How to save an entire 3D scene to scene layer package?

[EricEagle]

I would like to export a local 3D scene from ArcGIS Pro.  The scene is made up of raster layers (2D) draped on custom terrain (elevation) in a local projection.

My predicament is that I need to sideload the scene to ArcGIS Portal instances on two other networks where I do not have ArcGIS Pro.  I know an SLPK is the way to do this, but I do not see anything that supports raster/elevation export to SLPK.

So the question really is: What is the workflow for exporting full local scenes for staging to multiple Portal instances?

[Andrew--Johnson]

Hi,

It sounds like the workflow is to share the web scene to portal. The second link contains steps on how to share a web scene to portal.

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/map-authoring/author-a-web-scene.htm 

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/sharing/overview/share-a-web-scene.htm 

thanks,

Andrew

[EricEagle]

Hi Andrew,

Nope, the workflow is to save the web scene to a flat file (slpk) for side-loading to portal on a network where I do not have ArcGIS Pro available to do the loading.  Hope this helps.

[Andrew--Johnson]

Hi Eric,

Unfortunately, that's not possible as scene layer packages only support a specific type of data (e.g Point, Point Cloud, 3D Object, Voxel) and not combining multiple types into one type.

If you want multiple data types included together with a scene then the workflow for online is to use web scenes and offline to use mobile scenes.

thanks,

Andrew

[Robert_LeClair]

I know ArcGIS Earth supports *.slpk as well as well as a mobile scene package.  If you're able to download and install ArcGIS Earth, then you can use the *.slpk and mobile scene packages in those free apps versus trying to use ArcGIS Pro.  Would that be a possible solution for you?

[EricEagle]

Hey Robert!  Good to hear from you.  This is a fairly large project and the idea is to side-load it to a Portal instance so that we can take advantage of the performance that server-side caching will provide.  The only issue is that I cannot go directly from Pro to the Portal.  I have to be able to (either) add it as a valid new item in my Portal content management section, or add it directly to the federated/hosted server via the traditional ArcGIS Server Manager (e.g., service definition file(s)).  I'm going to try the mobile package approach in the meantime.

[Robert_LeClair]

Hey Eric!  Good to hear from you too - hope all is well for you in 2022!  Let me know what you learn using the mobile map package workflow and we'll go from there!

[EricEagle]

So, it looks like this is not possible.  You cannot side-load a MSPK to Portal in a way that allows you to then Publish it and have services for each layer created.

So, this is kind of disappointing because as you know, we work across multiple networks that do not talk to each other.  On some of those networks, we do not have ArcGIS license servers or access/ability to install ArcGIS Pro -- but there are Portals there, and we need to be able to somehow portable-ize, freeze, whatever word you want to use, a 3D scene of diverse content (custom elevation sources, 2D raster/vector, 3D multipatch) so that we can load it to a Portal instance where we lack publish-from-ArcGIS Pro ability.

Also, complicating this, the scene in question is a Local Scene (UTM projection) which can't be viewed in ArcGIS Earth anyway.

I understand this is an edge case, so I'll try and work this through our customer rep / solution engineers.

[Andrew--Johnson]

Hi Eric,

Publishing mobile scene packages is not currently supported but it is something the team is looking into down the road. ArcGIS Runtime only supports Global scenes so if you wanted to view the scene in a ArcGIS Runtime application then it would have to be a global scene. I documented these considerations in this help topic

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/mapping/map-authoring/author-for-arcgis-runtime.htm 

It sounds like the best option in this scenario is to create individual slpks, tpks and then have the organization upload those items, publish the services and then add them to a web scene.

Another option is to automate this using the ArcGIS API for Python so each organization can simply run the script with the data you have provided

https://developers.arcgis.com/python/sample-notebooks/publishing-web-maps-and-web-scenes/ 

https://developers.arcgis.com/python/sample-notebooks/publishing-packages-as-web-layers/ 

thanks,

Andrew