Creating Custom Basemaps for ArcGIS Urban

Enhance the appearance of your models in ArcGIS Urban, either with a purpose-driven display of ground features or with some creative flare, by leveraging custom basemaps. Using tools like the ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor, or resources like the ArcGIS Living Atlas, you can tailor the look and feel of your basemaps for both internal and external planning audiences.

ArcGIS Urban brings a web-based 3D application to planners and design professionals to create scenarios and perform impact assessment on plans and projects at a variety of scales. But unlike many other applications on ArcGIS Online that rely on web maps created with Map Viewer, ArcGIS Urban generates models according to the visualization settings defined in its “Manage” tool.

Most models generated by ArcGIS Urban use Esri’s Light Gray Canvas basemap in their schematic visualization. However, there might be a need for a municipality or planning agency to alter the basemap, whether it be to turn off certain features like existing building footprints or to provide a more artistic rendering of the surrounding environment. Customizing a basemap for these purposes and loading it into a web scene or directly within ArcGIS Urban is possible and this article will guide you through the necessary steps to accomplish this task.

Let’s say I’m working with a municipality who would like to see existing building footprints eliminated from the Light Gray Canvas basemap in their ArcGIS Urban scenarios, as they would like the focus to be on proposed features that don’t match the geometry of what’s on the ground today. This is a small detail that only detracts slightly from planners end deliverables, but I know we can eliminate these footprints with help from the ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor, which gives us the ability to customize the appearance of features while still making use of Esri’s up-to-date vector basemap data.

Composing the new basemap:

1. Log into the ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor and click the “New Style” button in the top-right corner.

2. Select the “Light Gray Canvas” basemap from the main gallery.

3. Zoom in to an urban area.

4. Choose the “Edit layer styles” button on the left-side toolbar.

5.  Click on the “Buildings” header.

6. Toggle the “Visible” option to off.

7. Save the basemap to your account with an identifiable name and related tags.

Loading the basemap within Scene Viewer:

If you have already exported your scenario from ArcGIS Urban as a web scene, then you can load the new basemap within Scene Viewer. This method does not require you to customize your organization’s basemap gallery settings.

1. Open the web scene with Scene Viewer.
2. Select the “Basemap” tool on the right-side toolbar and set the basemap to “No basemap”.

3. Select the “Add” tool on the left-side toolbar and select “Browse layers”.

4. Navigate to and select the newly created basemap tile layer.

5. Drag the tile layer to the bottom of the layer list.

Loading the basemap within ArcGIS Urban:

If you want to use the new basemap directly within ArcGIS Urban, you must customize your organization’s basemap gallery settings before using the basemap within a model. This action requires an Administrative-level account.

1. Create a group that will contain the web maps used to populate the basemap gallery.

2. Open the newly created basemap tile layer in Map Viewer.

3. Under the “Layers” tool, select the options for new the tile layer and choose “Move to basemap”.

4. Under the “Basemap” tool, remove the existing base and reference layers so you are only left with the new tile layer.

5. Perform a “Save as” function to save it as a web map with an identifiable name and related tags.

6. Set the extent under the “Settings” tab on the item details page associated with the web map. Note: ArcGIS Urban can only load basemaps with an extent that covers the model’s extent.
7. Share the newly saved web map to the group created in step #1.
8. Go to “Organization” within the header bar, choose the “Settings” tab and find the “Map” option in the left-side list options.

9. Set the basemap gallery to consume the group created in step #1.

10. Open the model in ArcGIS Urban.

11. Go to the model “Settings” found within the “Manage” tool.

12. Under the schematic visualization, click on the pencil icon at the bottom of the “Basemap” card.

13. Navigate to and select the newly created basemap.

14. Close the “Settings” page, choose a scenario within a plan, and explore how the model looks with the new basemap in place.

Additionally, planners at the municipality told me that they would like to see a basemap option within ArcGIS Urban that looks more like their landscape design sketches that make use of softer, natural tones and watercolour textures. I could use the same steps identified earlier for composing a new basemap with the ArcGIS Vector Tile Style Editor to help me achieve a more sketch-like style, but in this case, I will leverage the ArcGIS Living Atlas to provide me with an existing authoritative basemap already presented in this style.

1. Open a new web map in Map Viewer.

2. Select the “Add” tool on the left-side toolbar and select “Browse layers”.

3. Set the drop-down menu to “Living Atlas” and search for “Watercolour”.

4. Add the “Watercolour” tile layer provided by Esri Vector Maps.

5. Under the “Layers” tool, select the options for the Watercolour tile layer and choose “Move to basemap”.

6. Under the “Basemap” tool, remove the existing base and reference layers so you are only left with the Watercolour tile layer, and rename the basemap.

7. Perform a “Save as” function to save it as a web map with an identifiable name and related tags.

8. Share the newly saved web map to the group that populates your basemap gallery.

9. Exit the Map Viewer and open the model in ArcGIS Urban.

10. Go to the model “Settings” found within the “Manage” tool.

11. Under the schematic visualization, click on the pencil icon at the bottom of the “Basemap” card.

12. Navigate to and select the newly created Watercolour basemap.

13. Close the “Settings” page and explore how the model looks with the new Watercolour basemap in place.

You can find more information related to working with basemaps in ArcGIS Urban below:

Preparing Custom Basemap and Elevation Layers for ArcGIS Urban

Creating a 3D Basemap for an Urban Area (Tutorial)

New Coordinate Systems Support in ArcGIS Urban (October 2023)

 

This article shows sample data located in Saint John, New Brunswick, from the online tutorial Creating a City Model in ArcGIS Urban. The proposed developments that appear are entirely fictional and intended for demonstration purposes only.