Now available: the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In.

Now Available: Cesium Design Tiler and Add-In for Autodesk Revit

Cesium for Omniverse v0.24.0

Cesium for Unity Samples v1.14.1

CesiumJS 1.125

3D Tiles

On any given Sunday, Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles are used to orient and immerse FOX Sports' football fans.

Atlanta to Hollywood on FOX NFL SUNDAY. Courtesy FOX Sports.

FOX NFL SUNDAY Atlanta to Hollywood

For FOX NFL SUNDAY, the XR team builds virtual 3D cities to highlight team locations and then fly to the studio in Los Angeles, where the crew of analysts and Hall-of-Famers comments on the matchups of the day. These immersive 3D models are a new feature this season, enabling FOX Sports to visualize specific skylines and customize them with lighting and atmosphere each week for the best production quality and value. Designed for city scale, Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles show viewers the details they would encounter in the real world and reduce FOX’s need to acquire data in other ways.

FOX Sports' XR team uses Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to build virtual 3D cities to highlight game locations, like the Steelers-Falcons matchup in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Courtesy FOX Sports.

The NFL's 32 teams have 30 full-time stadiums and cities among them, plus the occasional international trip. Because Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles pull from Google's extensive high-resolution imagery, FOX Sports is well covered with game locations, and draping this imagery over 3D mesh and formatting it as 3D Tiles provides accurate geospatial context for fans, optimized for streaming for the on-air graphics team.

FOX Sports' XR specialists combine Photorealistic 3D Tiles; their own 2D imagery; and 3D models of clouds, water, watercraft, and hand-modeled trees in Unreal Engine, fusing these disparate datasets of varying sizes, georeferencing them, and streaming them via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unreal. Fans see a polished, realistic scene that seamlessly transitions to commentators in the studio.

“In the past, we’ve used aerial imagery, but we have not encountered a tool that has allowed us as much flexibility and detail as Cesium. We put a high value on our production quality, bringing out the most in our brand,” said Zac Fields, SVP of Graphic Technology at FOX Sports. “Beyond a cool visual, it’s very informative, showing cities around the world with context.”

After seeing the matchup location, the viewer flies to the studio in Los Angeles. Courtesy FOX Sports.

FOX NFL SUNDAY airs at 12 p.m. ET. Fields plans to extend the Cesium/Google combo to other sports, like international soccer and Major League Baseball. 

Learn to add Photorealistic 3D Tiles to your Unreal Engine project, and bring both art and information to your viewers.

Cesium Orients and Informs FOX Sports Football Fans

We are pleased to announce the release of the Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In. This release provides new tools to improve workflows and provide new capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context.

The Cesium Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In are now available.

Cesium Design Tiler

These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets. 

The Design Tiler and Revit Add-In provide easier, more efficient workflows for sharing your design data via the web or other visualization platforms like Unreal Engine, Unity, and NVIDIA Omniverse. By incorporating Cesium and 3D Tiles, you are now able to quickly and easily share your data, making it more accessible while also creating more performant applications.

The new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In improve workflows and capabilities that place AECO content in a 3D geospatial context.

Benefit of streaming AECO designs via 3D Tiles

3D Tiles is an open standard for streaming massive, heterogeneous, 3D geospatial data, such as global terrain, entire 3D City models, and high resolution reality data captured from drones, LiDAR scanners, and mobile devices.

3D Tiles optimizes the streaming of complex design and geospatial data providing high performance visualization.

3D Tiles Visualization

3D Tiles are efficient for global data sets like Cesium World Terrain and Google’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles, as well as complex CAD/BIM data with hundreds of thousands of individual features and millions of individual triangles. By leveraging 3D Tiles, your complex design models can now be streamed efficiently to any number of 3D viewers that show your site within its geospatial context. For example, when streaming design data as 3D Tiles with Cesium for Unreal, there are 80-90% fewer draw calls and a 50% faster framerate compared to using untiled static meshes.

The Design Tiler, accessible through Cesium ion’s user interface or via API, adds the ability to quickly and easily convert from IFC to 3D Tiles. IFC is an open standard developed by buildingSMART International that is widely adopted across AECO and BIM. 

The Design Tiler ingests IFC data including entities, metadata, and the underlying parent and child relationships inherent in the IFC data structures. The initial release of the Design Tiler supports most IFC Geometry Types, Entity metadata and embedded geospatial information. We have been working with large federated IFC models containing over 100 individual building models, over 4 million individual objects and in excess of 800 million mesh triangles, all being performantly streamed via 3D Tiles. 

IFC Data model converted to 3D Tiles, manually positioned in Boston, MA, and combined with Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles. Source - BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International, accessible via Github.

With this new tiling capability, you can easily drag and drop your IFC data into your Cesium ion account. The resulting data will be converted to 3D Tiles making it accessible as an asset for streaming into CesiumJS, our runtime integrations with Unreal, Unity, or NVIDIA Omniverse, or any other system that supports 3D Tiles v1.1. If your IFC data contains embedded coordinate reference system information, Cesium will use this information to place the 3D Tiles in the correct location on the globe. If this information is not available, you can use the Cesium ion 3D Tiles Location Editor to quickly and easily set its position, rotation, and scale on the globe. 

Through our AECO Tech Preview Program, Trendspek was given early access to the Design Tiler. Trendspek provides a suite of tools that empower owners, engineers, and contractors to manage infrastructure across the entire asset lifecycle using CesiumJS. Josh Sinclair, Head of Product at Trendspek, said, “The LoD generation is far superior to any BIM conversion tool we have used in the past. The output looks great.” With the Design Tiler, the Trendspek team was able to incorporate BIM data to communicate proposed remedial works packages to their users. 

Trendspek has been able to quickly incorporate BIM as 3D Tiles alongside a reality capture model in their inspection application which uses CesiumJS.

With support for IFC, 3D Tiles can now be generated from a wide range of AECO verticals, including architecture, structural engineering, and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) designs. With IFC data as 3D Tiles, there is greater performance, increased interoperability, and less manual effort to optimize this rich content for viewing and distribution.

Complementing the release of the Design Tiler, the Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In is now available. This Add-In provides a simple process to upload your current 3D View directly to Cesium ion as 3D Tiles. The Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In connects directly to your existing Cesium ion account and leverages the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles. This Add-In is available free and open source under the Apache 2.0 License.

The Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In connects directly to your existing Cesium ion account and leverages the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles.

Autodesk Revit to Cesium ion December 2024

The conversion process is configurable, allowing you to export visible geometry and textures along with all element parameters as metadata to 3D Tiles. The Revit Add-in allows AECO teams to send performant, interactive digital twins to partners over the web or into native runtime engines like Unreal Engine, Unity, or NVIDIA Omniverse via Cesium ion. The conversion and upload to Cesium ion is done transparently, letting architects and other AECO professionals focus on their designs and workflows.

View your Revit models anywhere in the world with accurate geospatial context.

The open source Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In continues our commitment to openness and interoperability. Download the Add-In directly from the Autodesk App Store, the Cesium downloads page, or the GitHub repo.

The addition of the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In provides a new set of tools for improving workflows that increase the accessibility and interoperability of your design data via open standards. These tools allow you to make your data available quickly and easily by leveraging open standards, combining it with global geospatial content and streaming into an accurate 3D view. 

Get started by creating a Cesium ion account and uploading your IFC data or download the Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In to unlock the potential of your design data as 3D Tiles.  

Looking for inspiration? Check out our AECO CesiumJS examples on the Cesium Sandcastle or our updated Cesium for Unreal Samples starter project.

If you have any suggestions or need support, please reach out on the Cesium Community Forum. We can’t wait to see what you create with these tools!

Join Cesium at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida, from December 2-5! I/ITSEC is the world’s largest gathering of professionals in modeling, simulation, and training, and we’re excited to be a part of it once again.

Stop by BOOTH 221 for Cesium demos curated specifically for the modeling, simulation, and training community.

Here’s a preview of what you can expect:

 I/ITSEC is a great opportunity to engage directly with our leadership and engineering teams. We look forward to the opportunity to answer your questions and demonstrate the latest capabilities from Cesium. 

We will also be hosting a Cesium Happy Hour at our booth on Tuesday from 3-5PM.

Announced last year at I/ITSEC, Cesium ion Self Hosted provides an offline capability for hosting, tiling, and streaming massive heterogeneous 3D geospatial datasets. When Cesium customers need to move their solution to the high side or a disconnected environment, Cesium ion Self-Hosted is the way to go. 

At I/ITSEC this year, we will feature a dedicated station where you can get hands-on experience with Cesium ion Self-Hosted. Like what you see and want to try it out in your environment? You can sign up for a free 30-day evaluation of Cesium ion Self-Hosted right at the booth.

Cesium ion, the solution for hosting, tiling, and streaming 3D geospatial data, is now available for your own environment as Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium ion Self-Hosted

Explore Cesium Global 3D Content and Tiled Partner Data

We’ll also have all the Cesium Global 3D Content offline locally in our booth. This is the same data we ship to our Cesium ion Self-Hosted customers for hosting in their own local environment. 

Interact with these datasets in a Cesium Story hosted locally by Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Cesium Moon Terrain: the first complete, accurate, and readily-accessible 3D dataset of the moon.

Cesium World Bathymetry:  a global bathymetry and topographic terrain tileset that enables 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics for use cases like oil and gas exploration, navigation for unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), managing offshore wind farms, and analyzing essential climate science.

Japan 3D Buildings and Regional Terrain Data: Providing a foundation for building digital twin applications and solutions in Japan.

Vexcel 3D Cities: High-quality 3D data models for more than 60 metro areas across the globe available for offline use with Cesium ion Self-Hosted.

Live demos of Cesium’s open source plugins for today’s leading creation engines like Unreal Engine and Unity

Built on open standards and APIs, these plugins combine the 3D geospatial capability of Cesium and 3D Tiles with today’s leading creation engines.

Cesium for Unreal - Integrated with Unreal Engine Editor, Actors and Components, Blueprints, and other UE features to enable a high degree of interactivity, physical realism, and photorealism to create amazing experiences.

Cesium for Unity - Cesium for Unity is tightly integrated with Unity making it possible to visualize and interact with real-world content in editor and at runtime. The plugin also has support for Unity game objects, physics, collisions, and character interaction.

Cesium for Omniverse - Cesium for Omniverse enables users to visualize and interact with a full-scale, high fidelity WGS84 globe within NVIDIA Omniverse to create, visualize, and analyze simulations in their precise 3D geospatial context.

Cesium Native - Cesium Native powers Cesium's runtime integrations and is an open source foundational layer for any 3D geospatial software, especially those that want to stream 3D Tiles.

A First Look at Cesium’s all new Design Tiler

To improve workflows and capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context, Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program.

These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets

Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program. These tools transform IFC and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets. Join us in connecting architecture and geospatial.

Connecting Architecture and Geospatial: AECO Tech Preview Program

CesiumJS Example with One World Terrain’s Well Formed Format based on 3D Tiles: 

The past year has seen many great developments for 3D Tiles, including its use by NBC Sports for broadcast coverage of the Paris Summer Games. 

At I/ITSEC, we will be showing how we continue to evolve this OGC Community Standard developed by Cesium including specific enhancements that are part of the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain Contract. Stop by our booth to see live demos of new features in the One World Terrain Well Formed Format (WFF),  an extension of 3D Tiles.

Once again Cesium will bring partners into the booth to showcase how they are utilizing the Cesium Platform. Stay tuned for specific days and times these demos will be shown. 

Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), Gaming Research Integration Learning Laboratory (GRILL)  -  Presenting Glimmer, a VR application with Cesium Moon Terrain. (Wed. 1:30-6 pm; Thurs. 9:30 am- 3 pm)

Battle Road - Presenting AtomEngine, an Earth-scale realtime multiplayer simulation using Cesium World Terrain as well as their custom Cesium for Godot integration. (Tues. noon-6:30 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-1:30 pm)

Reveal - Presenting Farsight, a mobile first platform providing surveillance video, 2D, and 3D geospatial data for use in decentralized, comms-limited environments. (Tues. 2-6:30 pm; Wed. 1-30-6 pm)

Brightline Interactive - Presenting SpatialCore, Leveraging USD to bring AI to 3D environments with Cesium geospatial context. (Mon. 2-6 pm; Tues. noon-2 pm)

LuxCarta - Presenting BrightEarth, a web service that uses AI-enhanced production techniques offering high resolution building and tree extraction from from a range of sub-meter imagery sources rendered with CesiumJS. (Mon. 2-6 pm; Wed. 9:30 am-1:30 pm)

Northrop Grumman - presenting Helix, which uses Cesium for Omniverse to visualize generated synthetic training data. (Thurs. 9:30 am-3 pm)

Stop by BOOTH 221 or reach out to schedule time with the team. We look forward to connecting with you in Orlando!

Development is progressing on a new open source Add-In for Autodesk Revit that will be released later this year. The Add-In integrates with Cesium ion to generate 3D Tiles, further connecting architecture and geospatial.

Cesium’s Revit Add-In provides a simple workflow for exporting your design data to 3D Tiles available on Cesium ion. Sample data courtesy of Autodesk.

Revit to Cesium ion

The Cesium Revit Add-In is currently being evaluated by participants in Cesium’s AECO Tech Preview Program, which provides early access to software like the Revit Add-In and Cesium’s Design Tiler. 

Program participant Erik Narhi, Computational Design Lead at Buro Happold Engineering, used the Cesium Revit Add-In to easily convert existing Revit design data to 3D Tiles and bring that data into Unreal Engine. 

“The Cesium Revit Add-In adds another layer to the potential of 3D Tiles and Cesium for AEC workflows,” Narhi said. “We are excited to explore how we can leverage it as we continue to push the mainstreaming of game engines and interactive 3D workflows for AEC project design, analysis, and delivery.”

Cesium’s Revit Add-In easily converts your design data to 3D Tiles. Image courtesy of Buro Happold Engineering.

Cesium’s Revit Add-in was designed to complement existing workflows by connecting Revit to Cesium ion with an easy-access, one-click export capability. Much like the Cesium 3ds Max plugin released in 2020, the Revit Add-In connects directly to your Cesium ion account allowing you to accurately place and visualize your designs in real-world environments.

The Revit Add-In, combined with Cesium’s Design Tiler, improves workflows and capabilities placing AECO content in a 3D geospatial context. Sample data courtesy of Autodesk.

Cesium's Revit Add-In converts a project's internal representation using the Cesium ion Design Tiler into 3D Tiles. The Design Tiler is optimized to support the properties of the BIM data and the metadata, materials, and textures within the Revit design file. To improve streaming and rendering performance, the tiling process detects shared geometry and instances them in the exported 3D Tiles. The Revit Add-in allows AECO teams to send performant, interactive digital twins to partners over the web or into native runtime engines like Unreal Engine, Unity, or NVIDIA Omniverse via Cesium ion. The conversion and upload to Cesium ion is done transparently, letting architects and other AECO professionals focus on their designs and workflows.

Exported 3D Tiles include your design data geometry, materials, textures, and metadata to support visualization and analysis. Sample data courtesy of Autodesk.

AECO Metadata Styling

By building integrations through open standards and collaboration with software companies like Autodesk, Cesium will continue to improve workflows for building AECO-focused applications that combine project plans with accurate 3D geospatial data. 

As we move closer to a full release of the Revit Add-In and Design Tiler, we would love to hear your suggestions on the Cesium Community Forum.

Coming Soon: Cesium Add-In for Autodesk Revit

In April 2024, AERO AI, a Cesium Certified Developer, was awarded a Cesium Ecosystem Grant to reintegrate Cesium ion and WebODM, a free and open source drone imagery processing platform from OpenDroneMap.

The OpenDroneMap community can now tile aerial data as 3D Tiles directly from the WebODM dashboard.

AERO AI’s Cesium Ecosystem Grant supports the WebODM Reintegration Project, focusing on the WebODM Cesium plugin. The plugin enables users from AEC, environmental conservation, geospatial analysis, and beyond to benefit from the ability to integrate, process, analyze, and visualize aerial data and 3D geospatial information.

Workflow for a user to process drone imagery in OpenDroneMap’s WebODM and upload to Cesium ion. Courtesy AERO AI.

Developed by OpenDroneMap, WebODM is open source software for drone image processing that is widely used by drone pilots, organizations, and academic institutions. It allows users to generate maps, point clouds, DEMs, and 3D models from aerial imagery. With the Cesium ion plugin, users can effortlessly upload this data to Cesium ion, where it is transformed into 3D Tiles for diverse applications. These include creating scalable, high-resolution immersive experiences and digital twins of buildings and urban environments. Users can also produce maps for disaster recovery, urban planning, wildlife management, and environmental monitoring, providing critical insights into terrain changes over time and improving decision-making for projects that require precise spatial analysis.

With the Cesium ion plugin, WebODM users can effortlessly upload their data to Cesium ion, where it is transformed into 3D Tiles for diverse applications. Courtesy AERO AI.

Cesium ion-WebODM Plugin

AERO AI rebuilt the Cesium plugin from the ground up, enabling the seamless integration of georeferenced ortho maps, point clouds, and 3D models generated in WebODM with Cesium ion. We removed the deprecated react-bootstrap dependency and implemented several API updates to improve overall functionality. We also resolved issues with dropdown buttons, refined styling with a cursor change, and refactored the modal usage. Our team fixed the file upload functionality in the UploadDialog and addressed text input issues. Plus we made adjustments to the task dialog, added logic to generate zip files for textured models, and updated the manifest plugin version while removing outdated dependencies. The full list of updates is here. Reach out to AERO AI with questions.

Options to upload and tile orthophotos, point clouds, surface models, and terrain models generated in WebODM to Cesium ion using the Cesium ion plugin for WebODM.

AERO AI developed the Simulated Environment for Geospatial Assets (SiEGA) platform, which integrates a variety of 3D technologies within an advanced physics engine. SiEGA supports streaming 3D Tiles and allows for the seamless import of WebODM assets, tiled through Cesium ion for high-resolution geospatial visualization. It is among the 3D creation engines that support streaming 3D Tiles.

WebODM-generated 3D model tiled as 3D Tiles by Cesium ion and streamed to AERO AI’s platform, SiEGA. Courtesy AERO AI.

The WebODM-Cesium ion integration is straightforward. Follow the new tutorial to try it out.

Create 3D Tiles from OpenDroneMap in WebODM

“Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator” enables players to experience the evolution of human spaceflight, blending a game with a simulator, so users learn to operate spacecraft with realistic procedures and, soon, Cesium Moon Terrain.

Reentry is used for both fun and research. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen is replacing his homebuilt Moon renderer with Cesium Moon Terrain. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Reentry is used for both fun and research. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen is replacing his homebuilt Moon renderer with Cesium Moon Terrain.

Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator

Reentry users make their way through NASA’s Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo while studying the history of human spaceflight and gaining practical skills. The ultimate goal is to land on the Moon.

A select group of players called “test pilots” will be the first to orbit and walk on Cesium Moon Terrain in Reentry, with this feature available to other users in early 2025.

Reentry is not limited to gamers. Creator Petri Wilhelmsen tailors instances of the simulator for aerospace industry agencies, and users are also testing VR implementation. 

These immersive 3D trainings bring aerospace professionals up to speed with realistic models and simulations for studies and research related to human space exploration. Wilhelmsen can build in failures or events so organizations can see how people behave in these situations, such as loss of power, fuel management, and isolation.

Lunar Module in orbit around the Cesium Moon. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Wilhelmsen began working on Unity-based Reentry in 2015. It was released as “early access” on Steam in 2018 and remained a hobby for Wilhelmsen until summer 2024, when he joined Helsinki-based studio Lyra Creative and Reentry became his full-time project. Members of Lyra Creative are focused on immersive experiences, expanding users’ views and vital training opportunities.

View from the commander's window of the Apollo Command Module. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

Within a few hours of hearing about Cesium Moon Terrain, Wilhelmsen began incorporating it into Reentry via Cesium ion and Cesium for Unity. Cesium Moon Terrain is accurate, complete 3D Tiles of the lunar surface, enabling 3D visualizations, simulations, and analytics.

“Having a digital twin of the Moon, where craters and all the details of the Moon can be explored, is vital,” said Wilhelmsen. “Creating my own streamable Moon renderer is beyond my own capabilities, and, by using Cesium, I can instead focus on other aspects of the game.” 

Wilhelmsen reports it took only 30 minutes to replace his lower fidelity Moon with Cesium Moon Terrain.

The Command Module Columbia looking down at the Apollo 11 landing site. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

The launch pad and spacecraft in Reentry are from asset stores, but he also makes some assets himself using Blender. The laser scan of the Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia, for example, is from the Smithsonian Institution; Wilhelmsen modified it for Reentry to improve the panels. These assets are loaded directly into Unity.

Users in orbit see not only the Moon but also Earth—the Cesium globe via Cesium for Unity enables accurate, realistic visualizations for both enthusiastic gamers and those who are training and pushing boundaries. In the future, Wilehelmsen may incorporate Cesium World Terrain and satellite imagery for the launch areas, to add to the accuracy on Earth.

The Lunar Module preparing for descent and landing on the lunar surface. Courtesy Petri Wilhelmsen.

A number of users have remarked to Wilhelmsen that they remember events during these early space programs, and they are reliving the thrill and pride of humanity’s progress with Reentry. 

To add Cesium Moon Terrain and other curated 3D data to your simulation, sign up for a Cesium ion account.

“Reentry” Blends Gaming and Training with Cesium Moon Terrain

At Cesium, we believe that collaboration is the key to advancing the 3D geospatial ecosystem for the benefit of all. For over a decade, we have supported interoperability with leading GIS providers like Esri to meet the growing need for comprehensive solutions that represent the natural and built environment with reality capture models, BIM/CAD designs, and traditional GIS layers. 

3D Tiles support for Esri products, and collaboration with Esri and standards organizations like the Open Geospatial Consortium ("OGC"), enables users to find the best solutions for their geospatial use cases.

Collaboration enabled with OGC standards like 3D Tiles and I3S to support streaming, analyzing and creating 3D geospatial content and applications.

Esri ArcGIS helps users solve complex GIS problems to show hidden patterns, trends, and relationships. Combining this with efficient streaming and 3D visualization capabilities enables users to build solutions delivering advanced spatial data management and analysis.


The combination of GIS and 3D streaming capabilities can address a number of cases in the rapidly growing area of digital twins. For example, a design firm that is creating a spatially accurate 3D representation of a proposed project that includes utility, traffic, and zoning information can share multiple versions of their detailed architectural models to collect public feedback. Or a community group building a virtual experience of their city can combine 3D buildings with route planning to key landmarks or locations.  Facilitated by open standards like 3D Tiles and Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), Esri and Cesium are helping users unlock geospatial insights, increase access to spatial data, and empower a large and diverse community of users.

Cesium Esri examples

Last fall, Esri announced the integration of 3D Tiles into the ArcGIS System of Record as a way of enhancing 3D GIS workflows. This integration allows users to combine 3D Tiles with other OGC community standard GIS layers, such as Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S), for use in exploration tools, analysis, animation, layouts, and more. With 3D Tiles seamlessly integrated, users can elevate their data beyond a realistic visualization by leveraging the analytic power of a complete GIS. 

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map

ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro and Drone2Map can be used to process aerial and drone imagery to create full resolution Digital Surface Models (DSMs), true orthos, and 3D point clouds, as well as 2D meshes and photo-realistic 3D meshes that can be exported as 3D Tiles.

With ArcGIS Pro, users can visualize 3D Tiles layers together with other 2D or 3D layers, view layers with different spatial references together, drape 2D layers on top of 3D mesh layers, and edit features based on 3D Tiles layers. With 3D Tiles layers, users can now interactively analyze scenes and perform exploratory analysis like viewsheds and view domes. ArcGIS Pro also allows users to share 3D Tiles layers from a scene to ArcGIS Online.

Users can integrate 3D Tiles integrated mesh layers into Scene Viewer. Like the existing Integrated mesh scene layer, a 3D Tiles integrated mesh layer can represent built and natural environments through realistic textures and elevation information and be used in combination with other geospatial content.

Along with other OGC Services, users can add 3D Tiles as a local tileset or via a hosted service in ArcGIS Online or third party web servers to ArcGIS Earth, Esri’s free application for visualizing and exploring geospatial content in 3D.

Both the 200.4 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDKs for Native Apps and the 4.29 release of the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript adds support for 3D Tiles.  These features allow developers to leverage the power of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 3D Tiles format, providing a seamless integration of yet another type of 3D geospatial data into their custom applications.

ArcGIS Scene Viewer with 3D Tiles with draped graphics for relative energy ratings and labels for construction years for buildings in the city Utrecht - from Esri Developer IntegratedMesh3DTilesLayer sample application - https://developers.arcgis.com/javascript/latest/sample-code/layers-integratedmesh3dtileslayer/live/

Open and connected APIs and data services from other providers help to unlock the value of the 3D geospatial ecosystem. Cesium has long-supported the integration of ArcGIS Terrain, Imagery, and Map services within CesiumJS.  

Recently, Esri collaborated with Cesium to enable Indexed 3D Scene Layers (I3S) within CesiumJS. This open source contribution from Esri brings extensive collections of I3S content from ArcGIS to CesiumJS developers and users. I3S, an OGC standard, facilitates the efficient transmission of various 3D data types, including discrete 3D objects with attributes, integrated surface meshes, and point cloud data across vast areas, as well as detailed Building Information Model (BIM) content. This capability supports delivery to web browsers, mobile apps, and desktop environments. Currently, the I3S integration into CesiumJS supports 3D Objects, Integrated Mesh, and Building Scene Layer data types, enabling the integration of 3D and 2D data from multiple sources, including Cesium ion and ArcGIS Online, into a single geospatial application.

ArcGIS Terrain and Basemaps in Cesium ion as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

ArcGIS I3S Services, ArcGIS Basemap and Cesium World Terrain as shown in Esri Developer Tutorials

Another layer of integration between the ArcGIS and Cesium platforms is at the developer level where we have collaborated to bring ArcGIS Location Services and the ArcGIS Maps SDKs into CesiumJS.  ArcGIS Location Services provide services for building mapping and spatial analysis applications, available as part of ArcGIS. The inclusion of the various ArcGIS APIs is another step in the multi-year effort to steadily add open source support for ArcGIS APIs, data, and services to CesiumJS.  

Additionally, Esri’s Developer site provides over 20 tutorials showing users how to integrate ArcGIS locations services and CesiumsJS. Through this collaboration, CesiumJS users can combine ArcGIS location services and Google Map Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles to quickly and easily create powerful 3D geospatial visualizations. 

Esri Location Services with Photorealistic 3D Tiles from Google Maps Platform streamed into CesiumJS

See the reference materials for more info. As we begin the next chapter at Cesium, open standards remain at our core. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with industry leaders like Esri to offer additional value and capabilities to the 3D geospatial community. 

If you have ideas about integrations between Cesium and Esri or other third party organizations, please share them on the Cesium Community Forum.

Updated 10/04/2024 to include ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript

As AEC projects increasingly require public input and organizations prefer plans with realism for their own understanding, Pennoni is moving engineering from graph paper to streaming 3D models with Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles.

Proposed “dolphin” cylinder protection at Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA)’s Delaware Memorial Bridge. Courtesy Pennoni.

Multidisciplinary engineering firm Pennoni—also our neighbor, headquartered in Philadelphia—serves clients across the US and has recently created immersive visualizations for clients in Florida; Virginia; Washington, DC; Maryland; Delaware; Pennsylvania; New Jersey; and Massachusetts. Whether it’s for a revamped playground, a shared-use path, a new neighborhood, bridge replacement, or a streetscape, Pennoni is bringing 3D interactions to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) planning and approvals. For example, Pennoni recently completed a digital twin of the new “dolphin” cylinder protection system for the Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA)’s Delaware Memorial Bridge, a critical twin suspension bridge crossing the Delaware River.

The firm has been heavily involved with design visualization and the creation of digital twins for engineering projects since 2015. That’s when Pennoni in-house viz duo Joe Spadea, PE, associate vice president, Pennoni FX Studios (PFX) visualization practice leader, and Steven Lewis, senior engineering technician, led the formation and creation of the PFX team. Since that time, there have been new faces and technologies to grow the firm’s capabilities. The firm began using Cesium in 2023, when Mike Sulesky, design visualization specialist at Pennoni, met the Cesium team at a Drexel University event. The PFX Studios team found that integrating Cesium with tools they were already using was easier and saved time, freeing up days of work to improve other facets of a project. With Cesium for Unreal and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles, they no longer needed to hand-model a project’s surroundings and could instead create suitable scenes and infrastructure massing in house.

“It’s a constant balance of quality, budget, and time. Cesium allows us some flexibility of budget and time,” said Tim Timmons, senior design visualization specialist at Pennoni.

Digital twin of Jake's Place, an inclusive playground in Vineland, New Jersey. Courtesy Pennoni.

Pennoni creates interior and exterior 3D renderings and animations for its clients’ individual projects. For interiors, the firm’s Unreal Engine artists combine manual modeling with marketplace assets. For exteriors, Pennoni’s engineers, with collaborating architects, create 3D models for proposed structures using CAD data, point clouds, or photogrammetry. Pennoni loads these directly into Unreal Engine, ensuring accurate placement and lighting with Cesium for Unreal, and streams Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Cesium ion for real-world urban context, so the future view is clear. 

Google Maps Platform’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles were designed to scale from city blocks to citywide, immersing users in the surroundings they expect to see. Photorealistic 3D Tiles use the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) community standard 3D Tiles format. This format, created by Cesium, efficiently streams massive amounts of data required to display details for both collaborative planning and public awareness.

Pennoni reports that including Cesium in its digital innovation has helped the firm impress clients, win work, and market Pennoni itself, as the engineers work hand in hand with the company’s corporate communications team.

“Rather than waiting years for a project to be completed, and then capture and post photos, we can show visualizations immediately, in present day,” explained Spadea.

Proposed condominiums set against the Florida Gulf Coast. Courtesy Pennoni.

Proposed condominiums set against the Florida Gulf Coast, rendered with Cesium for Unreal. Courtesy Pennoni.

Pennoni Seaforest Condos

Earlier this month, Cesium announced we joined Bentley Systems, a leading infrastructure engineering software company, via acquisition. Together with Bentley, Cesium provides a complete platform for building digital twin experiences for the natural and built environment, with a strong commitment to open source, open standards, and open APIs.

"The recent acquisition is a great fit and a win for everyone. Pennoni has utilized Bentley tools and has a long-standing partnership with Bentley, so this is a welcome next step for us. It's remarkable as well that all three firms are headquartered in the Delaware Valley. Move over, Silicon Valley,” said Spadea.

To immerse your AEC clients in accurate, realistic 3D and better allocate your resources, sign up for a Cesium ion account.

Pennoni Transforms Engineering Models with Cesium

We are excited to announce Cesium’s AECO Tech Preview Program. Throughout our community we see many Cesium experiences that combine the natural and built environment. To improve workflows and capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context, Cesium has developed a new Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, now available for early access and feedback via our AECO Tech Preview Program. These tools transform IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and Revit files into 3D Tiles, the OGC community standard created by Cesium for streaming massive 3D geospatial datasets.

Join us in connecting architecture and geospatial.

For those building AECO-focused applications who are looking for a faster way to provide smaller, more accessible and secure applications, or want an easier, more efficient way to share your design data via the web or other visualization platforms, your process will benefit from the end-to-end workflows using Cesium and 3D Tiles.

Incorporating interactive 3D visualizations with AECO projects is becoming increasingly prevalent as a way to plan a project, collaborate with colleagues, analyze design options, and communicate the vision to stakeholders. Building and deploying AECO-focused applications that share complex and highly detailed designs with end users is challenging. These apps often contain many gigabytes of data from multiple sources, must react to frequent design updates, and are difficult to get into the hands of project decision-makers. Using Cesium’s Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, users can transform design data into 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling, and analytics, for efficiently streaming massive scale AECO content to the web or through project-centered applications via Cesium’s geospatial platform. We have been developing and testing these capabilities, streaming 3D Tiles from design data with projects containing over 4 million individual objects and 800 million mesh triangles.

Streaming complex design data as 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling and analytics. Hospital sample model provided courtesy of Autodesk.

Streaming IFC content as 3D Tiles, including metadata for querying, filtering, styling, and analytics. Source data BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International.

AECO Tech Preview Program: Hospital Sample

Open APIs and standards to support interoperability are at the core of Cesium and 3D Tiles. Developed by buildingSMART International, IFC is an open standard, widely adopted in the AECO industry, with support from major software packages by vendors such as Autodesk and Bentley Systems. IFC’s rich data structure captures not only geometric information but also metadata, including material properties, schedules, and the relationships between building elements, making it ideal for complex projects requiring detailed and interoperable data. With support for IFC, 3D Tiles can now be generated from a wide range of AECO verticals, including architecture, structural engineering, and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) designs. With IFC data as 3D Tiles, there is greater performance, increased interoperability, and less manual effort to optimize this rich content for viewing and distribution.

Sample IFC data including structure and MEP as 3D Tiles. Sample data courtesy of BSI (2020) "Medical-Dental Test Files," buildingSMART International.

Because Autodesk Revit is widely used for designing buildings and infrastructure in 3D, and much of our sample data was in Revit files, our engineering team built a Revit Add-In that integrates with the Design Tiler to generate 3D Tiles. The exported 3D Tiles include the metadata, materials, and textures from your Revit files for efficient streaming on the web or in your visualization engine of choice. Cesium’s Revit Add-In provides a bridge connecting the architecture and geospatial worlds, unlocking value for both.

Autodesk Snowdon Towers sample data exported directly from Revit as 3D Tiles including structural and MEP content, full interior detail, and per-feature metadata streamed into Unreal with Cesium. Data courtesy of Autodesk.  

As Cesium moves toward an official release of the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In, we are pleased to offer early access to these new tools through the AECO Tech Preview Program. Participants will have access to the Design Tiler and Revit Add-In as we continue to develop them in parallel. Your experience and feedback will be invaluable as we refine and enhance these tools to meet your needs. This is a unique opportunity to influence the direction of our product and work directly with our engineering team.

UPDATE (12/03/24): The Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In are now available through Cesium ion and the Autodesk Application Store. We look forward to collaborating with you to shape the future of 3D visualization in AECO.

Try the Design Tiler and Cesium ion for Autodesk Revit Add-In

Join the Cesium AECO Tech Preview Program

Globe view of UNICiv, showing sites from 1800 BCE - 1500 CE. The Legananny Dolmen in Ireland is selected.

Interactive digital maps display detailed contemporary geographic information, increasingly in 3D, for navigation, exploration, and virtual travel. What the world looked like near the beginnings of human civilization, however, is more difficult to discover, search, and visualize. Cesium Research’s most recent publication, UNICiv: A Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization, explores Cesium’s ability to support 3D models of ancient and historic sites within their geographical and temporal context.

Developed over the summer by Cesium's Yuhan Liu and led by Dr. Norman Badler, Head of Research, UNICiv is an extensible, universal, spatio-temporal interface that leverages Cesium for Unreal and 3D Tiles to visualize structures of the distant past. As a demonstration and education tool, UNICiv’s applications range from cultural heritage to urban planning. The UNICiv publication has been accepted as a full research paper to the Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (GCH 2024). 

GCH is the premier technical meeting for novel digital technologies in the cultural heritage domain, fostering discussions in AI, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, and Human-Computer Interaction.

UNICiv offers over 30 explorable 3D models of historic and archaeological sites around the world, displayed collectively on a single interactive globe. These models are produced by archaeologists, independent artists, or research projects from institutions and nonprofits. Sites range in time from 8000 BCE to 1500 CE. Examples include Neolithic monuments like Stonehenge, ruins of Bronze Age villages, and Greco-Roman temples. These models have been curated and imported into Cesium for Unreal through Cesium’s integration with Sketchfab. The models are imported into Unreal using Cesium’s plugin and placed on top of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial imagery.

Users can explore the past in 3D using UNICiv’s interface. Start by navigating a Cesium globe where ancient structures are highlighted as pins. The timeline interface indexes sites that appear on the globe. When users select a site, they are taken on a flight path to its geolocated model, where they can use traditional game controls to explore. Users can build their personalized list of sites to save, compare, and present their findings. Additionally, some locations offer reconstructed visualizations that can be overlaid on current-day ruins, providing a unique perspective on how these ancient sites once appeared.

Perspective view of the reconstructed Old Temple at Pachacamac in Peru. Site list controls set to Common Era (0-1500 CE). Cesium World Terrain shows the present-day view of the Lima Province. Model courtesy of Aline Normoyle, Clark Erickson, and Norman Badler, used with permission.

La Motilla del Azuer, 3D Model from Global Digital Heritage on SketchFab. Tour site list shows manually added fortification sites.

Amphitheatre of Butrint, 3D Model by Ørjan Sandland, imported from Sketchfab (CC Attribution). Simultaneous Site List shows all sites with reconstructions (not pictured) available to view. The Albanian mountains are part of Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

Temple of Apollo - Naxos Greece, 3D Model by Vasilis Haroupas on SketchFab. Simultaneous Site List shows all available BCE models. Terrain from Cesium World Terrain with Bing Maps Aerial Imagery.

From incorporating more models to iterating on user experience, UNICiv is an ongoing research project with exciting directions for future work. A significant task for the future would be to incorporate and reverse-engineer significant geographical changes to experience the natural environment experienced by the earth’s earliest inhabitants. In the meantime, UNICiv provides a uniform, 3D geospatial, contextualized interface to the re-discovered past.

The UNICiv publication was one of eight full research papers accepted to the 22nd Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage 2024. The Cesium research team is excited to present at the conference, which takes place September 16–18, 2024, in Darmstadt, Germany.

UNICiv is a powerful tool for visualizing temporal change on a global scale, especially in cultural and historical preservation. Initial user evaluations have highlighted UNICiv’s significant potential for advancing archaeological demonstration, education, and exploration. Furthermore, the UNICiv interface becomes increasingly adept at capturing the development of human civilization as more 3D models are integrated into it. Thus, the Cesium research team plans to soon provide open access to the UNICiv resource and welcomes collaborations and user contributions. Contact Dr. Norm Badler to express your interest in UNICiv.  

For help getting started on your own project with Cesium for Unreal, visit the Learning Center. 

Cesium Research's Universal Navigation Interface to Civilization (UNICiv) Accepted for Publication and Presentation at Eurographics Conference

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