Request for Project Use Cases

[gkjohnson]

I'm looking for people who have used / are using TilesRenderer who can share their use cases & any screenshots or demos if you can. Or if you're planning to use it for something that would be useful, as well. I'd like to share how the library has benefitted other applications with NASA JPL to help bolster the case for some more open source work.

@Gmadges @usefulthink @jesse-small - I know it's been awhile since you've contributed to the project but if you can share any details about your work that would be great.

@Desplandis @jailln @AnthonyGlt - I know you guys are working on ITowns but can you provide some more context for how 3D Tiles support will benefit you? Does everyone working on ITowns work at the same company? Or are there different organizations that are planning to use this?

Thanks for your help!

[jo-chemla]

Sharing here the feedback I posted under your twitter ping for posterity:

Here is a link to a demo-scene on the Sacré-Coeur, Paris + a few screens where we use Google 3D Cities as background + comparison of before/after with our 3d-scans (copc/potree/3dtiles)

First: potree ptc UTM 31N + Google 3DTiles ECEF 4978
Second: IGN COPC LAMB93 + gsplat 31N by mkkellogg viewer

We also do export our datasets as 3d-tiles datasets, rendered on the web with 3dTilesRendererJS, but none are public as of yet - working on that!

Our interest with your lib vs NYTimesRD/three-loader-3dtiles based on loadersgl/deckgl and CesiumJS is we managed to make a wrapper for r3f pmndrs/drei (still have to release that!). Participations we'd like to help design include:

• Blender 3dtiles streaming
• Gather Open data 3dtiles tilesest
• Multi-CRS tilesets
• Foveated rendering
• 3d-tiles-tools mergeJson
• .3dtiles package support

Regarding multi-CRS-es datasets, here is a simple hacky impl. we use to have multiple datasets in a single scene, each with coords expressed in its own CRS: computeCrsTransform here, transforming coordinates of origin+3 axes from one CRS (EPSG:4978 for google 3D-tiles) - similar to your setLatLonToYUp, but more generic, difference in this thread

Finally a quick opinion on 3dtiles edition/production: the ecosystem still lacks an open-source solution to tile massive meshes (when there exists tilers from pointclouds to 3dtiles format), and edition is still pretty hard - no propagation of meshes edits, holes filling, triangles deletion, to every level of the tileset.

Quick note regarding iTowns: from my understanding, it was initially a project powered by french IGN (National Geographic Institute) accepting external contributions, like ones from Oslandia. Folks at oslandia then decided to fork the project and launch Giro3d probably to get a better voice at the steering of the viewer.

[LoicUTC]

@airnez, @AnthonyGlt , @jailln and I work at Ciril GROUP, within the Business Geografic entity. Business Geografic is a software publisher mainly providing solutions for French local governments. We develop a 2D and 3D GIS no-code application generator containing maps and numerous GIS functionalities like styling, metadata search, data viz, etc.

Initially, we used Cesium, but we’ve now switched to iTowns, where we are main contributors and co-lead the project with IGN (cc @Desplandis ). iTowns, as you know, is an open-source software that we are working to expand within a community, aiming to position it as a competitor to Cesium and MapBox. The project is gaining momentum, with other companies, such as Sogelink and Carl Berger-Levrault, adopting it for their use cases. I’ll let them know your request and tell them to share their specific usecases as well.
As a side note, Oslandia decided a few years ago to leave this open-source initiative, forking iTowns and developing their own alternative, Giro3D.

Regarding our own use cases, we have chosen to adopt the OGC 3D Tiles format as the main 3D input format in our software solution, so our clients must provide data in this format. A few months ago, we've decided to contribute to 3DTilesRendererJS (thanks for your great work by the way!) and migrate to this library within iTowns to combine our efforts to manage this format properly together.

It’s not easy for us to provide detailed use cases since they are generally private to our clients. However, 3D Tiles datasets are generally used by our clients as a component to build digital twins with our software. For instance, Toulouse Métropole (a charming city in France) aims at creating a digital twin by modeling the city in 3D (with 3D Tiles 1.1 datasets) for visualization, for data consultation, and simulation purposes essentially.

Credits : Toulouse Métropole

Here is a screenshot of another city, Lille Metropole, in 3D Tiles displayed with iTowns (and 3DTilesRendererJS) in our software:

Credits : Métropole Européene de Lille. 3D Open data Mesh.

Of course some of our clients also have 3D Tiles point clouds and couple them with other data sources like with realtime building extrusion:

And also with classes :

As we develop a comprehensive GIS sofware, not limited for 3D features vizualisation alone but also combined with 2D view as you can see here :

Credits :Parc Chartreuse

The reality is that while visualization is one aspect, efficient tools for generating data in this 3D Tiles format are not yet well understood, integrated, or easy to use by local governments themselves.

Thanks a lot for your work on 3DTilesRendererJS. Ciril Group and iTowns folks will continue to contribute to this open source project.

Cheers

[gkjohnson]

Thank you for the screenshots and detailed descriptions guys!

@LoicUTC

The project is gaining momentum, with other companies, such as Sogelink and Carl Berger-Levrault, adopting it for their use cases. I’ll let them know your request and tell them to share their specific usecases as well.

Thanks for passing it on - I'm interested to hear more about the other use cases, as well.

efficient tools for generating data in this 3D Tiles format are not yet well understood, integrated, or easy to use by local governments themselves.

If you guys have any lists of tools used (free or paid) for generating 3d tile sets I'd be interested to hear what you're using. Most of my experience has been with internal JPL tooling for this stuff. Perhaps we can provide a list to end users for how to generate tile sets.

[jailln]

If you guys have any lists of tools used (free or paid) for generating 3d tile sets I'd be interested to hear what you're using. Most of my experience has been with internal JPL tooling for this stuff. Perhaps we can provide a list to end users for how to generate tile sets.

We're mainly using py3dtilers that supports input formats like CityGML, geojson, obj and ifc. We're also using py3dtiles (on which py3dtilers is built) for point cloud data sets. We also ocasionally use pg2b3dm.

[jo-chemla]

Just added last week an open-data section to cesium 3d-tiles Resources, which also lists Generators which seem to be what your last questino is about. Regarding commercial licenses that do generate 3d-tiles for massive mesh data, we have been using the following commercial photogrammetric suites over the years

• Bentley ContextCapture, which was among the first to support 3d-tiles export as early as 2016, has been acquired by Bentley Systems in 2015, which also just acquired Cesium after the spin-off from AGI
• Agisoft Metashape/Photoscan, 3D-tiles export support for meshes in 2018
• RealityCapture (Capturing Reality has been bought by Epic Games in 2021), 3D-tiles export around 2021
• and Cesium Ion, which offers both on-premise/self-hosted tiler and service.
• There are also converters from ESRI I3S to OGC 3D-Tiles

Unlike for massive meshes, multiple open-source tilers do exist for pointclouds (as well as 2.5D terrain), as well as converters between various flavors of 3d-tiles/I3S. like

• the above py3dtiles tooling supported by oslandia,
• the converter classes by loadersgl
• or Kitware VTK 3d-tiles generation
• a good toolbox assembling multiple tools like py3dtiles and postgis: geosolutions-it/digital-twin-toolbox
• IGN team recently published source code for lcaraffa/sparkling-wasure, to produce 3d-tiles for massively parallel pointcloud-to-mesh reconstruction on the Lidar-HD dataset

[jesse-small]

I work at VEERUM as a full stack developer. VEERUM is a software company that focuses on online 3D data visualization and interaction. Our primary product is DigitalTWIN which allows users to upload reality scans, design files and metadata such as equipment information, scheduling or process documentation to a visual environment.

DigitalTWIN focuses on rendering point clouds, as well as 3d-tiles for CAD and reality scan models. Users can also create custom 3D objects to reference equipment, plans or notes about on-going projects and construction. Our system pulls in client data to create a visual representation of a user’s facility or site. Using a combination of point clouds, 3d-tiles and panoramic photos, we can show visualizations and comparisons between design and reality.

We have developed the VEERUM Viewer which uses ThreeJS to render our visualizations and created custom APIs for additional tools such as measurements, object creation, visual effects, clipping and spatial search capabilities. The 3d-tiles library is used to render our 3d-tiles and we have integrated it into our project in order to support the tools listed above.

We use 3d-tiles for CAD representations so users can easily visualize their designs files and compare them to captured reality scans in real time. This can help ensure projects stay on track and monitor progress without that person needing to be on site.

3d-tiles can also be used as custom “Equipment” objects so users can import their own models to represent equipment for planning such as cranes or scaffolding.

We also offer another product called 3DVAULT that focuses on the storage of large data files and providing visualization options for common data formats. We support additional viewers such as IFC, OBJ, FBX, PDF, etc. But this product also includes the same VEERUM Viewer to provide viewing of point clouds and 3d-tiles.

[gkjohnson]

Amazing! Thanks @jesse-small, this looks great - to be clear, the point cloud scenes rendered in the above screenshots are rendered with 3d tiles?