Multiscale Hillshade: How to hack ambient occlusion and terrain curvature in ArcGIS Pro

Really realistic shading for a 3D surface is hard. There are rigorous and awesome methods like ray shading and ambient occlusion and curvature. But those can be pretty slow and intensive. Let's just see what we can get away with by making a few blurred versions of our input elevation surface and start hacking away at some scaled hillshades, slopes, and...hillshaded slopes? Yes. Get ready to live.
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[@fabiomalfatti5963]

Thanks a lot, you bring hillshading to another level!

[@ollah468]

Thanks! So keen to give this a try

[@ibrahimmohammed3484]

wow, ART i can watch this all day ! also i need to start turning each techniques you show into a model tool

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

Good idea. I would do that but I'm too lazy.

[@ibrahimmohammed3484]

John, would you mind please showing choosing a ( realistic ) color scheme for the hillshade or blending with landcover layer ? preferably that one with ambient occlusion effect

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

That's the next video in the series. Here's a couple previews. twitter.com/John_M_Nelson/status/1248345602913636355

[@ibrahimmohammed3484]

@@JohnNelsonMaps cool, can't wait for it.

[@kattriet]

Great video, thank you! It worked well for me, however some of my rasters slightly changed their proportions, do you know why this occurred?

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

Weird! No, no idea sorry.

[@kattriet]

@@JohnNelsonMaps okay, thanks anyway :)

[@andresimplicio2131]

What is the ideal size of the cells in a continental area? 100?

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

I don't know. I'd say whatever blur-distance looks realistic (not too noisy with detail and not visually blurry) when you hillshade it and zoom out to your desired scale.

[@EstherMandeno]

Did you use slope percent or degrees? Does it make a difference? - Sorry, just checked, you used degrees. I tried it with percent and it didn't come out too good. I'll try it next with degrees. Thanks for the tips! I can use this for a project right now. :)

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

Good point, I haven't even tried it out with percent!

[@emmanuelduchene]

Wonderful! Makes for a great result. Now I have a question I can't find the answer to: how could I flatten these different layers to create one (as I would do in Photoshop) and be able to export that single layer to a tif file?

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

thanks! good question, and one that i've wondered about myself. you could experiment with the "band math" raster function and just all all the layers's pixel values up. but i don't know if that would do it. i'll ask around.

[@emmanuelduchene]

@@JohnNelsonMaps alright, I tested this but it doesn'nt do the trick. I always end up with a raster based on the first or last layer. Tried to match and blend but same result. Let me know if you find a solution. Thanks for the help!

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

@@emmanuelduchene i have an evil plan. what if you export your map as a geotiff?

[@emmanuelduchene]

@@JohnNelsonMaps Oh my, that was an evil plan indeed. And it did the trick! Evil and success strangely hold together sometimes. *shivers* Thanks for the help and keep up the great work, fantastic content. Your one minute hacks are also great to watch.

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

@@emmanuelduchene SWEET! I should have thought of that long ago as I've wondered the same. Well, i may not get there fast, but maybe eventually. Cheers Emmanuel.

[@christophervandeven2549]

Why is it that when I use the hillshade on the original DEM using the Slope tool in raster functions, the values range from 0-255, but when I create a hillshade using the tool from the Geoprocessing pane, they have less dynamic range (from 23-215 or 145-217)?

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

Christopher Van de Ven I do not know. They are possibly different algorithms managed by different teams. But I’ll find out and let you know.

[@christophervandeven2549]

@@JohnNelsonMaps Thanks! Loved this process - my hillshades are popping so much more.

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

@@christophervandeven2549 Cool!

[@jeremyallen1392]

@@christophervandeven2549 if you change the stretch type of your raster to 'Minimum Maximum' it will allow you to change the statistics of your dataset to "custom" and you can put the original values.

[@HerrArcturus]

I love how it looks! I have a problem though. When i export the layout, it looks terrible. How did you export the results? Thanks!

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

How does it look? Besides terrible

[@HerrArcturus]

It does look just like the transparent upper DEM was exported.

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

@@HerrArcturus it’s hard to know what’s going on

[@P.T.Barnum]

Genius

[@JohnNelsonMaps]

ha, thanks Miquel!