Viewing 3D model online

[PeterStrohm]

Greetings,

I have a DEM and a corresponding orthoimage on my local computer.  I'm able to open them up in ArcScene, drape the ortho over the DEM and view it in 3D.  I'd like to be able to share this model with others online and I'm told that ArcGIS Online can do this.  I can't figure it out, however.  It looks like ArcScene only exports files in .wrl format and ArGIS Online can't import that file type.

It should be pretty simple, right?  Just need to go from DEM + ortho to an online viewer that has a link I can send to others.  Pretty stuck right now, though.  Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

[MikeMinami]

You can add a link to a globe service running on ArcGIS Server. You can also add items that reference  ArcGlobe documents (.3dd) and ArcScene documents (.sxd). But these two are just files, you need ArcGIS Desktop to open them, and access to the data they reference.

hope this helps,

Mike

[SteveCole]

ESRI has some tricks up their sleeve coming up with their Javascript API which you can get a sense of here:

Building 3D Web Applications with ArcGIS

I don't know what their timeline is but hopefully it's sooner than later. Regarding Mike's suggestion, I suppose you can also utilize your published map service using ArcGIS Explorer if your audience does not have a license of ArcGIS Desktop.

[MikeMinami]

We also have a product called CityEngine...

http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine

Mike