Troubleshoot scenes and 3D data

You may encounter the following issues when working with scenes, hosted scene layers, or 3D data in the portal website. Possible solutions to these common issues are proposed.

Scene Viewer

• Point symbols and labels do not appear in the scene.
• My elevation layer doesn’t display correctly in the scene.
• My scene does not display layers in the same order as shown in the Contents pane.
• My layer is only partially drawn.
• Neither my gamepad nor SpaceMouse device navigates in Scene Viewer.

Hosted scene layers

• When publishing a hosted scene layer, I receive a message that the portal token expired and publishing fails.
• The colors or textures on my multipatch features appear to flicker or continuously switch colors.

Scene Viewer

Point symbols and labels do not appear in the scene.

Some devices automatically switch between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics cards to render 3D graphics. Scene Viewer (and scene-based apps) work best with a dedicated graphics card; therefore, in your graphics card driver settings, make sure the per-application settings for your web browser are set to the dedicated graphics card. How you configure per-application settings for your graphics card will vary depending on the type and version of graphics card driver you use.

My elevation layer doesn’t display correctly in the scene.

If you see benching (a step-like appearance of the elevation surface) in your elevation layer created from a cached elevation image service, you may need to lower the compression value and maximum error of the service when you publish to better match the resolution of the elevation data.

My scene does not display layers in the same order as shown in the Contents pane.

Scene Viewer has a built-in hierarchy for ordering layers. The viewer displays your layers in the order listed below. Within each of these groups, you can order the layers in the scene.

1. 3D-enabled layers—This includes 3D data with z-values and 2D data that has Elevation mode set to Relative to ground or Absolute height.
2. Next, Scene Viewer displays dynamic map services and 2D feature layers with Elevation mode set to On the ground.
3. Finally, Scene Viewer displays hosted tile layers and cached map services.

For example, a dynamic layer of hurricanes always displays on top of a cached map service (tile layer) of population density even if the hurricane layer is at the bottom of Contents.

My layer is only partially drawn.

A layer may have too many features for Scene Viewer to display at one time due to performance reasons. When this occurs, a message appears in Scene Viewer warning that the layer is only partially drawn. To see the omitted features, zoom in and move around the scene.

3D symbology affects the number of features shown. Also, changing to complex 3D symbols, such as from cubes to trees, can cause fewer features to be drawn since trees require more vertices to be rendered.

Learn more tips to improve scene performance

Neither my gamepad nor SpaceMouse device navigates in Scene Viewer.

Scene Viewer supports navigation for most gamepads and 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse devices. Support for navigation with devices other than a standard mouse depends on the operating system, browser, and device. The following are the supported devices by operating system and browser:

Windows

• Chrome—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4); 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse
• Firefox—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One)
• Edge—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One)

macOS

• Chrome—Gamepad (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4); 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse

Note:

• The Safari browser doesn't support gamepad or 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse navigation in Scene Viewer.
• You may need to restart your browser after connecting the device to enable navigation.
• To navigate with your device, ensure the Scene Viewer browser window is active.

Hosted scene layers

When publishing a hosted scene layer, I receive a message that the portal token expired and publishing fails.

Scene layers (scene services) are published to the hosting server. Authorization of the hosting server is dependent on a token from the portal. If the publishing process for the scene layer does not complete before the portal token expires, publishing will fail and you will see an error message in the ArcGIS Server logs for the hosting server that token renewal failed .

The portal administrator can increase the token expiration to allow publishing to complete. Contact your portal administrator and ask them to increase the token expiration setting. Instructions can be found in Specify the default token expiration time.

The colors or textures on my multipatch features appear to flicker or continuously switch colors.

This happens if you defined colors and textures for the z-values of both exterior and interior surfaces in your multipatch data. Be sure the data does not have different colors and textures defined for exterior and interior surfaces.