a string ";" was returned which corresponds to a string list with one empty string element.
  • isinf function: Fixed a bug for values that are not a number: isinf(ln(-1)) wrongly returned true, now returns false.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Added Decoder and Encoder for Autodesk's DWG format (com.esri.prt.codecs.DWGDecoder, com.esri.prt.codecs.DWGEncoder).

• Removed Encoder for Pixar's RenderMan format.

• USD Encoder & Decoders:

  • Added support for USDZ in both the USD decoder and encoder.
  • Updated to USD 21.02 library.
  • Decoder: Bugfix: Sometimes, temporary files were still locked after usage.

• SLPK Encoder:

  • The node hierarchy and texture resolutions got optimized for improved rendering performance in the ArcGIS Online Scene Viewer.
  • The geometry LODs are more fine-grained now, resulting in a smoother viewing experience in the ArcGIS Online Scene Viewer.

• Unreal Encoder:

  • Updated to Datasmith 4.26 library.
  • Support for exporting multiple (CityEngine) scenarios in one export session.
  • Support for multiple UV sets.
  • Changed PBR textures export from srgb to linear color space and removed obsolete color space conversion shader.
  • Bugfix: Texture modes are now correctly set if the same texture is exported both as normalmap and diffusemap. Before such textures were exported as normalmaps only.

• GLTFDecoder:

  • Changed embedded resources URI handling from fragments to the "gltf" scheme. Note that legacy URIs encountered in old rpks are converted automatically during the ResolveMap extraction from the rpk.
  • Does not abort anymore if GLTF extension "KHR_materials_SpecularGlossiness" is encountered. It now just reads the geometry and supported material parts.
  • Improved data URI handling.
  • Bugfix: Percent encode texture key for URI fallback handling.

• GLTFEncoder:

  • Deactivated merging for vertices/uvs/normals. This might give small differencies in coordinates/normals/uvs and tiny faces are not removed anymore.

• VUE Encoder:

  • Moved VUE encoder to a separate PRT extension library (so it can be loaded independently).
  • Updated to VueExport 15.0.0.0 library.

• ShapeBufferDecoder:

  • Support ".multipatch" extension.
  • Fixed invalid embedded texture URIs. Embedded textures now use "shp" scheme instead of a temporary memory URI. The URIs are therefore valid as long as the passed-in mutipatch buffer is valid.

• Unreal, SLPK Encoders: Bugfix: Avoid upscaling textures in atlas generation.

• Alembic Encoder: Updated to Alembic 1.7.16 and OpenEXR 2.5.2 libraries.

• FBX Encoder: Updated to fbxsdk 2020.2.

• All geometry Encoders:

  • Select encoder based on texture extension, not the pixelformat. This leads to e.g. "builtin:uvtest.png" being actually writen as png, not jpg.

• All image Encoders:

  • Added "existingFiles" option.
  • Throw exception if encode failed, i.e. the whole geometry export is aborted if an image can not be encoded.

• JPGEncoder:

  • In some cases (lossy) re-encoding of images can be avoided and the original file can just be copied. This has been extended to memory URIs and flipped textures.
  • Added "forceJFIFHeaders" option. Default is false. If set to true it is guaranteed that all written files have a JFIF header, even if the original file had an EXIF header and re-encoding was avoided. This option is enabled in the ShapeBufferEncoder.
  • Removed "textureAddAlphaMask" option. That functionality was extracted into the specific JPGAEncoder.

• PNGEncoder, TIFFEncoder: In some cases re-encoding of images can be avoided and the original file can just be copied. This has been extended to memory URIs.

• RAWEncoder, TIFFEncoder: Bugfix: The option "textureBase64" was just ignored.

• All image Decoders: Bugfix: improved error handling when decoding images (in some cases there were duplicate errors & re-reported errors from a different asset).

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Windows: Switched to Visual Studio 2019, Toolchain 14.27.
• Linux: Switched to GCC 9.3.1.
• Enabled C++17 language standard.
• Updated 3rd party libraries:
  • CE-8486: update to zlib 1.2.11.
  • CE-8490: update to libpng 1.6.37.
  • CE-8490: update to libtiff 4.1.0.
  • CE-8490: update to giflib 5.2.1.
  • CE-8019: update to boost 1.73.

CITYENGINE SDK 2.3.6821 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.2.6332

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.3.6821 is used in CityEngine 2020.1.6821

PRT API

• ResolveMap::searchKey: Fixed a bug where no terminating 0 character was returned.
• Added Status::STATUS_NO_GEOMETRY. [CE-8283]

PRTX API

• EncodePreparator: Fixed uv calculation for HoleProcessor::DELETE_HOLES.
• Fixed a crash in case prtx geometry encoder extension fail to create geometry.
• OpaquePtr: Implemented copy, assignment and const dereference operators. [CE-7351]
• Added Texture.getChannelCount(). [CE-7932]
• Fixed a bug in MeshBuilder where illegal material indices were set. [CE-8078]
• Fixed a crash if decoder returned no geometry. [CE-8283]
• Added template method LogFormatter.getMessage() that enables message access for subclasses. [CE-8109]
• Fixed a bug in MeshBuilder constructors where materials were not copied from the source mesh.

CGA

• New features:
  • Support for reading USD assets. [CE-8089]
• New functions:
  • transpose function. [CE-7346]
• Bugfixes:
  • Improved numerical accuracy in pivot and scope calculation. [CE-6972]
  • comp(f): Improved performance for shapes with many faces. [CE-7935]
  • Fixed incorrect conversions returned by the convert function. [CE-2300]
  • split operation: Fixed bugs in the automatic cut closing which led to missing faces or illegal hole faces in the cut-plane. [CE-7457, CE-1574, CE-5272]
  • Runtime errors occuring in the initialization phase (attr and const evaluation) are now visible in the Problems view. [CE-1563]
  • print function: Output from initialization phase (attr and const evaluation) is now printed to the CGA Console. [CE-1563]

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New decoder for Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) format: com.esri.prt.codecs.USDDecoder. [CE-8089]
• FBX Encoder:
  • Added support for polygon holes. [CE-7635]
• I3S/SLPK Encoder:
  • Adapted projection of normals to longitudinal squashing of global coordinate systems. [CE-7171]
  • Ensure ordering of textures in atlases is consistent over multiple exports. [CE-7351]
  • Ensure ordering of attributes is the same as for features. [CE-8268]
• GLTF Encoder:
  • In absence of UV set 0, write the first present UV set. [CE-7063]
• GLTF Decoder:
  • Support decoding embedded textures from MemoryURI. [CE-8079]
  • Properly decode the opacity map attribute. [CE-8081]
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Added LOD support. [CE-5904, CE-8100]
  • Fixed crash for degenerated triangles. [CE-8240]
  • Fixed wrong Actor offset for globally merged exports. [CE-7582]
  • Do not write empty mesh if instancing is on and no un-instanced geometry is present. [CE-7857]

CITYENGINE SDK 2.2.6332 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.1.5704.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.2.6332 is used in CityEngine 2020.0.6332

PRT API

• FileOutputCallbacks, MemoryOutputCallbacks: the create() function has a new optional parameter to allow for logging generate errors to file / block. [CE-7126]
• Callbacks:
  • The array attr eval callbacks attrBoolArray(), attrFloatArray(), attrStringArray() now have an additional parameter nRows (for 2D array dimensions) which is set by the AttributeEvalEncoder. [CE-7218]
  • The AttributeEvalEncoder does not report values of CGA const functions anymore (via Callbacks::attrXXX()) [CE-7124]
• generate():
  • attributes of initial shapes are now checked for a match in the CGA attributes of the connected rule. Both name and type must match. Mismatches used to result in undefined behaviour. [CE-1600]
  • Integer array attributes of initial shapes are now passed-through to the encoders (used to cause an exception).
• New content type prt::CT_TABLE (for prt::ContentType enum)[CE-7217]
• Initial shapes: added /arrayDimRows/ namespace to attribute key for setting dimensions of CGA 2D array attrs [CE-7220]
• SimpleOutputCallbacks: made attrFloat(), attrXXXArray() write strings consistent to other attrXXX() implementations (int format)

PRTX API

• New content class prtx::Table
• New function prtx::Databackend::resolveTable()
• prtx::DebugUtils::dump(mesh): extended to print UV coordinates as well
• Renamed prtx::NamePreparator::legalizedAndUniquifed() to prtx::NamePreparator::legalizedAndUniquified()
• Improved robustness of extension loader [CE-7368]
• Use /arrayDimRows/ namespace to extract dimensions of CGA 2D array attrs from prtx::Shape via Attributable interface [CE-7220]
• Removed CGA const functions from prtx::Shape via Attributable interface [CE-7220]

CGA

• New functions:
  • Operators for arrays. [CE-7262, CE-7258, CE-7263]
  • colon operator. [CE-7149]
  • readStringTable, readFloatTable: Functions to read CSV files. [CE-7217]
  • nRows, nColumns functions to access dimensions of an array. [CE-7212]
  • floatArray, stringArray, boolArray: Functions to convert arrays and create empty arrays. [CE-7256, CE-6863]
• New attributes:
  • material.opacitymap.cutoff attribute [CE-7773]
• Changes to existing features:
  • envelope operation:
    • Added a version which takes per-edge arrays for baseHeight and angles. [CE-7586]
    • Fixed non-deterministic behaviour in rare border cases. [CE-7603]
  • array initialization function: Added notation to create 2d arrays with several rows. [CE-7212]
  • index operator:
    • Access elements by index arrays or logical arrays. [CE-7150, CE-7349]
    • Added row and column indexing for 2d arrays. [CE-7214]
  • index function: This function is deprecated. Use the findFirst function instead. [CE-7519]
  • readTextFile function: .csv extension not supported anymore (see new readTable functions) - if you want to read a .csv file as text you will need to rename it to .txt. [CE-7217]
  • array initialization, splitString, comp function: The size of the returned array is limited. It can be configured via the /cgaenv/maxArraySize initial shape attribute (default: 100000).
  • texture operation: Reset opacitymap if no alpha channel present. [CE-6941]
  • str, abs functions: Support for arrays. [CE-7276, CE-7520]
  • @Enum, @Range annotations: These annotations can now be applied to array attributes to specify enumeration values or ranges for array elements. [CE-7290, CE-7291]
  • @Enum annotation: Enumeration values can now be specified dynamically by an attribute. [CE-7144]
• Bugfixes:
  • bool function: Excluded the float-to-bool conversion from inf/nan checks (also see /cgaenv/floatCheck initial shape attribute). [CE-6667]
  • setupProjection operation: Fixed blurry and discontinuous textures at very large world coordinate magnitudes or very large offset values. [CE-6667]
  • find function: Fixed wrong index if matchString was empty. [CE-7311]
  • str, print functions: Fixed printing the sign for negative infinity.[CE-7625]
  • Fixed performance problems when generating shapes that contain holes and a large number of vertices. [CE-5818]

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New decoder to read .csv tables: CSVDecoder [CE-7217]
• New encoder: added support for Pixar's Universal Scene Description (USD) format [CE-6130]
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Updated to use Datasmith 4.24. This makes the Unreal encoder stable and it is not beta anymore. [CE-7337]
  • Added Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh (HISM) component support for per initial shape export [CE-6481]
  • Add full path of inserted assets as metadata to actors [CE-7021]
  • Added support for texture atlasses [CE-5268, CE-7106, CE-7127]
  • Fixed a bug where a wrong opacity map was used.
  • Optimized textures by combining individual PBR maps into one and diffuse & opacity maps into one [CE-6698]
• SLPK Encoder:
  • Removed "Layer Enabled" option [CE-7138]
  • Added support for material.opacitymap [CE-5973]
  • Fixed a crash on models that contained UV Coordinates only on some faces. [CE-7581]
  • Fixed a crash when using default encoder options [CE-6951]
  • Opacity Mode:
    • Fixed a bug which led to materials having mode opaque instead of blend
    • Use opacity mode mask instead of opaque for internal node materials if they are a mix of opaque and blend materials [CE-7866]
  • Fixed writing of emissive factors [CE-7089]
  • Fixed wrong vertical coord system unit [CE-7043]
  • Fixed a bug where a too long attributes file led to illegal offsets [CE-7097]
  • Fixed a bug in degenerated uvs handling which led to nodes not being unloaded in the SceneViewer. [CE-7581]
  • Optimize empty pbr textures (do not write them) [CE-6690]
  • Optimized texture atlas sizes [CE-6689]
• FBX:
  • Decoder/Encoder: Update to FBX 2019 [CE-6329]
  • Decoder: Improved texture file lookup heuristic (correctly handle backslash '') [CE-7588]
• GLTF Decoder and Encoder now read / write alpha cutoff value to CGA attribute material.opacitymap.cutoff

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Windows:
  • Switched to Visual Studio 2019, Toolchain 14.23 [CE-7325]
  • Raised minimal Windows API to Server 2012 / Windows 8.1 [CE-7325]
• CMake Support Script: Prevent searching for PRT and its dependencies on the system path [CE-6850]
• Increased minimal cmake to 3.14 [CE-7325]
• The full name of CityEngine has been changed from "Esri CityEngine" to "ArcGIS CityEngine". [CE-7565]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 2.1.5705 CHANGELOG

Minor update to fix broken links in the CGA reference documentation. Otherwise this release is identical to 2.1.5704.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 2.1.5704 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 2.0.5403.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.1.5704 is used in CityEngine 2019.1.5704

PRT API

• Added Callbacks::attrBoolArray(), Callbacks::attrFloatArray(), Callbacks::attrStringArray() for array attributes. [CE-6277]
• Fixed createResolveMap() (unpack to filesystem case): in rare cases there were filename clashes. [CE-6569]

PRTX API

• Removed deprecated functions for logging wide strings: log_wtrace, log_wdebug, etc.

CGA

• New functions:
  • array initialization function (create arrays via initialization list).
• Changes to existing features:
  • set operation: Added set operations for array attributes.
• Bugfixes:
  • Maximum recursion level for CGA functions: Fixed crash if recursion level was chosen too high. The maximum recursion level is set via attribute /cgaenv/maxFuncCallDepth.
  • roofShed(byHeight) operation: Fixed wrong height in some situations.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• I3S/SLPK Encoder:
  • Update to I3S Version 1.7. [CE-6178, CE-6258, CE-6260, CE-6261]
  • Reduced memory consumption with many/large textures and improved texture atlas composition. [CE-6330]
  • Write PBR materials. [CE-6576]
  • Use Domains for boolean attributes. [CE-6060]
  • Removed texture quality option and replaced it with the "Max Tree Depth" option [CE-6750, CE-6654]
  • The handling of PNG textures has been fixed. This makes the resulting scene layers compatible with ArcGIS Portal 10.7. [CE-6668]
  • Improved screen size heuristic (for LOD switching in viewers). [CE-6751]
  • Improved texture size in atlas. [CE-6752]
  • Improved handling of degenerated texture coordinates. [CE-6969]
  • Fixed a bug which led to wrong materials in intermediate levels. [CE-6984]
  • Fixed a bug in "Features per leaf shape" - crashed in some cases if reports were emitted. [CE-6805]
  • Fixed a bug where temporary files were not deleted from disk.
  • Fixed a bug which led to crashes if the resulting slpk file was too large to fit into memory.
  • Fixed bugs which led to errors in ArcGIS Pro. [CE-6897]
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Updated datasmith library for Unreal 4.23. [CE-6817]
  • Removed FBX dependency. [CE-5562]
  • Create Unreal PBR material instances in CE exporter. [CE-6600]
  • Improved Instance (HISMC) Caching Behaviour. [CE-6635]
  • Removed unnecessary heightmap scaling. [CE-6889]
  • Correctly handle absence of UV sets. [CE-6780]
  • Fixed precision issue with instances. [CE-6731]
  • Create Unreal Materials during export to remove dependency on predefined Master Materials. [CE-6600]
  • Improved automatic Material Blend Mode selection. [CE-6512]
  • Fixed filename legalizer bug which led to "_png" instead of ".png". [CE-6485]
• Alembic Encoder
  • Fix: Add the global export offset to pre-computed bounds.
• ShapeBuffer Encoder:
  • Multipatch: Use "triangles" part type for triangles. [CE-5913]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Updated Whitepaper / Architecture documents. [CE-6741]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 2.0.5403 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.10.4198.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 2.0.5403 is used in CityEngine 2019.0.5403

Licensing

• The CityEngine SDK is now free for non-commercial use and we removed the technical requirement to have a CityEngine license, i.e. the CityEngine SDK runs without a license now. All content of all directories is licensed under the Esri Terms of Use.

PRT API

• Removed FlexLicParams and LicParams structs and LicParams parameter in init() function. [CE-5608]
• Renamed STATUS_ADAPTOR_NOT_FOUND to STATUS_STREAM_ADAPTOR_NOT_FOUND, added STATUS_RESOLVEMAP_PROVIDER_NOT_FOUND to Status. [CE-6016]
• New CT_STRING in ContentType. [CE-6112]
• Added AAT_BOOL_ARRAY, AAT_FLOAT_ARRAY, AAT_STR_ARRAY to AnnotationArgumentType. [CE-6116]
• New InitialShapeBuilder member functions createInitialShape() and resetGeometry(). [CE-5407]
• InitialShapeBuilder::setAttributes(): multiple calls are now possible per instance. [CE-5407]

PRTX API

• New function DataBackend::resolveBinaryData() and deprecated readURI(). [CE-6017]
• New URIUtils::addFragment(), URIUtils::removeFragment(), URIUtils::addQuery() functions. [CE-6016]
• New URI::hasFragment() and URI::getFragment() functions. [CE-6016]
• Removed Adaptor class and introduced ResolveMapProvider class. [CE-6016]
• Removed ET_ADAPTOR from ExtensionType and added ET_STREAM_ADAPTOR and ET_RESOLVEMAP_PROVIDER. [CE-6016]
• New ExtensionManager::createResolveMapProvider() function. [CE-6016]
• New CTString and StringDecoder classes, new DataBackend::resolveText() function. [CE-6112]
• New types PRTUtils::AttributeMapUPtr, PRTUtils::AttributeMapBuilderUPtr, PRTUtils::ResolveMapUPtr, PRTUtils::ResolveMapBuilderUPtr. [CE-5407]
• New URI::isFilePath() function. [CE-6402]
• Shape: BuiltinShapeAttributes::xxx_map getters: return resolve map key instead of resolved URI (if you want the resolved URI, use the xxxMap getters of the Material class which return a Texture). [CE-6336]
• Expose type definition for prtx::ReportDomains to allow custom implementations of prtx::ReportsAccumulator without violating ODR.

CGA

• New operations:
  • rectify operation.
  • resetGeometry operation.
  • setbackPerEdge operation.
  • setbackToArea operation.
• New functions:
  • readTextFile function.
  • geometry.boundaryLength function.
  • splitString function.
  • comp function.
  • Array util functions: index, item and size.
  • Edge attribute functions: edgeAttr.getFloat, edgeAttr.getString, edgeAttr.getBool.
• New attributes:
  • Material attributes:
    • material.emissive.{r|g|b}, material.metallic, material.roughness.
    • material.{emissive|occlusion|roughness|metallic}map and corresponding .{su|sv|tu|tv|rw}.
    • material.opacitymap.mode.
• Changes to existing features:
  • alignScopeToAxes operation: New axis selectors for alignment in the object coordinate system were added.
  • print operation and print function: Support for arrays.
  • comp operation: New component selector fe for face edges.
  • setback operation: Supports individual distances per edge.
• Bugfixes:
  • convexify operation: Fixed incorrect results on shapes with holes.
  • softenNormals, setNormals(auto) operation: Compute correct soft normals for vertices bordering a hole. This bug only appeared when the threshold angle was set to a value less than 180 degrees.
  • comp(v), comp(e) operation: Compute correct orientation of the scope z axis for vertex/edge components bordering a hole.
  • comp(v), comp(e), alignScopeToGeometry operation: Fixed resulting scopes when applied on edges or vertices.
  • roofHip, roofGable operation: Corrected the resulting order and first edge of roof faces if the initial shape contained collinear vertices.
  • roofGable operation:
    • Fixed a crash in subsequent operations or functions if the initial shape contained near-identical vertices.
    • Corrected trim plane generation if the initial shape contained several faces.
  • cleanupGeometry operation: Fixed a crash in vertex merge. This happened when hole vertices were within tolerance to vertices that belonged to both another hole and an encircling face.
  • setback operation: Enhanced result at concave vertices.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New Decoders:
  • Added GLTF Decoder. [CE-5946]
• New Encoders:
  • Added GLTF Encoder. [CE-5947]
• All Encoders:
  • Speedup of vertex/normals/texture coordinates merging in exotic cases. [CE-5936]
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Correctly handle textures with same name. [CE-5886]
  • Improve actor translation values. [CE-5875]
  • Added native metadata export. [CE-5884]
  • Added native terrain export API. [CE-6147]
  • Added default material selection if not set by CGA. [CE-6030]
  • Fixed wrong materials for instanced meshes. [CE-6378]
  • Support for PBR material properties. [CE-6120]
  • Updated datasmith library for Unreal 4.22. [CE-6424]
  • Fixed hanger on crash. [CE-6011]
• OBJ/MTL Decoder:
  • Speedup for large material counts.
• I3S/SLPK Encoder:
  • Update to I3S Version 1.6. [CE-5950]
  • Fixed faulty texture mime types. [CE-5578]
  • Removed DDS Texture option (always writes them). [CE-6184]
  • Improved speed for DDS compression. [CE-6034]
  • Reduced memory consumption. [CE-6035]
  • Aligned MBS center and OBB center. [CE-6290]
  • Fixed crash with non-square textures. [CE-6475]
• FBX Encoder:
  • Only add unification extension to material name when needed. [CE-6335]
• FBX Decoder:
  • Fixed crash due to invalid materials. [CE-6036]
• Alembic Encoder
  • Moved to separate extension library and linking Alembic library statically. [CE-6226]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Removed FlexLM library. [CE-5608]
• Fixed crash in ResolveMap::getString() if status argument is omitted. [CE-6187]
• PRTUtils::ObjectDestroyer: fixed crash on nullptr.
• Fixed random-based CGA attr initialization on 32bit (behaves the same as on 64bit now). [CE-6124]
• Removed an invalid key which was returned in prtx::Shape::getKeys(). [CE-6336]
• Fixed crash in prtx::Geometry access via Attributable interface. [CE-6336]
• Improved the search functionality of the included reference documentation. [CE-5808]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.10.4198 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.10.4051.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.10.4198 is used in CityEngine 2018.1 (2018.1.4065).

PRT API

• Corrected cgaenv default values in API reference.

CGA

• setback Operation
  • The first edge of setback faces is set at the outline of the initial face. For remainder faces the first edge is the closest to the first edge of the initial shape. This fix potentially changes your existing models. [CE-5592]
  • Avoid creation of slivers, especially at rounded corners with short edges. [CE-4463]
  • Fixed a possible crash for invalid uv-sets. [CE-4123]
• alignScopeToGeometry Operation
  • Fixed a numerical instability when world.lowest is used. In case multiple faces or edges are candidates for the lowest component, the one with the lowest index is chosen. This fix potentially changes your existing models. [CE-4828]
• innerRectangle Operation
  • Fixed a numerical instability. In case several rectangles are candidates for the largest, the one with the lowest distance to the shape's centroid is chosen. This fix potentially changes your existing models. [CE-4788]

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New Encoders
  • Added LERC encoder. [CE-5288]
• OBJ/MTL Decoder:
  • If Ks is zero and map_Ks is present, assume a value of 1 for Ks. [CE-5384]
• I3S/SLPK Encoder:
  • Additionally store textures in DXT/DDS formats. [CE-2294, CE-5667]
  • Use minimum oriented bounding boxes for nodes instead of bounding spheres. [CE-5577]
• Unreal Encoder:
  • Added simple terrain support. [CE-4579]
  • Store shape/model offsets in "Unreal Actor Locators" instead of adding them to the geometry. [CE-5729]
  • Ensure that the foliage flag is only set on instances with identical materials.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Added new shared library glutess to the CE SDK: The OpenGL tesselator is now included, we do not rely anymore on the one provided by the OpenGL drivers.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.10.4051 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.9.3786.

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.10.4051 is used in CityEngine 2018.0 (2018.0.3929).

PRT API

• Fixed the XML representation of prt::AttributeMapBuilder.
• Fixed missing enum items in API reference (e.g. prt::LogLevel). [CE-5326]

PRTX API

• Fixed wrong prtx::Mesh::getUVSetsCount() return value.
• Fixed wrong prtx::MeshBuilder error message if uv coordinates and indices are out of sync.
• Updated prtx::NamePreparator to filter out invalid characters in URIs (e.g. for file name creation). [CE-5276]
• Reduced header inclusion and introduced a few forward-declarations. [CE-5382]

CGA

• Behavior change in "random" evaluation: Fixed a bug in the evaluation of attr/const functions where the random generator could produce unexpected values if attrs/const functions are mutual dependent.
• New operation: "insertAlongUV"
• New function: "assetNamingInfo"
• Changes to existing functions:
  • acos, asin and sqrt: A warning is issued if the parameter is outside of the valid range.
• Bugfixes:
  • comp operation:
    • Re-evaluate random generator for each group (g) and material (m) component. Before this fix rand returned the same value for each component.
    • Group components (g): Fixed wrong per-face materials for meshes with holes.
  • trim and i operation: Trim planes now respect holes in assets.
  • trim, i and split operation: Trim planes and splits now respect per-face materials.
  • split operation: Fixed missing filling face when faces with near zero area were present at the split position.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Collada Decoder
  • Fixed a bug where multiple UV coordinate sets could be wrongly imported. [CE-3389]
• Unreal Encoder
  • Updated to Epic Unreal Studio / Datasmith SDK 0.18 (corresponding to Unreal Engine 4.19).
  • Introduced two new encoder options to control mesh granularity and instancing behavior. [CE-5306]
  • Fixed a bug where the Datasmith NormalMap texture mode was not correctly set. [CE-4997]
  • Fixed a bug where the wrong output path was logged. [CE-5306]
  • Fixed a memory leak when resizing texture to power-of-two. [CE-5276]
  • Fixed a bug where the "maximum number of objects" limit of Unreal could be reached. [CE-5301]
• Texture Encoder
  • Added support for (32bit) GeoTiff metadata. [CE-1771]
• Vue, Alembic, Collada, OBJ Encoders
  • Added stricter validation on object/file names to support non-english locales. [CE-5276]
• I3S Encoder
  • Fixed a bug where encoding multiple objects with identical bounding boxes could lead to a crash. [CE-5057]
  • Fixed a bug where the I3S node level could be set to a wrong value.
• Shape Buffer Encoder
  • Added an encoder option to only export CGA report sums instead of all values. [CE-4673]
• Vue Encoder
  • Fixed a bug where not all encoded textures are correctly logged. [CE-5224]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• OS and Compiler Ugrades
  • Linux: Switched to RHEL 7 and GCC 6.3 with C++14
  • Windows: Switched to Visual Studio 2017 (MSVC Toolchain 14.11)
  • macOS: Switched to macOS 10.12 and Apple Clang 8.1
• Added Unreal encoder libraries to generated CMake config. [CE-5394]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.9.3786 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.8.3501

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.9.3786 is used in CityEngine 2017.1 (2017.1.3674).

PRT API

• Documentation
  • Added missing namespaces (StringUtils.h).
  • Added link to featured annotations (RuleFileInfo.h).

PRTX API

• Added cut textures flag to EncodePreparator (EncodePreparator.h).
• New function returns pseudo id from initial shape (EncodePreparator.h).
• Added copy constructor for transformed mesh builder (Mesh.h).
• Removed obsolete includes (EncodePreparator.h).
• Documentation
  • Added missing namespaces (DataBackend.h, AnnotationBuilder.h).
  • Clarified ExtensionManager::addFactory (ExtensionManager.h).

CGA

(Please also refer to the CGA ChangeLog for 2017.1 in the CityEngine Online Help for new operations and bug-fixes.)

• Increased CGA language version to 2017.1
• New annotations:
  • @Enum annotation.
• New functions:
  • geometry.height function.
• Changes to existing features:
  • cleanupGeometry operation: Merge vertices: Vertices of holes are now merged within tolerance. As a consequence, neighboring holes could be merged to a single hole and small holes could be removed.
  • Prior usage of @Range annotation is deprecated. Instead use new parameterized version of @Range annotation and new @Enum annotation.
  • @Angle, @Distance and @Percent annotations are supported in CityEngine.
• Bugfixes:
  • Occlusion queries: Improved accuracy in cases when the query geometry lies on the surface of an occluder shape.
  • All intra context/occlusion queries: Fixed a bug where queries did not respect occluder/context shapes and therefore returned a wrong value. This happened for labels (including the empty label) which were not encountered in the first evaluation pass (two-pass generation process).
• cleanupGeometry operation:
  • Merge vertices: Prevent creation of small holes and inverted faces.
  • Remove duplicate faces: Correct consideration of holes.
  • Remove shared edges between coplanar faces: Enhanced overall robustness and results for holes.
  • Remove degenerate faces with small area: Applied at the end in order to reduce impact.
• scatter operation: Gaussian standard deviation can be specified in relative coordinates.
• tileUV operation: Fixed creation of invalid UVs in case of near zero area geometry.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New Encoders
  • Added Unreal encoder.
• I3S/SLPK Encoder
  • Added an option to enable backface culling ("backfaceCulling"). [CE-3656]
  • Added attribute statistics and labels. [CE-4529]
  • Fixed inconsistent feature IDs. [CE-4105, CE-4672]
  • Fixed handling of CGA generation errors. [CE-4398]
• ShapeBuffer Encoder
  • Textures are cropped to used regions. [CE-2602]
• FBX Decoder
  • Set asset URI in FBX decoder (fixes instancing support).

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Licensing sub-system has been updated to FNP 11.14. [CE-4676]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.8.3501 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.7.2915

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.8.3501 is used in CityEngine 2017.0 (2017.0.3406).

PRT API

• Added a prt::generate overload with support for multiple occlusion sets. [CE-3791, CE-3994]

PRTX API

• Added support for multiple occlusion sets (GenerateContext.h). [CE-3791]
• Small change to improve const correctness (ExtensionManager.h, GenerateContext.h).

CGA

(Please also refer to the CGA ChangeLog for 2017.0 in the CityEngine Online Help for new operations and bug-fixes.)

• Increased CGA language version to 2017.0
• New operations:
  • label operation.
• New functions:
  • New basic functions: min, max and clamp.
  • New functions for color conversion: colorHexToB, colorHexToG, colorHexToH, colorHexToO, colorHexToR, colorHexToS, colorHexToV, colorHSVToHex, colorHSVOToHex, colorRGBToHex and colorRGBOToHex.
  • New functions for context queries to labeled shapes: minimumDistance, contextCompare and contextCount.
• Changes to existing features:
  • primitiveQuad, primitiveDisk, primitiveCube operation: Removed vertex normals because they do not influence shading. Vertex normals can still be created using setNormals or softenNormals operation.
  • comp operation: New component selectors g for groups, m for materials and h for holes.
  • inside, overlaps and touches functions:
    • New optional label identifier for performing occlusion queries on labeled occluder shapes.
    • Geometries only slightly lying outside an occluder shape are considered inside (adjusted threshold behavior due to floating point limitations).
    • Surfaces touch also when normals point in same direction.
  • Support shapes consisting of vertices or edges (coming from comp or scatter operation):
    • geometry.isClosedSurface, geometry.isPlanar, geometry.isRectangular functions: Return false.
    • geometry.nEdges function: Counts edges.
    • geometry.isOriented function: Consider vertex/edge normal.
• Bugfixes:
  • setback operation: In some cases self-intersecting faces on concave shapes were created. That could lead to a failure of subsequent operations.
  • comp operation:
    • Combined (=) face component split now respects per-face materials.
    • Fixed wrong edge component split for edges with opposing adjacent faces.
    • Fixed wrong result of combined (=) vertex and edge component split.
    • Fixed (deprecated) noStreetSide comp split selector handling.
  • geometry.area and geometry.isOriented function: Corrected scope selectors for negative scope sizes (e.g. front becomes back if scope.sz is < 0).
  • alignScopeToGeometry operation: zUp mode: Fixed wrong pivot for meshes that only consist of vertices (for example from vertex splits or scatter).
  • inside, overlaps and touches functions:
    • Fixed a bug where a closed shape were not touching and not overlapping another geometry that lied inside.
    • Intra-occlusion: Fixed a bug where component split shapes which are children of the current shape were considered for occlusion.
    • Inter-occlusion: Fixed a bug where occlusion-queries were not considered when defined in consts or functions.
    • Fixed a bug that mistakenly returned true in rare situations due to near zero-area triangles.
    • Inter-ccclusion: Fixed a bug that created an occluder shape by a component split or offset operation during the intra ghost tree generation which was then mistakenly considered also for inter occlusion.
    • Fixed behavior in exports.
  • set operation: fixed a bug: trying to set the initialShape.pz attribute resulted in inconsistent behaviour (mismatch with initialShape.pa).
  • alignScopeToAxes, rotateScope, mirrorScope, setPivot, cleanupGeometry, reduceGeometry, convexify, split operations: Correctly consider a non-adjusted scope coming from a split operation.
  • offset operation: Now keeps asset materials and groups.
  • scatter operation: Issue warning for negative or zero number of points.
  • inside, overlaps, touches, geometry.angle functions, alignScopeToGeometry, alignScopeToAxes operations: Fixed for shapes consisting of vertices or edges (coming from comp or scatter operation).
  • assetApproxRatio, assetApproxSize, assetBestRatio, assetBestSize, assetFitSize, fileRandom, imageApproxRatio, imageBestRatio, fileSearch functions: Fixed a bug which led to wrong asset lookups if used in RPKs.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Multiple Encoders/Decoders
  • Fixed import/export of vertex normals (FBX/Collada). [CE-3407]
  • Fixed matrix inversion for mirror-matrices (fixes several FBX/Collada import issues). [CE-3970]
  • Correctly import material names (FBX/Collada). [CE-2352]
• I3S/SLPK Encoder
  • Fixed a crash when no geometry was generated. [CE-4325]
  • Fixed a problem where nodes could end up with too much geometry. [CE-4075]
  • Fixed projection of vertex normals into the target coordinate system.
  • Added support for "popupInfo".
  • Changed file extension from spk to slpk. [CE-3201]
  • Fixed the header of the compressed SLPK archive - resolves import problems in ArcGIS Earth and Pro [CE-3888]
• FBX Encoder/Decoder
  • Updated to FBX SDK 2017.0.1 (internal file format 7.5.0). [CE-3313]
  • Correctly apply the FBX scene units on import. [CE-2259]
  • Correctly convert geometry into current scene coordinate system on import. [CE-2978]
  • Correctly read material of instanced geometries.
  • Instances were not correctly exported if the "create shape groups" option was enabled. [CE-2540]
• Collada Encoder
  • Fixed a problem with non-consequtive uv sets. [CE-2839]
  • Avoid unreferenced texture coordinates in exported Collada files. [CE-1359]
  • By default, "Global Scaling Factor" has a hidden annotation. [CE-1353]
  • Enable Collada encoder in basic license feature set. [CE-3771]
• Alembic Encoder
  • Updated to Alembic library 1.7.0
• Renderman Encoder
  • Added support for renderman txmake tool. [CE-1830]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Fixed a threading-related crash in roof operations and skeleton subdivision. [CE-3706]
• Fixed a Windows handle leak when looking up the path to the core library. [CE-2143]
• Licensing sub-system has been updated to FNP 11.13. [CE-3053]
• Compiler toolchain updates (see README.md)
  • Windows: Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 (C++14)
  • macOS: Apple Clang 7.3 (Xcode 7.3), C++14, new min macOS 10.11
  • Linux: GCC 4.8.2 (C++11) (no change)

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.7.2915 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.6.2663

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.7.2915 is used in CityEngine 2016.1 (2016.1.2875).

PRT API

• Clarified the documentation of prt::Callbacks::cgaGetCoord regarding projection support.
• Also fixed the status return value in some cases of prt::Callbacks::cgaGetCoord.

PRTX API

• Fixed a bug in the encode preparator where the bounding box was not invalidated after fetching instances.
• Improved the consistency of the encode preparator regarding mesh order. [CE-3003]
• Fixed a bug where invalid PRT extension libraries were registered. This fixes potential crashes at exit.

CGA

• Improved performance of inner rectangle operation. [CE-2623]
• Improved robustness of remainder computation in inner rectangle operation. [CE-3073, CE-3113]
• Fixed a static initialization issue on Linux and MacOS which led to wrong results on first model generation. [CE-3270]
• Fixed a bug with collinear trim planes during the roof operation. [CE-2915]
• Fixed a bug where polygons where not correctly merged after a trim operation. [CE-2911]
• Fixed a bug where rule attributes where not correctly overwritten by lower-level CGA imports. [CE-2870]
• Fixed two issues regarding trim planes and scope in the roofGable operation. [CE-2912]
• Fixed a bug regarding roof generation on perfectly square polygons. [CE-2972]
• Fixed a bug where edge comp split would return the wrong edge on non-planar polygons. [CE-2260]
• Fixed a crash in the envelope operation. [CE-1568]
• Fixed a crash on setNormals, cleanupGeometry operations. [CE-2997]
• Fixed a number of bugs in trim plane generation in the roof operations. [CE-1991]
• Fixed a bug in reduceGeometry and cleanUpGeometry operations regarding wrong resulting scope. [CE-2532]

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• OBJ Decoder
  • Fixed support for spaces in texture and mtl file names. [CE-1548]
• OBJ Encoder
  • Fixed a number of bugs in the export log generation.
  • Fixed a small memory leak.
• Collada Decoder
  • Added support for common texture/sampler schema dialect/shortcut. [CE-2382]
  • Avoid triggering empty CGA asset warnings.
• Texture Encoders
  • Fixed a threading issue when encoding JPEG textures in parallel. [CE-3131]
• ShapeBuffer Encoder
  • Fixed support for polygons with holes. [CE-3267]
• Alembic Encoder
  • Added support for the "Alembic Preview Material Schema". [CE-3192]
  • Improved Alembic node hierarchy with an additional grid hierarchy layer. [CE-3114]
  • Updated to Alembic SDK 1.6.1. [CE-3071]
  • Fixed support for UV sets > 0 and avoid writing empty uv set 0.
  • Added support for self/child bounds.
  • Added support for OID initial shape attributes. [CE-2939]
  • Added support for the material.shader property. [CE-2851]
  • Fixed a number of minor issues and improved robustness.
• I3S Encoder (Scene Layer Packages)
  • Fix crash with empty shapes. [CE-3157]
  • Added white diffuse color if vertexColor is on. [CE-3139]
  • Fixed compression method used to store SPKs. This fixes support for ArcGIS Earth. [CE-3175]
  • Fixed a bug in converting vertex normals. [CE-3144]
  • Fixed bounding spheres computation for scenes with units in feet. [CE-3046]
  • Fixed wrong z-value in scenes with units in feet. [CE-3046]
  • Added atlas flag to better support ArcGIS Earth. [CE-3062]
  • Added support for vertex normals in global scenes. [CE-3045]
  • Added support for textureData attribute to better support ArcGIS Pro. [CE-3044]
  • Added support for export log generation. [CE-2600]
  • Added support for CGA reports. [CE-2520]
• FBX Decoder
  • Fixed a crash in the FBX decoder while handling empty nodes. [CE-3057]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Linux: Added a prefix to the internal Flexnet Publisher symbols to avoid potential license collisions with flexnet-based host applications. [CE-2844]

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.6.2663 CHANGELOG

This section lists changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.4.2074

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.6.2663 is used in CityEngine 2016.0 (2016.0.2642).
• CityEngine SDK 1.5 has been an internal release only.
• Increased license level to "2016.0", licenses for 2015.2 and older are not valid for CityEngine SDK 1.6.

PRT API

• Added new function prt::setLogLevel to specify the minimally active logging level.

PRTX API

• Required compilers have been upgraded and C++11 has been enabled:
  • Windows: Visual Studio 2013 Update 5
  • OSX: Apple Clang 6.1 (Xcode 6.4) (on OSX, we require C++14)
  • RHEL: GCC 4.8.2 (DevToolSet 2.1)
• Removed dependency on the Boost C++ library.
• Added support for texture regions to prtx::Mesh. [CE-2509]
• Improved texture atlas generator in prtx::EncodePreparator:
  • Added flag atlasRepeatingTextures to support repeating textures. [CE-2510]
  • Added flag maxTexSize to resize incoming textures. [CE-2251]
  • Added flag forceAtlasing to force atlas even for a single textures. [CE-2471]
• cleaned up logger interface
• small interface cleanups

CGA

• Increased CGA language version to 2016.0
• New CGA Operations
  • Added new operation splitArea. [CE-2106]
  • Added new operation softenNormals. [CE-1848]
  • Added new operation innerRectangle with alignment and remainder options. [CE-2566]
  • Added new primitive generation operations primitiveQuad, primitiveDisk, primitiveCube, primitiveSphere, primitiveCylinder and primitiveCone. [CE-2418, CE-2419]
• Changes to existing CGA operations
  • Updated insert operation [CE-2271]:
    • New parameter upAxisOfGeometry that specifies the up axis of the geometry.
    • New parameter insertMode that specifies the alignment and positioning of the geometry in the scope.
    • Also see deprecation list below.
  • setNormals operation:
    • New mode auto that uses softenNormals functionality. [CE-1848]
    • New mode conform that computes consistent normals. [CE-1849]
  • cleanupGeometry: Mode all/faces: All duplicate/inverse faces are removed except one (independent from orientation).
  • extrude operation
    • The parameter axisWorld is deprecated and changed to a parameter extrusionType
    • New types face.normal, vertex.normal, world.up and world.up.flatTop
    • The axes x, y, z, world.x, world.y and world.z are deprecated. Use type world.up instead of axis world.y.
  • roofGable, roofHip, roofPyramid and roofShed
    • Roofs can now be generated with a given height.
    • New parameter valueType to switch beetween a roof generation byAngle or byHeight.
• Deprecated Operations and Arguments
  • innerRect (replaced by innerRectangle)
  • Deprecations related to insert:
    • builtin:cube and builtin:cube:notex arguments for insert are replaced by new primitiveCube operation.
    • The usage of s(0,0,0) is deprecated in relation to insert. Use keepSizeAndPosition as insertMode instead.
• Bugfixes
  • cleanup, roofs, extrude: fixed vertex normal computation for rare cases [CE-2531]
  • roofShed operation: For shed roofs on shapes with one face no horizontal trim planes, hip, valley and ridge edges are now generated. This was already the case for shapes with more than one face.
  • scatter: fixes precision problem and fixed a crash
  • split, trim and insert operation: Fixed a bug that led to wrong results when vertices or edges lie in the respective split/trim plane.
  • geometry.isInstanced: Fixed for builtin primitives ("builtin:cube" and "builtin:cube:notex"). [CE-1566]
  • roofHip, roofGable: Fixed a bug that occured on rectangular shapes and led to a wrong shading due to double vertices.
  • roofShed: Fixed a bug that generated wrong shed roofs for shapes with more than one face, at least one hole and a non-zero edge index set. [CE-1562]
  • cleanupGeometry: Fixed an issue that prevented vertices to merge when they were the first vertex in a face. [CE-2531]
  • geometry.area and normal calculation became more accurate; floating point precision got improved in general.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New Encoders
  • Added Alembic encoder.
  • Added I3S (SPK) encoder.
  • Added TIFF texture encoder.
  • Added raw memory texture encoder. [CE-2471]
• Changes/Fixes to existing Codecs:
  • MTL Encoder: fixed wrong line feed character
  • ShapeAttributeEncoder: optimized performance of attribute handling. [CE-1837]

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Fixed a memory leak in prt::generateOccluders. [CE-2100]
• Fixed a memory leak in the comp split. [CE-2100]
• Fixed a memory leak in the prtx::EncodePreparator. [CE-1355]
• Fixed multiple memory leaks in prtx::Mesh.
• Fixed compiler firewall on RHEL.
• Fixed a bug where the logger reported events in the wrong log level.
• Fixed a crash on exit related to threading on OSX.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.4.2074 CHANGELOG

This section lists all changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.3.1969

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.4.2074 is used in CityEngine 2015.2

PRT API

• Added a new method releaseTransientBlob() to prt::Cache. This method must be called to release a pointer which was previously obtained with getTransientBlob() or insertAndGetTransientBlob().
• Fixed a race condition when releasing a cache pointer and flushing the cache at the same time.
• Added a new method logStats() to prt::SimpleOutputCallbacks which provides metadata about the written entities.
• Fixed version info of PRT dlls (windows only).
• Emit resolve warnings also for already cached assets.

PRTX API

• Added a texture atlas generator feature to prtx::EncodePreparator.
• Added support for a 'name' query to prtx::URI. This is also used to control the name of generated texture atlases.
• EncodePreparator
  • Fixed a bug where materials of instances could be mixed up.
  • Removed deprecated method EncodePreparator::add(const GeometryPtr&)
• Fixed value of the initialShape.startRule attribute
• Fixed a crash with style-prefixed shape attributes.

CGA

• No changes.

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• All Encoders
  • Added an option to enable output of export stats via the new logStats() callback.
  • Fixed validation of various encoder options (e.g. fixed missing min/max clamping).
  • Removed functionality to emit reports by default. Users should use the CGA Report Encoder (com.esri.prt.core.CGAReportEncoder) to emit reports.
• FBX decoder
  • Fixed reading of multiple uv sets.
  • Improved performance of FBX decoder.
• ShapeBuffer encoder
  • Fixed edge order. The first edge is now maintained.
• CityEngine WebScene encoder
  • Hardened validator against missing "layerGroup" option.
  • Fixed "enable materials" option.
  • Correctly filter out and report unsupported polygons.
• Renderman encoder
  • Replaced deprecated ObjectBegin/ObjectInstance with ObjectBeginV/ObjectInstanceV calls
  • Fixed numbering suffixes of exported RIB files.
  • Added support for bumpValue material attribute.
  • Fixed object mode: surface statement needs to be inside object
  • Updated built-in shader to support both archive and object mode.
  • Fixed material su,sv / tu,tv mix-up.
  • Do not emit texture extensions into RIBs.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.3.1969 CHANGELOG

This section lists all changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.3.1888

General Info

• CityEngine SDK 1.3.1969 is used in CityEngine 2015.1
• The API (prt/prtx) remains unchanged - therefore the minor version remains unchanged.

PRT API

• No changes.

PRTX API

• No changes.

CGA

• Fixed a numerical issue which led to misaligned faces after comp(f)

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• New decoder: added support for reading Autodesk FBX files
• Esri ShapeBuffer encoder
  • added support for writing the "polygon" buffer type
• CityEngine 3WS WebScene Encoder
  • Now includes layer names to uniquify object names, e.g. it is now possible to have identically named objects in different layers (e.g. House1.Wall and House2.Wall)
• All encoders:
  • Fixed a bug in the EncodePreparator where the final mesh and material lists could get out of sync.
  • Fixed a bug in object name processing: it now recognizes existing number suffices in object names.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.3.1888 CHANGELOG

This section lists all changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.2.1591.

General Info

• CE SDK 1.3.1888 is used in CityEngine 2015.0

PRT API

• fixed InitialShape::toXML()
• fixed error code in createDecoderInfo()
• fixed a crash in ResolveMapBuilder::toXML()

PRTX API

• texture: renamed the attribute "depth" to "bytesPerPixel"
• renamed Extension::getMinimalVersion to getVersion (major and minor number of an extension must exactly match)
• cleaned up builder interfaces in prtx:
  • replaced Builder, PRTBuilder, PRTXBuilder with Builder and SharedPtrBuilder
  • removed create() and createAndReset() methods for prtx builders

CGA

(Please also check the CGA change log in the CityEngine 2015.0 manual for details.)

• Changes:

  • New features:
    • getTreeKey function.
    • isNull function.
  • split operations:
    • Missing sizes are not allowed any longer
    • Functions in size expression do not need extra parantheses anymore.
  • @Hidden annotation: changed propagation across imports.A hidden import hides all its imports recursively.
  • "uid" shape attribute is now deprecated. Use the getTreeKey() function instead.

• Bug fixes:

  • Fixed a bug in the cgb decoder which failed to read compiled cga files with a large number of attributes/rules/splits.
  • Vertexmerger: fixed a bug which prevented hole vertices to be merged with vertices of other faces.
  • float() function: made string-to-float conversion independent of locale.
  • split operations: intensified internal mesh cleanup to reduce memory load, fixed a bug which led to undesired vertex-merges.
  • roofHip operation: avoid duplicate vertices.
  • offset, roofGable and roofHip operations: made offset / roof construction more stable on polygons with co-linear vertices and fixed a memory explosion bug.
  • cleanupGeometry operation: fixed bug which led to illegal material assignments ("filled holes rendering bug") on edge cleanup for geometries with per-face-materials.
  • Fixed undefined behaviour if the same name was used for a scalar attribute and a map attribute.
  • CGA compiler: Parameteric rules and functions with a large number of parameters do not hang the CGA compiler anymore.
  • offset, roofGable, roofHip and roofShed operations: made the handling of polygons with holes more stable for illegal holes (hole vertices identical to vertices of enclosing polygon resulted in hangers - fixed).

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

• Fixed CGA report encoding in OBJ, FBX, DAE, VUE and Renderman encoders
• Shapebuffer encoder:
  • fixed handling of textures with an alpha channel
  • introduced "generateModels" and "encodeInitialShapes" encoder options
  • removed "errorFallback" encoder option
• prtx::NamePreparator : sped up name preparator method legalizeAndUniquify()
• Image encode: fixed buffer allocation for resizing + float-byte conversion
• GDAL Texture Decoder: don't turn 8bit gray into rgb
• GDAL Texture Encoder: don't turn 8/16bit gray into rgb
• Added a TIFFEncoder

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Licensing: disable debugger detection (allow process startup with debugger already attached)
• Performance optimizations to speed up prt::generate()
• Reworked and optimized internal multi-threading ("numberWorkerThreads" entry in generateOptions argument of prt::generate())

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.2.1591 CHANGELOG

This section lists all changes compared to CityEngine SDK 1.1.1471.

General Info

• CE SDK 1.2.1591 is used in CityEngine 2014.1

PRT API

New Features

• New method "prt::InitialShapeBuilder::resolveAttributes" to read attributes from assets (if the decoder supports it).

Changes to existing Features

• Version structure: now contains CGA Compiler (CGAC) version and architecture.

PRTX API

• EncodePreparator: Added support for collecting CGA reports.
• Added customizable support for collecting CGA reports from the shape tree.

CGA

(Please also check the CGA change log in the CityEngine 2014.1 manual for details.)

• Changes:

  • new Features:
    • deleteHoles() operation
    • geometry.nHoles function
    • geometry.isClosedSurface function
    • listTerminate function
  • Hole support: all operations and Collada reader support polygons with holes now and many bugfixes.
  • color operation: support for setting opacity.
  • Better support for nonplanar polygons (interpolate instead of planarize).
  • Better support for texture coordinates and vertex normals (interpolate instead of delete).
  • Increased defaults for recursion detection.
  • Made float-to-string conversion independent of locale.

• Bug fixes:

  • Made convexify operation more consistant.
  • Fixed points/edge support in alignScopeToGeometry operation.
  • Fixed some cases which led to open volumes in envelope operation.
  • Fixed memory leak in setback and shape{L|U|O} operations.
  • Fixed nan handling in a number of operations.
  • Fixed non-';'-terminated string lists handling in listRange function.
  • AssetErrors: report warnings from geometry conversion of inserted assets

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

All Encoders

• Added support for lines and points to EncodePreparator.
• EncodePreparator: decreased default texture coordinate merge tolerance to 1e-4 to avoid UV precision issues on large objects.
• Renamed encoder option "exportContent" (enum) to "errorFallback" (boolean) and hide it per default. The option "errorFallback" is now a requirement for CityEngine-compatible encoders.
• Correctly pass on exceptions if generation error fall-back is turned off.

All Decoders

• Fixed resolve map key construction for secondary resources (e.g. for OBJ -> MTL -> texture files).

ShapeBuffer Encoder

• Renamed from "Multipatch Encoder".
• Added support for PolylineZ, Point and MultiPoint shape buffer types.
• Added support for encoding leaf shapes (new per-layer option "featureGranularity").
• Added support for per-leaf-shape reporting.
• Added new boolean option "emitReports" to control output of CGA reports.

Collada Decoder

• Fixed texture lookup regression if image path is prefixed with "./".
• Avoid second parsing pass if first pass encounters fatal errors.

Collada Encoder

• Switched to double precision to avoid geometry precision errors.

WebScene Encoder

• Fixed precision and rounding issues for initial shape metadata attributes and CGA reports.
• Added new options for vertex/normal/texture coordinate merge tolerances.
• Do not create webscenes with no objects (illegal), but throw a STATUS_ILLEGAL_GEOMETRY StatusException.
• Do not create webscenes with INF extends (illegal), but throw a STATUS_ILLEGAL_GEOMETRY StatusException.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Fixed a race condition in unknown texture / geometry handling.
• Fixed empty mesh handling (bad_alloc).
• Fixed illegal memory access in internal mesh data structure.

ESRI CITYENGINE SDK 1.1.1471 CHANGELOG

This section lists all changes compared to CE SDK release 1.0.1209.

General Info

• CE SDK 1.1.1471 is used in CityEngine 2014.0
• New officially supported Linux platform: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 (and compatible)

PRT API

New Features

• Added support for multiple texture coordinate sets in prt::InitialShapeBuilder.
• Added prt::StringUtils namespace with methods to help with string encoding.
• Added support for generic initial shape attributes:
  • Introduced the "/enc/metaData" namespace in prt::InitialShapeBuilder to store generic shape attributes.
  • Added support for client-specified ordering of generic initial shape attributes.

Changes to existing Features

• createResolveMap(): unpack to filesystem feature: unpacking directory must be explicitly specified.
• Switched vertex order of holes: holes are opposite to encircling face now.
• Changed signature of listEncoders() / listDecoders() (analogous to toXML()).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed multiple threading issues, e.g. in prt::init().
• Fixed a bug where the API was in an undefined state after license handle destruction.
• createResolveMap(): unpack to filesystem feature:
  • URIs in the resolve map were not percent-encoded.
  • Fixed handling of RPK entries with non-ansi/ascii characters.
• Fixed error/status handling on all toXML() implementations.
• Fixed a bug in prt::encodeTexture() where width/height/format metadata was lost.

Misc

• Improved const correctness.

PRTX API

New Features

• Added support for "data:" URIs in prtx::URI and prtx::URIUtils.

Changes to existing Features

• prtx::ShapeUtils::getRuleParameters() and ShapeUtils::getRuleArguments() swapped.
• Switched vertex order of holes: holes are opposite to encircling face now.

Bug Fixes

• prtx::ShapeUtils::getGeometryToWorldTrafo(): fixed precision issues.
• Fixed various issues in prtx::URI related to path handling.
• Fixed a bug in prtx::TextureBuilder where width/height/format metadata was lost.

Misc

• Improved const correctness.
• Improved prtx::MeshBuilder consistency checks.

CGA Operations

(Please also check the CGA change log in the CityEngine 2014.0 manual for details.)

New Features

• Improved hole support in:
  • offset() operation
  • roof operations
• setback() operation: new syntax and selectors for selecting edges based on their uv coordinates.
• tileUV() operation: textureWidth or the textureHeight parameter protection.

Changes to existing Features

• rule file "import" command: attr value propagation logic simplified

Bug Fixes

• General import issues
• Imported 'attribute protection' issues
• General attribute sampling issues
• Asset import path issues
• Asset lookup function issues
• fileSearch():
  • returning relative instead of absolute paths
  • spaces in quotes broken
  • crash in fileSearch() due to illegal regexp
• Initial shape attribute values wrong in const / attr functions
• comp() selector issues
• imageInfo() crashes
• imagesSortRatio() crashes
• geometry.angle() broken

Built-In Codecs Changes and Fixes

WebScene Encoder

• Fixed object offset bugs (increased precision of transformations and geo-reference values).
• Fixed a bug where JSON floating point values were written with the wrong decimal separation character depending on the current system locale.
• Fixed validation of required initial shape attributes.

Multipatch Encoder/Decoder

• Added option to triangulate meshes.
• Fixed conversion of vertex normals from/to y-up/z-up.
• Corrected material transparency and shininess ranges to 0..100 (was 0..255).
• Performance improvement (internal caching of re-used textures).

Collada Encoder

• Added optional encoding of CGA reports into Collada <extra> tags.
• Improved encoding performance.

OBJ Encoder

• Fixed mesh size estimation for memory budget export.
• Performance improvements (increased buffer size for write callbacks).

OBJ Decoder

• Fixed whitespace handling (lines with tabs have not been read correctly).
• Fixed an error if referenced MTL file paths start with "./"

Texture Codecs

• Fixed a crash when handling non-8bit textures
• Fixed a bug where texture metadata was not properly carried through the system.
• Fixed incorrect creation of JPEG images from texture data with alpha channel.
• Improved texture scaling/resampling.

Various Codecs

• Streamlined encoder option naming.
• Fixed storage of encoder UI icons.
• Increased robustness and fault tolerance.

Misc Changes and Fixes

• Fixed various memory leaks and static initialization issues.
• Improved licensing error handling.
• Fixed misleading warnings when trying to load a potential prt extension shared library.
• Added version checks to avoid loading of inconsistent plugins.
• Improved reference documentation for classes and built-in codecs.
• Added various application notes to documentation.
• Added CGA reference documentation based on CityEngine.
• Windows only: removed dependency on "dbghelp.dll" to simplify client code debugging.
• Factored out version of released SDK into version.properties file to simplify integration into external build systems.
• Added CGA compiler version checks to CGBDecoder and improved handling of CGB illegal files
• Increased Linux GCC compiler requirement to GCC 4.4.7 (RHEL 6.4) for extension development.