Create geospatial products in ArcGIS Reality Studio

The workflow for creating geospatial products in ArcGIS Reality Studio is described below. It includes loading orientation data to create a capture session, creating and processing an alignment to improve the quality of the orientation, and creating and processing a reconstruction to generate geospatial products such as digital surface models, true orthos, point clouds, meshes, and Gaussian splats.

To create geospatial products, complete the following steps:

1. Download, install, and authorize ArcGIS Reality Studio.

2. Start ArcGIS Reality Studio.

3. Add the imagery and orientation data.

   1. On the Home tab or the starting window, click New Capture Session .

      The Capture Session pane opens with the Imagery tab selected.

   2. Optionally, under Image Location, click Browse , browse to the folder containing the images, and click OK.

      Note:

      Images can be added after creating the capture session or can be read directly from some orientation files.

   3. In the Orientation Source section, choose Frames and Cameras Table (.csv).

      The Frames and Cameras Table option is used in this workflow for simplicity, as it can contain image paths and spatial reference. You can choose other orientation file formats to create a capture session.

   4. In the text box that appears, click Browse , browse to the location of the Frames and Cameras Table .csv file, and click OK.

      Note:

      If the .csv file has valid image paths and coordinate system definitions, you could simplify the creation process by skipping the step 3.b, 3.f, and 3.g.

   5. Optionally, click the Lidar Data tab and configure the point clouds data location and trajectory data location.

   6. In the Input Spatial Reference section, click Select coordinate system .

      Tip:

      Click the drop-down arrow to set the coordinate system from another data source of the project.

   7. Choose the horizontal and vertical coordinate systems from the Horizontal systems and Vertical systems tabs respectively.

   8. Optionally, check the Different Target Spatial Reference check box and check the boxes of the products that will use a different spatial reference.

   9. In the Capture Session Selection section, choose the camera sessions to add to the capture session.

      To choose all camera sessions, check the Select all check box.

      Tip:

      Capture session names are auto-generated. You can rename them by editing their text boxes.

   10. Click Finish.

       The capture session is created and visible in the Project Tree pane.

4. Create, submit, and start contributing to the alignment to optimize the imagery orientations.

   1. On the Home tab, click New Alignment .

   2. In the Alignment Name text box, provide a name for the alignment.

   3. In the Workspace section, click Browse , browse to the workspace location, and click OK.

      Tip:

      You can define a default workspace in the Processing Paths section on the General tab of the Options dialog box. This workspace will be selected by default every time you create, monitor or contribute to a job.

   4. In the Camera Sessions section, choose the capture session.

      All camera sessions in the chosen capture session that contain more than six images are automatically selected.

   5. Click the Create drop-down arrow and click Create, Submit and Start Contribution.

      Note:

      You must specify a temporary processing directory for the alignment to continue with enough available disk space.

      The Save Project As dialog box appears.

   6. Browse to a valid location, provide a name in the Name text box, and click Save.

      The alignment is created and visible in the Project Tree pane.

      The ArcGIS Reality Studio Node command terminal window appears, showing the background process. This terminal must remain open while processing is ongoing.

      The Workspace Monitor pane appears, showing the progress of the alignment.

      Wait until the alignment processing is completed. This may take a few minutes.

      Once the alignment processing is finished, the job in the Workspace Monitor is marked as finished. Optionally, close the terminal when processing is complete.

5. Create, submit, and start contributing to a reconstruction to create the geospatial products.

   1. On the Home tab, click New Reconstruction .

      The Reconstruction pane appears.

   2. In the Reconstruction Name text box, provide a name for the reconstruction.

   3. In the Workspace section, click Browse and browse to the workspace location.

   4. In the Sessions section, choose an alignment.

      All optimized camera sessions from the alignment are automatically selected.

   5. Choose an option from the Capture Scenario drop-down list that best fits the input data for the reconstruction.

      Note:

      The Aerial Nadir option requires values for Forward Overlap and Sideward Overlap.

   6. In the Quality section, choose Ultra, High or Rapid.

      Note:

      The Rapid option is only available for aligned capture sessions.

   7. In the Products section, choose the products to generate, or continue with the products selected by default based on the capture scenario chosen.

      Note:

      The DSM Mesh product is only available for the Aerial Nadir scenario.

   8. Click the Create drop-down arrow and click Create, Submit and Start Contribution.

      The reconstruction is created and visible in the Project Tree pane.

      The ArcGIS Reality Studio Node command terminal window appears, showing the background process. This terminal must remain open while processing is ongoing.

      The Workspace Monitor pane appears, showing the processing progress.

      Wait until the reconstruction processing is complete. This may take a few minutes.

6. In the Reconstructions section in the Project Tree pane , hover over the products you want to visualize and click Toggle Visibility to turn the visualization on.

   Note:

   Before visualizing a point cloud, click Create layer to create its visualization layer.

   Note:

   When visualizing point clouds, meshes or Gaussian splats products, some parts may be hidden by the terrain. You can change the display height by setting a cartographic offset. On the Project Tree pane, right-click the product and click Set Display Height. On the dialog box that opens, enter the offset and click OK.

   Note:

   The visualization of reconstruction products that are processed and stored in the cloud is not supported.

   The generated products appear in the Globe view.

7. On the Reconstruction tab, click Open Results Folder .

   File Explorer opens in the location of the results folder on disk.