July 15, 2025
Put Data into Motion: How to Create a 3D Fly-Through
The 3D Viewer tool in Global Mapper® brings your data to life, allowing you to effortlessly zoom, pan, and navigate your data in a three-dimensional space. Conveniently accessed from the Viewer toolbar, the 3D Viewer opens in a floating pane that can be moved, resized, or docked to your main window. By default, the viewer displays all visible loaded data, including digital elevation models, point clouds, and vector features. Layers can be toggled on and off in the Control Center and, as a result, will toggle them on/off in the 3D Viewer. Beyond simple navigation, you can set up a stunning fly-through simulation and record it as a video to share dynamic, immersive views of your 3D data.
Getting Started with the 3D Viewer
Prior to creating and recording a fly-through, you can adjust the viewer styles to optimize the display of loaded data. Within the Configuration menu are 3D View Properties that can adjust the vertical scale, lighting, and display of features. Within the 3D viewer, the Set Camera Parameters tool allows you to view your data from a specific coordinate location or selected point.
3D visualizations are commonly used in urban planning along with architecture and construction. For this example, terrain data is loaded for Manhattan, New York. The ground in this area is relatively flat, so vector layers containing buildings and park features are loaded to provide more detail. To display the buildings as solid-looking entities, they are extruded from the displayed terrain surface. Choosing to display the features at the roof height elevation and enabling the option to Extrude 3D Vector Features in the 3D Viewer Configuration options creates a more realistic representation of the city skyline.
3D Labels
Provide additional context to vector features shown on the map by creating a layer of 3D labels. This approach of having a dedicated label layer lets you display, style, and edit labels independently from the source polygons—adding clarity and flexibility to your 3D map visualizations.
Customization for label features includes selecting the font, size, and color. Furthermore, text labels can be displayed either as flattened text—superimposed directly on the vector features—or as billboard features that stand upright and dynamically rotate for easy readability. In this example, the billboard style is chosen to label the parks of New York City before creating a fly-through.
Creating a Fly-Through Path
Fly-throughs enable you to capture and showcase your project in 3D for customers or colleagues who may not have access to a GIS program.
A flight path is necessary to record a fly-through. A path can be imported into the workspace as a vector feature, or additional settings can be applied to an existing line. Additionally, a path can be created in the 3D viewer while navigating through data in walk-mode or fly-mode.
Navigating in 3D
In the 3D Viewer, Walk-Mode and Fly-Mode provide two options for navigating through the 3D environment. Much like video game navigation, simply use keyboard and mouse controls to move through the data. When working in walk- or fly-mode, click the red Record button in the Viewer to record the path of navigation. Movements within the 3D Viewer will be recorded as a 3D vector, along with the specific camera parameters. This saved walk-/fly-through line can then be used to replay and export the recording.
Bring a Line Feature to Life
In addition to creating a path with live navigation tools, a flight can be generated from a simple line feature. The vector could be digitized (created) in the Global Mapper workspace or imported from an external file. For this example, the line representing Broadway was copied from a vector layer of New York City streets. This path will be used as the horizontal starting point for the fly-through path.
From the main Global Mapper window, the line is selected with the Digitizer. Once Generate Fly-Through is clicked in the analysis toolbar, general flight parameters can be entered. Options in the Fly-Through Path Properties dialog include view direction, elevation, speed and flight duration. After values are entered for these overall parameters, click Generate Fly-Through Data, then OK to update the selected line with the needed parameters to play and record the flight.
Watch Your Fly-Through Simulation
In the toolbar of the 3D Viewer, there are buttons to play, pause, stop, and record a fly-through, as well as one to preview the individual frames of the flight.
Previewing a fly-through provides the opportunity to edit the flight parameters along each vertex of the flight path. When playing the fly-through, Global Mapper smoothly interpolates between these individual frames. Editing the flight through the preview option allows you to deviate from the single set of options used to generate the initial fly-through path in order to apply unique settings for each section of the flight. Altering the elevation and camera angles along the flight provides better visualization of the data and can result in a more interesting recorded video.
Playing the fly-through in the 3D Viewer and exporting the flight video are very similar processes. Clicking the Play button in the 3D Viewer toolbar allows you to see the fly-through executed in the viewer. Clicking the Save Fly-Through button prompts you for some additional video format information and then plays the flight in the 3D Viewer as it is recorded.
