Water bodies, such as rivers, lakes, and oceans, cover a significant portion of the Earth’s surface. Accurately modelling these features is crucial for creating 2D and 3D products in ArcGIS Reality Studio. However, their uniform texture, strong reflections, and variable appearance pose unique challenges. Traditionally, addressing these issues required tedious vectorizing work. Users could skip defining water bodies, but this often results in lower quality outputs. The new coarse water body workflow reduces the effort needed while maintaining high output quality, balancing effort and results effectively.
Water Body Digitization within ArcGIS Reality Studio
In the ever-evolving field of geospatial technology, ArcGIS Reality Studio stands out as a powerful tool for creating accurate and detailed 3D models. One of its standout features is the coarse water body workflow, which significantly reduces the time required for manual editing of water surfaces. By minimizing the number of vertices a user has to draw for water body geometries, this feature allows users to streamline their workflow and focus on other important aspects of their projects. Additionally, the coarse nature of these polygons allows for more variation in the water surface, meaning users can potentially reuse the same polygons for consecutive projects in the same area. Let’s dive into what makes this workflow so special and how it can benefit your projects.
The Coarse Water Body Workflow: A Game Changer
From the outset, Reality Studio has enabled users to provide precise polygons that accurately represent water surfaces at the time of data acquisition. When these polygons are supplied, they are considered during processing, resulting in smooth water surfaces in the specified areas. Although this approach yields pleasing results, the task of digitizing these water surface polygons has always been labor-intensive.
The coarse water body workflow in Reality Studio simplifies this process by allowing users to digitize water bodies directly within the application. As the name suggests, these polygons no longer need to precisely follow the outlines of water surfaces but instead encapsulate the general water area. While the outline can be coarse, the elevation of the water body still needs to be correctly provided. Reality Studio will automatically detect and exclude non-water objects, intelligently reconstructing the water surfaces.
In the example shown above, the coarse water body geometry could be defined with just 6 vertices, compared to the 679 vertices required to draw the polygon around boats docked at their jetties. This example also demonstrates how bridges and islands are automatically detected, ensuring that water surface correction is only applied where water has been detected. This significantly reduces the manual effort required while maintaining high-quality results.
Key Benefits of Using the Coarse Water Body Workflow
The coarse water body workflow offers several advantages that can significantly improve your projects:
- Efficiency: By digitizing water bodies directly within ArcGIS Reality Studio, users can streamline their workflow and reduce the need for external tools.
- Accuracy: The workflow ensures that the accuracy of water body correction is maintained, delivering the high-quality results known from using precise geometries, even when using coarse ones.
- Flexibility: Users can easily create 3D polygons for water bodies directly within the application, making it simple to adjust and refine the geometries as needed.
- Reusability: The coarse nature of the polygons allows users to reuse the same water body geometries for consecutive projects in the same area, further enhancing efficiency.
How to Use the Coarse Water Body Workflow
Follow these steps to effectively use the Coarse Water Body Workflow in your projects:
- Create Geometries: Digitize coarse water body geometries directly within ArcGIS Reality Studio or import them from existing sources or previous years.
- Adjust Elevation: Ensure the 3D polygons match the water level at the time of data acquisition.
- Configure Reconstruction: Select the coarse water geometries and indicate the correct type of water body.
- Process: The software will detect and reconstruct water surfaces within these geometries.
- Review and Iterate: Make necessary adjustments to the water body geometry and reprocess efficiently, focusing only on affected areas.
Unlock Efficiency with the Coarse Water Body Workflow
The coarse water body workflow in ArcGIS Reality Studio is a powerful tool that enhances the accuracy and efficiency of reality mapping projects. By simplifying the process of digitizing and processing water bodies, it allows users to produce high-quality Reality Mapping products with significantly less editing effort, saving both time and money. Whether you’re involved in urban planning, environmental monitoring, or disaster management, this workflow can help you achieve better results with less effort.
Are you still accurately digitizing your polygons manually? Discover the efficiency gains provided by the new coarse water body workflow in ArcGIS Reality Studio and see how it can streamline your projects and save valuable resources!
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