Adding Texture to the sides of an extruded polygon in ArcScene

Question

I've been using ArcScene 10.2.2 to create simple extrusions of building footprints and now would like to add textures to them to make them more realistic.

I want to add textures to the sides of the extruded polygons but it only adds texture to the top of the polygon and then the sides become stretched versions of that texture.

I've tried and failed many methods of doing this but the only way I found it to convert the polygons to lines and then symbolize the lines with a "3D texture line" then "extruding" using the line width and changing the vertical orientation. This is a very long workaround way to do it.

I don't have access to any other software options (sketchup etc) so was hoping there was a way in Arcscene to do this.

Answer 1

I've been having the same issue. I just discovered if you are using a simple enough texture you can do the following to sort of McGuyver a vertical texture. Create a polyline (not a polygon) of the outline of your polygon. Enter the Symbol selector screen and edit the symbol. Choose the 3D Texture Line Symbol from the drop down and choose the texture file. Once it has loaded in the editor, click the vertical orientation tick box. You can now use the line width as your "extrude height". So if you were going to extrude your shape by 5 (generic units) type in the line width as 5.DO NOT also extrude the line (also make sure the Extrude features in layer tick box is not checked in the Extrusion tab). ArcScene will also probably take a long time between each step.

Again this is not perfect but it works for simple enough textures. Hope that might help you.