Creating ArcGIS Pro Scenes

Owned by Erlend Kvinnesland
Last updated: Jun 27, 2022
2 min read

This section describes how to create a scene in ArcGIS Pro local scene viewer containing seismics and multiple surfaces.

The initial challenge is that ArcGIS Pro does not support the display of seismic data natively, and also stacking multiple rasters vertically is not fully supported.

To enable ArcGIS to display these data types the Ground Model add-in contains tools to convert seismics and rasters to the wavefront .OBJ format. This is a common format supported by many 3D modelling packages including ArcGIS Pro. These OBJ files in turn may be imported using built-in ArcGIS tools to create multipatch data. Multipatch data allows for viewing cross sections and stacked surfaces in a similar manner as with the original data.

The following sections describe how to perform the OBJ export/import sequence.

Exporting seismics to .OBJ

  1. Import the SEG-Y files using the methods described earlier in this documentation. This will give you seismic feature classes.

  2. In the Ground Model toolbox open the tool Export Seismic to OBJ

  3. Specify which Seismic Feature Layer to want to export. The tool will take selection into account - if you have selected a subset of the seismic features only these will be exported.

  4. Specify the Output Folder where you want the files to be stored

  5. If you later would like to import these files in to arcgis Pro you should not check the options Flip Depth Direction or Y is up. These options are available in case you would like to import the .obj files in to software with other coordinate systems.

  6. Click Run. Execution may take a while, depending on data size.

Exporting rasters to .OBJ

This is similar to exporting seismics:

  1. In the Ground Model toolbox open the tool Export Raster to OBJ

  2. Enter the required parameters.

  3. Click Run.

Do not check the “Flip Depth Direction” or “Flip Z and Y axis” if you want import the files in ArcGis Pro. Click run to start the export. This may take some time if the raster is large.

Import .OBJ files in arcgis Pro

  1. To import the OBJ files into ArcGIS Pro use the built-in tool Import 3D Files

  2. Select the .obj files you want to import as well as the output multipatch feature class.

  3. Do not check the Y Is Up checkbox, and leave the Placement Points empty.