Adding Dataset tutorial - Melbourne - can't zoom in as normal

Hi Roger

Great to know that you were able to resolve the issue. If I were to guess, you were in the editor mode and had to change the camera movement speed?

I ask so that future visitors to the forum who may run into the issue find the solution, as well as any documentation we can improve in the tutorials.

CC Alex @agallegos

Thanks
Shehzan

Hi Shehzan,

Yes, that was it partially, but it was mainly that the right mouse key needed to be depressed and then use the wasd keys. I think since I am not a gamer the default attempt
to zoom in is to just scroll in and out. Non gamers may have that zoom method so ingrained into their heads that to think to press the right mouse key down AND use the wasd keys takes some more trial and error to understand. Maybe a mention of how the 2 systems zoom would be beneficial. Especially if the AEC and other non gaming industries are quickly getting into using gaming engine software for their needs.

Cheers and thank you for getting back to me. If I may while I have your eyes for a few minutes more hopefully, ask 3 questions I have lingering; 1) at the end of the Adding Dataset tutorial-Step 6 things started to get into more in-depth terminology that I as a new to Unreal and Cesium and non programmer person did not understand.

Currently, loading local quantized-mesh terrain files using Cesium for Unreal is not supported. However, terrain assets can be loaded from any server, including localhost. To load terrain assets completely offline, consider setting up a localhost to serve the terrain. The Url field can be filled using the same steps as above with http://localhost:portNumber/terrainAsset.

It made me think that going forward with the Cesium / Unreal tutorials were going to leave me in the dust. I hope that this is not the case. I really need to be able to get my aerial ortho’s into Cesium and into Unreal and this leads me to my 2nd question: Will Cesium also work directly with Twinmotion or Reality Capture? or is there a plan to have Cesium work directly with Twinmotion or Reality Capture?

Last question for now, is if I have a 360 interior model file of a building that I had constructed out of 360 2:1 images that I took, can that file be brought into Cesium and overlay the photogrammetry in a way that the user could still enter that building? The url /link to this file is: Metareal Tour
If you require the photogrammetry drone imagery file I would be able to supply it. (Hamilton, Canada area)

thank you very much for your assistance. Very much appreciated.

Roger

Hi Shehzan,

In the "Place Objects on hte globe " tutorial section, under the Culling piece, it says

To avoid these problems, we can disable view-frustum culling for tilesets that are important for physics, shadows, and other purposes. Click the Cesium3DTileset in the World Outliner, find the Cesium → Tile Culling section in the Details panel, and uncheck Enable Frustum Culling.

Is the Cesium3D Tileset actually the actor we were told to title “LocalTileset” or is the text incorrect and the graphic correct which indicates the Cesium World Terrain actor?

I was thinking that by unchecking “Enable Frustrum Culling” would make a shadow disappear if it was coming from behind my location and forward past me. It doesn’t seem to do that. I positioned myself in front of the cone I added so that I was in its shadow but unchecking the EFC box had no impact. Can you tell me what effect I should be seeing?

Thank you

Roger

Hi @Roger_Stermann1,

I’ll take over for @Shehzan_Mohammed here, as I typically edit the learning content. Thanks so much for your feedback - we absolutely want to make sure that the learning content is accessible for everyone and free of errors. I’ll respond more thoroughly to your questions a little later today, but I wanted to let you know that I’m looking in to your concerns!

Thanks Alex. Much appreciated and look forward to learning the Cesium app!

Roger

The wording of this section is definitely more technical. The tutorials following this one ideally are not as complex, but user feedback is super important for making sure that the onboarding process is smooth. If you discover other stumbling blocks in the learning content sequence, please let me know! I’ll see what I can do to clarify sections.

Reality Capture currently supports uploading to Cesium ion. If you upload a mesh-based file, you should be able to import it in to Unreal. (point clouds are not supported yet.) I am not aware of any plans involving Twinmotion, but if that’s something you’d like to see in the future, let us know!

To clarify, is this file a 3D model, or a series of 360 degree images? If it is a 3D model, it should be relatively straightforward to place the model inside of the photogrammetry and allow the user to view the inside of the building. You would need to import the file in to Unreal Engine and place it in the scene manually (Or, if it’s a supported file type, upload it to Cesium ion and import it to Unreal), then build some functionality to allow the user to switch between the interior and the exterior.

If the file is a series of images, I suspect it will be more complex - you’d have to rebuild the functionality for the user to switch between viewpoints. I haven’t seen anything in Unreal Engine that would allow you to quickly create a similar interactive experience as the one you linked, but if you are prepared to get involved with Blueprints or C++ code, it’s definitely doable. Here’s a link to get you started - 360 panoramic photo in a spherical mesh like on street view - #6 by UnreaLhorizon - XR Development - Epic Developer Community Forums

The tileset used in this example could be any tileset at all, but would have the greatest impact on complex tilesets like Cesium World Terrain or imported photogrammetry. You can see the effects most easily in a scene like the Melbourne photogrammetry described in the Adding Datasets tutorial. If you move the camera to be among the buildings, you should be able to notice the effects of enabling and disabling Frustrum Culling.
When Enable Frustrum Culling is checked on a tileset, the tiles that are far enough out of view should disappear, and they should no longer cast shadows in the scenario you described.
When Enable Frustrum Culling is unchecked, all the tiles should stay loaded, and cast shadows even when not in view.
This setting has to be set on a per-tileset basis- if you have multiple tilesets in the scene, they will each follow their own settings, and the setting won’t have an effect on objects that are not tilesets. If your tileset only consists of a cone, it might not be culled at all since the file is so small.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

-Alex

Roger_Stermann1:

at the end of the Adding Dataset tutorial-Step 6 things started to get into more in-depth terminology that I as a new to Unreal and Cesium and non programmer person did not understand.

The wording of this section is definitely more technical. The tutorials following this one ideally are not as complex, but user feedback is super important for making sure that the onboarding process is smooth. If you discover other stumbling blocks in the learning content sequence, please let me know! I’ll see what I can do to clarify sections.

I’ve made my way to the global scenes with sublevels tutorial but I ran into problems there and need to redo it at least once if not twice to understand how to create folders and levels in the correct locations. They don’t seem to allow dragging and dropping from the original location-lol. I’m having a little difficulty understanding where levels and sublevels reside and where I have to be positioned in the software to create them in the right location / level.

Roger_Stermann1:

Will Cesium also work directly with Twinmotion or Reality Capture? or is there a plan to have Cesium work directly with Twinmotion or Reality Capture?

Reality Capture currently supports uploading to Cesium ion. If you upload a mesh-based file, you should be able to import it in to Unreal. (point clouds are not supported yet.) I am not aware of any plans involving Twinmotion, but if that’s something you’d like to see in the future, let us know!

Ok, that’s definitely better than a ‘no’ which I was expecting. Silly Q1: How do I know a file is ‘mesh based’? Yes, I would love to have Cesium/RealityCapture/Twinmotion be integrated tightly. Twinmotion for AEC and environmental uses I see as a growing area . Twinmotion because of it’s relative simplicity. As you probably are aware, there is tight integration bw TM and Revit, Sketchup and other cad based sw.

Roger_Stermann1:

I have a 360 interior model file of a building that I had constructed out of 360 2:1 images that I took, can that file be brought into Cesium and overlay the photogrammetry in a way that the user could still enter that building?

To clarify, is this file a 3D model, or a series of 360 degree images? If it is a 3D model, it should be relatively straightforward to place the model inside of the photogrammetry and allow the user to view the inside of the building. You would need to import the file in to Unreal Engine and place it in the scene manually (Or, if it’s a supported file type, upload it to Cesium ion and import it to Unreal), then build some functionality to allow the user to switch between the interior and the exterior.

If the file is a series of images, I suspect it will be more complex - you’d have to rebuild the functionality for the user to switch between viewpoints. I haven’t seen anything in Unreal Engine that would allow you to quickly create a similar interactive experience as the one you linked, but if you are prepared to get involved with Blueprints or C++ code, it’s definitely doable. Here’s a link to get you started - https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/360-panoramic-photo-in-a-spherical-mesh-like-on-street-view/107028/6

This is a 3D model. What file types is Cesium supporting at this time?

Roger_Stermann1:

Is the Cesium3D Tileset actually the actor we were told to title “LocalTileset” or is the text incorrect and the graphic correct which indicates the Cesium World Terrain actor?

The tileset used in this example could be any tileset at all, but would have the greatest impact on complex tilesets like Cesium World Terrain or imported photogrammetry. You can see the effects most easily in a scene like the Melbourne photogrammetry described in the Adding Datasets tutorial. If you move the camera to be among the buildings, you should be able to notice the effects of enabling and disabling Frustrum Culling.
When Enable Frustrum Culling is checked on a tileset, the tiles that are far enough out of view should disappear, and they should no longer cast shadows in the scenario you described.
When Enable Frustrum Culling is unchecked, all the tiles should stay loaded, and cast shadows even when not in view.
This setting has to be set on a per-tileset basis- if you have multiple tilesets in the scene, they will each follow their own settings, and the setting won’t have an effect on objects that are not tilesets. If your tileset only consists of a cone, it might not be culled at all since the file is so small.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

-Alex

Strange, I must be doing something out of joint as I positioned myself with my back to the ‘cone’ actor we placed into the tileset tutorial and in it’s shadow and turned on and off the ‘enable frustrum culling’ checkbox thinking I would see the shadow disappear, but it never did. If you get what I am trying to describe , any thoughts on what I am missing?

Thanks!

Roger

Hi Roger,

Cesium supports the following 3D model types:

Wavefront OBJ .obj
Filmbox .fbx
Digital Asset Exchange .dae
glTF .gltf
Binary glTF .glb

If your file is any of the above filetypes, you should be able to use it with Cesium ion and Cesium for Unreal.
Check out this guide for instructions on uploading 3D model files to Cesium ion. You can geolocate your model as described on that page so that it will be in the right place when you open it in Unreal.

Regarding the cone actor and frustrum culling, unless you uploaded a model of a cone to cesium ion and added it to the scene that way, the cone you placed in the previous tutorials is not a tileset and won’t work with Frustrum Culling. It’s likely a static mesh, which is a different kind of actor and obeys different rules. Something like a cone generally doesn’t need to be turned into a tileset, but can be if needed in a similar way to the guide I linked in the previous paragraph.

Let me know if that helps!

-Alex

Thanks Alex,

I think all the more relevant information the better will help me as its all new
and I definitely will not yet know what even to ask for or about.
So as this goes, I just hope to be fine tuning down to more specifics.
Once I can get the georeferencing down (not an easy thing I know)
of the varying datasets and the layout of Unreal and Cesium will be a very good day.

Cheers and talk to you soon Im sure. You’re time is most appreciated

Roger

Ya, Alex,
so I actually just read your information on the static mesh and tilesets. That is a perfect example of something I had no idea about. Not even what a static mesh is.

Are Actors basically either static meshes and tilesets or is there a host more of other actor types ? ESRI calls their tilesets I3S’s i think.

Cheers,
Roger

Hi Roger,

There are indeed a wide variety of Actor types. I recommend visiting the Unreal documentation to learn more about Actors.

If you’re totally new to Unreal Engine, it might be worth going through some non-Cesium tutorials to learn how to use Unreal. While we try to make our tutorials accessible to everyone, other sources can teach about the fundamental building blocks of Unreal Engine better than we can as we try to explain using the Cesium for Unreal plugin. There are a ton of tutorials out there, both in video format and text-based. My personal recommendation is Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial for Beginners: Getting Started | raywenderlich.com. That site has been very helpful to me in learning Unreal, and has a range of tutorials from basic to more niche topics.

I hope that helps!
Alex

Thank you Alex for the information.

I actually do get Ray’s stuff. I seem to have opted for Unreal Sensei at the moment but I always travel back and forth to see how various instructors teach certain topics.
I have done quite a bit so far but Unreal Sensei doesn’t get much into the geospatial side of things at least not in the beginning. Does Ray?

Thanks again,
Roger

Hi Alex,

If I use Cesium to bring in my drone aerial orthoimagery into Unreal can I then take it into Twinmotion? Would you know that kind of information?
Thanks very much.
Roger

Hi Roger,

I’m afraid I have not worked with Twinmotion at all and can’t advise on that. It’s worth a shot - if you decide to experiment, please let me know how it goes!

Best,
Alex

thanks for letting me know Alex.

Cheers,
Roger

Hi Roger,

You may also find this webinar useful. It shows a workflow using Twinmotion, Unreal, and the Cesium for Unreal plugin (albeit a pre-release version). At around the 15:30 mark they set up an example scene. This webinar doesn’t address bringing Cesium data into Twinmotion, but still may be helpful for understanding that workflow.

-Alex

Very nice Alex. Thank you for this webinar. Ill be making notes. Every piece helps especially at this stage.

Roger

Haha, I recorded this same webinar in June. Lol.

I really appreciate you thinking to send me it. If you have any Reality Capture webinars as well and happen to think about who would like to see them, I would!

Cheers,
Rog

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