Latest Contributions by NathanShephard

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

Hey Ted, Me again.  Yes, it's a good idea, but unfortunately the underlying rendering engine for ArcScene cannot handle many kinds of layers (eg: Terrains, Map Services, etc), and the new basemap layers also falls into this category. We promise to build a better, Scene-like 3D rendering viewer in the future.  But (sadly) not for 9.4. Appreciate the input. Thanks, Nathan. ... View more

Unfortunately, the Google SketchUp plug-in is no longer being actively supported by the SketchUp team.  We've spoken with them about it and they've been refocused on to other development tasks (instead of updating the plugin). So it's not going to be guaranteed to work with the latest releases of SketchUp or ArcGIS.  😞 The good news is that 9.4 still supports an update-3D-GIS-objects-using SketchUp workflow, just in a different way.  🙂 Here are the two main feature CREATION workflows, using 9.4: (1) Starting with a SKP (or DAE/3DS/FLT) file - Start editing in Scene or Globe (against a multipatch feature class)   - If required, create an Edit Template for the multipatch layer - Select the multipatch template in the Create Features window   - This enables the Insert tool (for placing multipatch features) - Click in the view where you want the 3D model to be placed - When prompted, navigate to the source SKP file - A new multipatch feature is created in the geodatabase (imported from the source 3D file), located at the point where you clicked - Move / rotate / scale the new multipatch feature, as needed - Optionally populate feature attributes, save edits (2) Starting with a GIS feature (such as a building footprint) - Use a feature attribute (such as bld height) to extrude the footprint into a block representation - Use the 'Layer 3D to Feature Class' GP tool to create a multipatch feature class - Select the multipatch feature/s you want to update, then use the 'Multipatch to COLLADA' GP tool to export them to DAE files   -> Note: this tool is not in Beta 1 - Load and edit the COLLADA files in SketchUp (or some other application) - Start Editing in Scene or Globe (against the applicable multipatch data) - Select the feature whose geometry you want to update from the DAE - Use the 3D Editor > Replace with Model command to switch out the existing block geometry with the more complex geometry (and optional textures) you created in the edited 3D model (COLLADA file). - Save edits Note that the second half of the Workflow 2, above, is how you could make improvements (eg: texture changes) to your multipatch features over the long haul. And, in regards to your specific Q: "Is there a work-around for exporting to SketchUp? ", the answer is "Yes - at 9.4 we have enabled export to COLLADA, a format which SketchUp supports". A lot of info to digest - hope it helps! Thanks, Nathan. 3D Team, ESRI. ... View more