Define a waterbody mask

Water bodies can be difficult to process cleanly because of turbulence and strong reflections. These factors often alter pixel values significantly between images and prevent accurate reconstruction. With the Waterbody Mask tool, you can draw or import a water body layer to mask these problematic areas so they can be interpolated into an accurate result. You can choose from the following Waterbody Geometry options to improve the result:

• Coarse—Polygons completely encompass the water bodies and may include objects on or near the water. Inside the polygons, ArcGIS Drone2Map adaptively reconstructs the water surface and any solid surfaces potentially included
• Precise—Polygons accurately delineate water bodies and exclude objects such as bridges, piers, and boats. Inside the polygons, ArcGIS Drone2Map constrains the reconstructed water surface to the water body geometry.

During product generation, water body polygons are applied to the raw data on the fly, so any intermediate data remains unaltered by this process.

Note:

The water body mask that is drawn or imported into the project should be at least partly within the boundary of the flight area and image collection; otherwise, a processing error may occur.

Create a water body mask

To create a water body mask, complete the following steps:

1. On the Home tab, click the Waterbody Mask button in the Pre-Processing group.
2. From the drop-down list, click Waterbody Geometry.

   A submenu appears with the Precise and Coarse options.

3. Choose the type of geometry for the new water body.
4. Click Create Waterbody.

   The Create Features pane appears.

5. Use the editing tools to draw a new polygon to define the water body area.
6. Close the Create Features pane.

Import a water body mask

To import a water body mask, complete the following steps:

1. On the Home tab, click the Waterbody Mask button in the Pre-Processing group.
2. From the drop-down list, click Import Waterbody.

   The Browse to Feature Class dialog box appears.

3. Browse to and select the feature layer or shapefile that will be used for the water body, and click OK.

Remove a water body mask

To remove a water body mask, complete the following steps:

1. On the Home tab, click the Waterbody Mask button in the Pre-Processing group.
2. From the drop-down menu, click Clear Waterbody.

   The water body mask layer in the table of contents is cleared of all polygons.

Use water body features with tile-based processing

You can use water body features in combination with tile-based processing to fix areas of poor water reconstruction. There are two methods of applying the tile-based processing workflow: merged and unmerged. Using merged tiles will reprocess tiles and overwrite the product leaving a single output file while also saving storage space. Using unmerged tiles will output the individual tiles into the project folder and allows you to see which specific tiles were updated. To learn more, see Tile based processing.

Note:

Tile-based processing is only support for True Ortho and DSM and point cloud products.

To see tiles within the product folder, the Delete Tiles processing option needs to be unchecked