zoom to specific viewpoint, bearing and focal length in a 3D scene

Question

Hello,

I am trying to replicate the view that was captured in a photograph using a 3D scene in ArcGIS Pro v.2.7.6. I know the coordinates where the photo was taken from, the height above ground the camera was held, the bearing, and the focal length of the camera. Is it possible to plug this information into the software to accurately zoom into the same frame of view as the original photograph? The goal here is to render a proposed building into the existing landscape for a viewshed analysis in order to show how the view from the photo location will be effected by the proposed project.

Thank you so much for your help!

LeahCharash · Accepted Answer

I've been playing with the Line of Sight Exploratory 3D Analysis tool and see that I can set the observer and target points (and height above ground for the observer point) then right-click on the observer point and select "zoom to" to move the camera to that view point. This takes care of the viewpoint location, height above ground of camera, and bearing. Does anyone know how to account for the focal length of the camera or do I just need to eyeball it?

LeahCharash · Accepted Answer

I solved this by using the camera properties tool under the view tab, navigation section. I left the fields "X", "Y", "Z", "Pitch", "Roll", and "Heading" with their auto-filled values based on the observer point I zoomed to using the Line of Sight tool above. The final field, "Field of View" is where the focal length of the camera gets incorporated. The equation I used for Field of View (AFOV) is:

Where f = focal length and H = the sensor size of the camera.

Not sure whether this was the best way to complete this task, but it got me where I needed to go. Please let me know if you have ideas for a better approach I can use in the future.