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3D visualization overview

Project success and stakeholder buy in, storytelling, and presentation of results highly depend on how efficient the insights, the data, and the content are visualized.

Creating 3D digital representations to simplify and explain complex issues to a variety of stakeholders, including decision makers and community members, is the key element of our visualization workflows in ArcGIS. It helps you to create a visual narrative that increases understanding, encourages collaboration, and helps establish consensus among stakeholders.

With ArcGIS, you can visualize the natural and built environments above and below the ground, from global down to building scale, in a 3D scene. Based on the purpose of your visualization, you can style the layers in your scene using smart mapping, add effects such as weather, shadows or water reflection, and animate objects in 3D. Next, you can explore and interact with the scene, leveraging a range of navigation and exploratory analysis tools.

Once you have authored your scene, you can share it with stakeholders and decision makers through a variety of applications. This allows the audience to explore and interact with the data, providing a more engaging and insightful experience.

The visualization workflows are organized around authoring and exploring of scenes. A scene allows you to visualize and analyze geographic information in an intuitive and interactive 3D environment. The topic working with scenes covers what scenes are and how you can leverage them in your organization. In Authoring a scene, you will find information on how to build a scene with various layers, and Explore scenes explains how you can interact with scenes to gain more insight.

Refer to the appropriate section in the menu to the left to find 3D visualization workflows.