Author a web scene

In ArcGIS Pro, you can author and share web scenes to your active portal. Web scenes are interactive displays of geographic information that are useful to expose 3D data on the web for visualization and analysis.

A global or local scene that contains existing web layers or publishable data layers can be shared as a web scene. All existing cached layers, including web scene layers, web tile layers, and elevation layers, must be in the coordinate system of the basemap, if present. For more information about basemap and elevation layers, see Basemap and elevation layers.

Scene layers in a global or local scene can be shared with the web scene. Both scene layer packages and scene services are supported. When a scene layer package is shared with the web scene, the package is published as a web scene layer.

Both 2D and 3D layers can be published when sharing a web scene. All new web layers are shared in the coordinate system of your scene. For more information about how different layers are published, see Operational layers.

The coordinate system of your scene can be specified in the scene properties.

The illumination and shadow settings saved in the scene properties are maintained through the sharing process. These settings can be modified dynamically in the scene viewer after sharing. Any bookmarks are also included in the web scene.

Local scenes

Local scenes, which can be shared to ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Enterprise, and Portal for ArcGIS 10.4 and later, should be used when you need to use a projected coordinate system to maintain the integrity of your data or to reduce distortion. The coordinate system must have a well-known ID (WKID), as Scene Viewer does not support custom coordinate systems.

Local scene showing Portland Oregon
A local scene shows Portland, Oregon.

Global scenes

Global scenes are ideal when sharing data that has a global extent. Global scenes only support WGS 84 and China Geodetic Coordinate System 2000.

Global scene showing the population of U.S. cities
A global scene shows the population of U.S. cities.