I am new to using ArcScene and encountered a problem in my analysis. I want to calculate shadows in the city center of Utrecht on different times and days. Subsequently I want to transform these shades to polygons that represent the amount of shade on streetlevel. I am using the tools Sun Shadow Volume and Multipatch Footprint.
I extruded a layer with buildings (with heights in the attribute table) on a TIN with the baseheights of Utrecht, which is almost flat (image 1). Subsequently I ran the Sun Shadow Volume tool, which seems to work fine. However, the resulting shades cut through the baselayer (image 2). When I want to transform them to footprints, I get the footprints at the lowest point, instead of at baseheight level (image 3).
Does anybody know whether I can change the settings in Sun Shadow Volume tool somehow? Or in the Multipatch Footprint tool? Or did I already do something wrong with the extrusion?
Best Answer
I also encountered this problem (shadows appearing below the ground) and it took me a while to figure out a workaround (I suspect that the problem exists because the tools are not yet used very much - I had to figure this out on my own!) You basically need to select only the above ground shadows and delete the rest.
My (not very eloquent) workaround was the following:
You're essentially making a big 3D block from the ground (with your DEM as its base) up into the sky and using that to select (intersect) the shadows that you want to keep.