From the course: Drone Analysis with Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online

Creating the DSM and DTM

From the course: Drone Analysis with Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online

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Creating the DSM and DTM

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- [Speaker] Let's create both a DSM and a DTM in Drone2Map. To do this, we will build from our existing work in the last chapter where we built the true ortho and used our high-resolution ground control points to give us the best result. Now, since we have built an accurate image collection, we will use the output from the rest of our work until we get to the inspection chapter in this course. So if you don't have your chapter two project already open, go ahead and open that now in Drone2Map. And let's get started. Notice on the right here, I have the manage pane open and we have our two other 2D products called digital surface model and digital terrain model unchecked. They haven't been completed yet, so that's what we're going to do together. And although we think of these products often as 3D, they are kind of technically two and a half D because we really only see the surface results, we don't actually see through in 3D. We can take advantage of the 2D view for navigation with the colors that are generated to give us a 3D effect very clearly. So first, let's go ahead and uncheck true ortho because we don't need to create that anymore. And let's go ahead and check the digital surface model and the digital terrain model, and we'll let the image collection process into those two products. Now from the main ribbon in the processing group, let's go ahead and open the options here and take a look at some of these parameters. Here is our 2D products, and let's talk about these. Now, just like the true ortho, we could import our own high-resolution ortho rectified elevation layer, but in this project, we will depend on the ESRI World 3D elevation layer. Now for each of the products, the DSM and the DTM, notice that you can control the shading parameters and the contouring outputs right here. If you're curious about anything, you can always pause the video and hover over these blue help icons just to learn a little bit more about each of the parameters and read through that. For example, the hill shading, the azimuth here, it defines where the light source is relative to the output. And in this case, it's at 315 degrees. So the compass directions start at zero at the top or north and then go around to 315 degrees, which is the northwest of the output. And that's where the light source for the hill shade will come from. If you're mapping terrain that is a certain direction, then adjust the parameter to best angle your light source for hill shading. Now let's go ahead and also output the hill shading and the contours. And notice also, you could export the contours as a shape file as well, so you can get many different products from this output. And of course, both the hill shade and the contours will be written as feature classes into the geo-database in this project. Scrolling down here to the digital terrain model, I'm going to create a shaded relief and the contours for this one as well. And let's go ahead and export the shape file. The rest, I'm going to leave default and click OK. Now we're ready. The processing will take a little while, so once we've begun, go ahead and pause the video and then reengage with the course after your processing is complete. So when ready, we just access the home icon here in the main ribbon, and we're looking for the processing group and the start button. And I'll go ahead and click my start and begin the process. My computer takes about seven to 10 minutes to complete these products, so go ahead and pause the video now and return back when you are complete. Well, welcome back. Hopefully, you've had success in creating your DSM and DTM products like me. And now in the next video, let's spend some time talking and understanding these different layers from our contents pane view.

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