trying to create an elevation layer from high resolution raster Geotiff elevation source as slpk?

[DavidWood3d]

in esri UNREAL SDK 2.1.0 and UE5.4 trying to create an elevation layer from high resolution raster Geotiff elevation source.  I have put in layers from 3Dtiles as local slpk packages but I cant seem to figure out how to get an .slpk packages out of ArcGIS Pro 3.5.    Also is this only going to work if I have 3D and Spatial analyst modules licensed and active?   I was assuming the most common (in my line of work) elevation format as a raster Geotiff would be easy to put in as a layer into the esri UNREAL SDK but am finding this one particularly difficult.  I want to build super high resolution local scenes and output custom flyover animations with this as that would speed up our workflow considerably over more traditional animation efforts.

[MichaelBranscomb]

Hi,

As you’ve found, all the layer types currently supported by ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unreal Engine are in the form of tiled/cached layers – 3D Scene layers, 3D Tiles layers, Image tile layers, and Vector tile layers. These provide the greatest performance in client applications when working at global scales and/or on resource-constrained devices.

Elevation sources can come from those Image tile layers, either as tile packages (.tpkx) or web elevation layers / cached map services. The key aspect to note is that when creating the tile cache, the image tiles need to be LERC encoded to be recognized as elevation (there is some basic info on LERC in the guide topic Elevation | ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unreal Engine | Esri Developer, but I can see it would benefit from additional doc on this scenario – I’ll open a new issue for us to follow up).

To create these LERC encoded image tile packages for elevation, follow steps 2 & 3 in the section “Create a tile package for a web elevation layer” in topic Share a tile package—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation. I’ve summarized the steps below individually but of course you can combine in a script or model to make the process repeatable or automated if needed.

To summarize:

Step 1.

Use Manage Tile Cache (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation to create the LERC encoded tile cache.

The parameter Input Tiling Scheme must be set to either: Elevation tiling scheme OR WGS84 Version 2 elevation tiling scheme.

Note “Elevation tiling scheme” means the tiling scheme of the ArcGIS elevation service, which is Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere (3857) e.g. https://elevation3d.arcgis.com/arcgis/rest/services/WorldElevation3D/Terrain3D/ImageServer.

If you need an alternative spatial reference (you mentioned local scenes) then you will also need to use the Generate Tile Cache Tiling Scheme (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation tool.

The output is a tile cache folder on disk.

Step 2.

Use Export Tile Cache (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation to generate a tile package from the tile cache created in Step 1.

The parameter Export Cache As should be set to Tile package (tpkx).

The output is a .tpkx file on disk.

Regarding your question Also is this only going to work if I have 3D and Spatial analyst modules licensed and active? – No, both the geoprocessing tools you will use above are available at ArcGIS Pro Basic license level (Named User license type of Creator or higher).

Thanks