A scene in ArcGIS allows you to experience geographic information similarly to the way you would in the real world, in three-dimensional space. This helps you to understand large and complex data and its spatial relationships by representing it as real-world objects that can be visualized, analyzed, and managed in a scene. A scene is very similar to a map in ArcGIS, with the added benefit of visualizing and exploring your spatial data in 3D.
Local and global scenes
A scene can have a local or global viewing mode. The decision to create a global or local scene is often driven by your visualization and analysis needs or how you want to share the scene across ArcGIS. A global scene is typically used to display data that spans the globe when viewing the curvature of the earth is important. Global scenes support WGS 1984 and CGCS 2000 geographic coordinate systems. If the spatial reference of your map is not WGS 1984 or CGCS 2000, a local scene view is recommended to avoid the distortion from being reprojected for global scene views.
Author a scene
Many ArcGIS applications support visualizing spatial data in a 3D scene. ArcGIS ProArcGIS Pro and Scene Viewer are typically used to create and author a scene locally or online.
A scene typically contains the following components:
- Layers—Geospatial data, such as scientific, urban planning, or environmental data with styles and configurations.
- Basemap—A basemap provides a background of geographical context for the content in your scene.
- Ground—The terrain with elevation data that can be turned on and off.
After you have created the scene, you can add and configure layers, select a basemap, and modify the ground. Next, you can capture slides or bookmarks to help your user navigate the scene, set environment settings such as time of day, shadows, and weather effects, and when ready, publish the scene to your organization.
Explore a scene
You can explore the content of your scene in a number of ways. You can navigate around the scene with the mouse, on-screen buttons, or the keyboard. Search for a specific location or use slides in a Scene Viewer, or bookmarks in ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Earth to jump to locations of interest. Investigate objects by clicking them to review information or use the measure tool to get a sense of scale.
Once you have published your scene, it can be shared with stakeholders and decision makers using various visualization techniques, including interactive exploration, fly-through animations, simulations, and virtual reality environments. This provides a more engaging and immersive experience for users to interact with the model.