Latest Contributions by NathanShephard

Hi D T, Thanks for asking about this topic. Yes, that "lock" toggle button is the way that you show cumulative time in Pro. There's some documentation about those controls in the help (see the below link), but I agree it's minimal and we should provide more guidance. We'll take a look at it again - for example we don't have the word "cumulative" on the page, which is definitely something we should change. Link: Configure time slider settings—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop  In regards to creating a time-aware animation video, did you find this page? Is this your end goal? Is the info helpful? Link: Animate through time—Animation | ArcGIS Desktop   Note that we're now making YouTube videos to help explain some of our more advanced concepts in a graphical way (rather than lots of words on pages). We don't have one posted for Time yet, but we do (for example) have a group of them that run through the best practices for animations that you might find interesting.  Link: Animation Lessons—Your First Animation - YouTube   So, back to the "display of cumulative time" - one big difference between 10.x and Pro is that this option is exposed at the individual layer level in ArcMap, while it is exposed at the map level in Pro. This was done on purpose because we wanted the time slider to act as a true filter of what content gets displayed in the view. The map can only have one temporal extent at a time (just like can only have one spatial extent), so we use the map's time to drive all the layers. The impact of this design for maps with a single time-aware layer in the view is negligible. The workflow is different, but the capabilities are the same. However, if you used ArcMap with multiple time-aware layers, and only SOME of them are set to 'cumulative time', then unfortunately this kind of display is not currently possible in Pro. We want to meet this need via the use of temporal symbology, which will be supported on a per-layer basis -> eg: "fade out point symbols from LayerA based on time". The design work for this is ongoing but you should know that it is not slated for the next release of Pro (ie: 2.1). If time is an important part of your GIS work, we'd really appreciate getting more feedback on your needs and use-cases so we can be sure to allow for it in our design. Thanks!   -Nathan. ArcGIS Pro Team ... View more

Hi Cheryl, You have configured the time slider correctly for cumulative display, and the 'blinking' effect is (unfortunately) a result of how long the updated filter is taking to update the view. That is, Pro is pulling the updated subset of features (based on the time slider change) and is not drawing them fast enough to avoid the 'blink'. You can try reducing the playback speed - which will show each time slice a little bit longer before pulling the next time slice - but you will likely still see a similar effect. Another approach, useful for sharing out a time-aware playback video, is to create an animation. This will NOT improve interactive playback within Pro - the time the view needs to filter and re-render a time slice will remain the same - but it does give you the ability to export the playback to a video file. The video will be smooth because each frame is fully rendered before being exported. Here's a help topic link that can get you started on creating a time-aware animation: - Animate through time—Animation | ArcGIS Desktop  Quick tip: you will most likely only need to create two keyframes (one with the time-slider set to 1890-1891, and one with the time-slider set to 1890-1971), update the video duration (default will be 3 secs, but you probably want a 10-15 second playback time), and then export it to a YouTube-friendly video file.   Hope this helps! Thanks, Nathan. ArcGIS Pro team ... View more

Hi Shane, The process is a bit labor intensive (depending on how many tree types you have), but the manual way to set up this layer in Pro is as follows: [1] Set your Tree layer to use real-world size - Open the Layer Properties dialog, click on the Display tab, and check on 'Display 3D symbols in real world units', OK [2] Apply a Unique Values renderer for the Trees layer based on the TreeType field  - Select the layer in the table of contents and click the Symbology dropdown on the Appearance ribbon - Then choose the applicable field (eg: Tree Type) in the Symbology pane   -> This will create a set of symbols, one for each type of tree you have in your data [3] For each tree type symbol, connect it to its model - Click on a current symbol, open the 'Properties' tab (top of pane), click on the 'Layers' sub-tab - Change the type to '3D Model Marker', click the 'File...' button and navigate to the 3ds file for that tree type   -> Click the 'back' arrow (top-left) and repeat until all tree types have been connected to their 3ds model [4] Define visual variable overrides for the symbol height - Click the 'burger' button in the top-right of the Symbology pane, click 'Vary symbology by Attribute' - Expand the 'Size' section and select the Tree Height field from the dropdown list of numeric fields If everything looks correct, you can use Share (ribbon tab) > Web Scene to publish it out, or use the Create Scene Layer Package GP tool to create an SLPK.  I just tried it on an alpha version of Pro 2.0 and it worked well. Note: Esri also provides a preset layer for Realistic Trees that can reference a "Genus" fieldname for applying different tree models (with height and crown width). You can learn more about this here: Preset layers—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop  Hope this helps! Thanks, Nathan ... View more

Hi Jason - to be clear, it "will most likely be added in the next release after Pro 1.4", so you will need to eagerly wait 1.5 for this particular function. Sorry. -Nathan. ... View more

Hi Jason - you're not going crazy. We haven't added the commands for defining / managing additional custom scale formats inside ArcGIS Pro yet, so you can only choose from the default ones in the list. Unfortunately, the one you want is not in that list. At present I would say that this capability will most likely be added in the next release after Pro 1.4. Thanks for sending in the question. Regards, Nathan. Esri Redlands ... View more

Hi Lars, Unfortunately the current, streaming-service-driven web scene viewer does not allow you to navigate the camera underground. It's in our future dev plans... However, all is not lost. You can use the (previously released) "CityEngine Web Scene" to do it. You can publish these from either ArcScene (using the 'Export to 3D Web Scene' GP tool) or from CityEngine. Both methods collate the data and symbology into a .3ws file that you can then host as an item online. When viewing this type of web scene, users are effectively downloading the file and viewing it from their local cache. It has the same advantages (no app download, no plugin, etc) as our next-generation web scene, though it is not recommended for large datasets because all the content has to be exported with the file. Here's our "3D Minard's Map" example you can look at, where a section of the earth has been clipped out and shared as a CityEngine Web Scene (published from ArcScene): - http://carto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/CEWebViewer/viewer.html?3dWebScene=2b48caaabd0e44028724c5f109f3de97 Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Lars, Yes, with ArcGIS Server 10.3.1 you will be able to host multipatch content as streaming 3D services. ArcGIS Pro 1.1 (coming out shortly after 10.3.1) will have a rich authoring and publishing user experience for multipatches, plus you will be able to publish and manage services directly from Portal. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Ricky, You are correct - Pro doesn't have that feature in 1.0. In 1.1 we plan to add the ability to search and find a feature in a layer (that is, search for a value and find feature/s that match). It will probably be 1.2 before we enable that same function for standalone tables. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Hi Ionut, The Content team here at Esri used an in-house / preliminary version of web scene publishing capabilities (that we plan to release with the next version of ArcGIS Server and Pro). We wanted to test publishing 3D objects - and give users an idea of what will be supported - which led to a set of publicly-hosted 3D services, including the one you linked to above. (Note: the link to our full set of example scenes is below).    - http://www.arcgis.com/home/group.html?owner=esri_3d&title=Example%20Scenes‌ Sorry for the confusion. We're looking forward to letting users (like you) publish this kind of content, too, but weren't quite able to get it into Pro 1.0. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

It should always be the full resolution of the TIN. The option you mention is basically for internal optimizations of the triangle strips that reconstruct the whole object - it should make as many parts as needed (with a max of, say, 1024 vertices per part). Does the multipatch feature LOOK the same as the TIN inside ArcScene before you convert it to COLLADA?  -> If not, then it sounds like a data-specific bug, so you should log a bug through Tech Support to get it into the bug tracking system. -> If it looks OK as a multipatch, but then NOT OK as an imported COLLADA element in SketchUp, then it's possible there's a bug with our COLLADA exporter... I just checked with some local data here using 10.0 Final and it was working as expected.  Note that I (out of habit) always select the imported object in SketchUp and 'Explode' it. I doubt that is part of your problem, but figured I would mention it. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Thanks for the details (and debugging info), JS. We'll investigate the Export to COLLADA tool in regards to this issue and attempt to get a solution into 10.0 SP1. Thanks, Nathan. 3D Team, Esri ... View more

(1) Can TIN be exported to COLLADA in ArcGIS 10? - Not directly, we only have direct export of multipatch features to COLLADA - You can, however, simply use the 'Interpolate Polygon to Multipatch' GP tool to convert the TIN to a multipatch feature for a given polygon / extent (as a pre-processing step), and then convert that multipatch to DAE. (2) Can ArcGIS 10 3D Analyst extension smooth TIN surfaces? - Depends what you mean by smooth. There is new direct TIN-element editing functionality and tools inside 10 (eg: deleting TIN nodes, adding breaklines). And there are other functions (such as Decimate TIN nodes) for reducing the 'noise' in a TIN.  If you move to Terrain datasets (think "multi-resolution TIN's in the geodatabase"), then there are other options again. (3) Does anyone really use 3D Analyst to create 3D buildings other then extruding footprints? - Correct. Advanced building model construction (eg: texturing) is done using software such as SketchUp, Maya, etc. - The creation of very accurate building footprints in projected coordinate space is what the GIS piece is all about. By extruding them to a general height, converting them to multipatches and doing the higher-end sculpting and painting of them using specialized editors such as SketchUp, you get great buildings in the correct location / coordinate space.  And each piece of software does what it does best. (4) Most importantly, i was hoping that to be able to export features to SketchUp, edit the model and be able to import it back while preserving the coordinate system information without having to manually place the model. - This exact workflow is supported.  🙂    (a) Select a multipatch feature and export it to a COLLADA file       -> The multipatch can be made by: extruding footprints; draping polygons on TINs; using 3Dsymbols; etc       -> Or the multipatch feature could have come from an imported SKP/3DS/FLT/DAE file from months/years ago    (b) Import the DAE into SketchUp and edit as needed. Then save the file back to DAE or SKP 6.    (c) Select the original multipatch (per step a), and use 'Replace with Model' to update the geometry       -> There is no re-georeferencing of the model, it's placed it in the SAME LOCATION as the original.       -> And you get to keep all feature attributes (eg: links to related Ownership tables, or Inspection Dates, etc) Hope this helps explain it a bit better.  We're looking to get either a video or a whitepaper (with screenshots) available so users such as yourself can see how there's a workflow that will continue (even though Google are no longer able to support the plugin). Let me know if you have any more Q's.  This is an important part of the 10 release for 3D, and we want it to meet your needs. Thanks, Nathan. 3D Team ... View more

Hi Guenter, Video layers support both AVI and MPG. We'll fix the documentation to avoid the ambiguity - thanks for pointing it out. I also noticed that the documentation looks out of date for the video file source information - it was modified to support multiple source files. See the example at the bottom of this post for the correct pathname syntax. The first sanity test for playing a video layer in ArcGlobe is that it must play correctly inside Windows Media Player. If it plays OK here, then the codec question is usually not important. A workaround-of-last-resort for a difficult video file is to convert it into a folder of frames (eg: a folder of JPG files). In Beta 2 (and, to a lesser extent, PreRelease), video layers are very sensitive to even very small issues inside the AGV/XML, so it's possible there might be a small problem with your AGV syntax. Apart from the video pathname change, two common content mistakes to look for are: an invalid pathname to the video; or a mismatched resolution of the video between the file and the AGV. Something else you can try is to export a video / animation from ArcMap. As long as the camera does not move, then you can request an AGV file to be auto-created on export. This will be an 'ortho' (or top-down) video. FUTURE NOTE: -------------- Now, having said all that, you need to be aware that the AGV specification is undergoing some significant changes for ArcGIS 10 Final (after PreRelease).  This should make it an easier format to work with, and improve its ability to survive slight errors.  It also means that the AGV file you work on for Beta 2will need to be reworked into the new formating to work in Final. Thanks, Nathan. 3D Team, ESRI. ------- PS: Here's a simple template AGV file that might help. You will need to update the <VideoData> value, plus the <Height>, <Width> and <FrameDuration> tag values. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Layer>   <Name>AVI as Camera</Name>   <VideoOverlay>     <FrameSource Type="File">       <VideoDataFiles>         <VideoData VideoFile="C:\test\SecurityCamera1.avi"></VideoData>       </VideoDataFiles>     </FrameSource>     <Video ProjectionType="Camera">       <Height>540</Height>       <Width>960</Width>       <FrameDuration>200</FrameDuration>       <Camera>         <FOVAngle>55.0</FOVAngle>         <Position>           <Longitude>-117.194374</Longitude>           <Latitude>34.056886</Latitude>           <Elevation>405.0</Elevation>         </Position>         <Heading>330.0</Heading>         <Tilt>40.0</Tilt>         <Range>10.0</Range>         <Roll>0.0</Roll>       </Camera>     </Video>   </VideoOverlay> </Layer> ... View more

Hi Ted, Yes. Topologies are defined / maintained (etc) strictly in a 2D sense. We have not developed 3D-aware topologies in 10 - and there's not one coming in 10.1 either... The display of a Topology layer in ArcGlobe is limited to the rasterized display, which (effectively) is rendered in 2D and draped as an image on to the Globe. The source layers (participating feature classes) within a topology can be displayed in 3D, but please don't think that this means 3D topology. Thanks, Nathan. 3D Team ... View more