Retain the vertical exaggeration in web scenes published from ArcGIS Pro

Summary

In ArcGIS Pro scenes, vertical exaggerations on elevation surface layers enhance raster data that display information such as topographic features or precipitation distribution. However, when sharing scenes as web scenes from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online, the elevation surface exaggeration is not honored. Sharing scenes is successful but returns a warning message in ArcGIS Pro. For more information, refer to ArcGIS Pro: 24130: Exaggeration on elevation surface is not supported in web scene. This is a known limitation, as documented in the note in ArcGIS Pro: Elevation layers.

This article provides a workaround to apply vertical exaggeration on raster data by multiplying the pixel values by a desired factor using the Raster Calculator tool, and it uses the raster as the elevation surface. In this example, precipitation raster data are used to display the exaggerated precipitation amount within an area. To display an exaggerated ground or terrain surface, use DEM raster data for the workflow.

Procedure

1. Open the scene in ArcGIS Pro. In this example, the 'NA_mean_precipitation.tif' 2D raster layer, displaying the precipitation distribution in North America, must be exaggerated and used as the elevation surface layer.

2. In the Geoprocessing pane, search for and select Raster Calculator (Spatial Analyst Tools).
3. Configure the parameters in the Raster Calculator pane.
   1. In the Map Algebra expression box, specify the calculation as provided in the code block below. Replace <raster_layer> with the appropriate raster layer, and <factor> with the value used to exaggerate the raster data.

<raster_layer> * <factor>

2. For Output raster, specify the name of the output raster. In this example, exaggerated_prec is used.
3. Click Run to execute the tool.

4. In the Contents pane, drag the new output raster layer from the 2D Layers category and place it under the Elevation Surfaces > Ground category to turn the output raster into the elevation surface layer. In this example, the exaggerated_prec layer is used as the elevation surface layer.

5. Share the scene as a web scene to ArcGIS Online. Refer to ArcGIS Pro: Share a web scene for instructions.

The image below shows the vertical exaggeration of the web scene is retained in ArcGIS Online.