How to create 3D water depth with ArcScene?

Question

I was trying to visualize flood depth in 3D using ArcScene. What I had for this purposes are:

1. high-resolution DTM of the valley
2. orthophoto and
3. Raster with flood depth information.

I have draped the orthophoto over the DTM and it looks like as follows:

Then I draped orthophoto over it:

Finally I overlayed flood map on top of orthophoto:

My question is , is there any way to visualize flood water in 3D with height. it looks like Flood depth raster only touches the base of the DTM. But I need to incorporate DTM + raster height in Flood depth map . How can I do it ?

Answer 1

I would use this approach:

1. Add flood deep to DTM to create a new surface raster (use Plus (3D Analyst) tool).

2. Drape the flood raster to the new surface.

Answer 2

You need to use the DTM as the base height for your flood depth raster and calculate a new height by adding the flood depths raster value to the dtm base height as a vertical offset.

bearing in mind that water is flat (waves aside), you could also use a flat plane and calculate the flood limits as a height above sea level and set the height of the plane equal to that.