Converting ArcGIS Map to UE5 Landscape

[Element808]

Aloha ArcGIS team,

First off I'd like to thank you all for the work put into this amazing product. This is such an important product and stoked to dig into the new release.

When testing a pre-release version of ArcGIS, I couldn't find any way that would convert ArcGIS maps to Unreal landscapes. Is this something that was added to the current release, or being looked at in a future release?

Mahalo in advance for any assistance 🤙

[Nicholas-Furness]

Hey @Element808.

Thanks for the kind words again!

Are you asking about being able to read a web map or web scene? Right now we support accessing layers directly. Reading a web map/web scene is something that we'll get to in time but first we want to add support for a few more layer types.

Then there's the question of integrating with Unreal Landscapes. For that, I'll have to defer to someone on the team who's more familiar with working with Unreal Engine. In the meantime, perhaps you can explain what features of Unreal Landscapes you need to use? It could be that the Maps SDK already supports what you need, albeit slightly differently.

Nick.

[Matt_Nelson]

Aloha Element,

Love the enthusiasm. So converting our content into landscapes is not something we currently support. I am not sure about the future of this either. So our plugin handles the case of dynamically loading the necessary level of detail content for you depending on where your camera is.

Because we deal with this dynamic loading and are constantly creating and destroying meshes I don't think there is a very intuitive way to interface our plugin with UE landscapes

[Element808]

Aloha Matt and Nicholas,

I really appreciate the replies. So the need would be a static capture of localized terrain, and not dynamic. Though I understand this dynamic nature is how the plugin works. It would be so beneficial to so many of us devs for this static capture of terrain, or at the very least take longitude/latitude, specify resolution, and how many square grids, then an export of a height map. Clearly your tech and map data you're pulling from is far superior to many current workflows and products on the market to create real-world terrain, but having this type of feature (even just exporting of height map and let us do the conversation to UE landscape ourselves) would be huge. Plus, you're already integrated into game engines which is what the other products are missing.

Either way, I appreciate the time spent having this conversation and being so open about the tech. Keep killing it and doing what you're doing 🤙

Mahalo,

Jordan Parsons 

[Matt_Nelson · Accepted solution]

I believe the CityEngine plugin for Unreal Engine also made by Esri has these capabilities.

[KnedlikMCPE]

Hello,

Sorry for opening this aged can of worms again, but could you link to an article or documentation piece saying how to do it? I had no luck with that.

Thanks in advance,

-Knedlik

[Element808]

Thanks again for the follow-up and sorry for the late response, @Matt_Nelson

I think you're right about CityEngine 👍 if that's the case, we'll go that route 😊

Mahalo,

Jordan Parsons 

[DanielElebash]

Hey, I made a little plugin that imports Mapbox heightmaps into UE5 landscapes.  It works well but I am having problems georeferencing the landscape to real world long/lat.  I just ran across ESRI, and it has the same abilities as Mapbox in addition to its own plugin with georeferencing.  So, I am going to see if I can make a new app using ESRI to import real world georeferenced locations.  Any help would be appreciated.  ESRI, you have very cools services,TY!!  As mentioned in this thread it looks like CityBuilder can do this.  However, I only need the simple feature of importing real world geolocated heightmaps and CityBuilder is not a cost-effective solution for me.  Here is a link to my existing plugin  delebash/UnrealMapboxBridgePlugin: Import heightmaps into Unreal from real world locations using Map....  Also here is a video describing my geoferencing problem in UE  Help in understanding georeferencing a real world heightmap to ue landscape. - YouTube.  Well, off I go as I get started creating this plugin with ESRI to see if it can help me solve my problem.  

[Matt_Nelson]

Good luck Daniel,

The workflow you are describing of converting height maps to a terrain is not really a problem we are trying to solve at the moment with our plugin.

The target we are trying to hit right now is to be able to dynamically load content from any of our Esri services for any place in the world and display it at an efficient level of detail. 

The idea of creating a more "static" landscape for a specific area is one that certainly has value but it is not a problem we are providing an out of the box solution for.

If you want to have success with using the ArcGISMaps SDK at the moment I think you will have to take a step away from the UE landscapes solution and try to use what we are providing. OR you can go down the path of converting LERC data yourself into a heightmap for a landscape. Either way you are in "uncharted" territory so if you learn anything meaningful and want to share you experience so that the team and other users can take advantage of that, it would be appreciated.

[DanielElebash]

Thank you very much for the info.  If I do come up with a good solution, I will definitely share it.