1. Theresa Valentine US Forest Service Corvallis Forest Science Lab
Visualizing Long Term Data: Developing Time Series Animations Using ArcGIS 9.2
Theresa Valentine
US Forest Service
Corvallis Forest Science Lab

2. Overview Why Time? Preparing your data Primer on Animations Graphing
Working with Spatial Data
Making a Video
Demo
Resources/Help

3. Time Historical Data Projections out to the future
Fire History
Road building history
Harvest history
Projections out to the future
Looking for trends/interactions
Precipitation/harvest/road building/slide locations
Able to look at many factors with time as the constant

4. Preparing your Data What data can be animated
In Arcmap, ArcScene, or ArcGlobe
Feature class layers
Raster catalog layers
NetCDF layers (feature, raster, or table)
In ArcMap, you can also animate tables, feature class layers, and netCDF layers in a graph
2 ways to animate: attribute values change over time or shapes of features change over time

5. Time Field Formats
Need to be able to identify a start field or start and end fields
Date, string, integer, and double
String:
YYYYMMDD YYY/MM/DD
YYYY-MM-DD YYYYMMDDhhmmss
YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss
YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
Integer and double field
YYYYMMDD YYYYMMDDhhmmss
hh (00-23)
See help for formatting a date string using the field calculator

6. Working with Tables One to one or many to one table relationships
Attributes stored in another table
Table must be joined to feature class layer or to the base table
One to one: Use the Add Join Tool in the toolbox
One to Many: use Make Query Table Tool
Note that the tables to be joined must be within the same geodatabase!
Creating indexes will increase performance.
May need to reformat the table. The Transpose Time Fields Tool can be run to reformat the fields

7. Reformatting Time in Your Data
Shape
State_name
Y1980
Y1990
Y2000
Polygon
Oregon
106 22
1000
Wash
202
2234
Idaho
222
1232
Transpose Time Tool
Shape
State_name
Time
Value
Polygon
Oregon
1980
106
Wash
202
Idaho
222

8. Graphing Creating a Graph in ArcMap
Start the graph wizard (tools, graphs)
Right click properties and advanced properties after you create the base graph
Look at the help for more information (creating a graph)

9. Working with Spatial Data
Attribute values change (populations of counties over time)
Shape of each feature changes over time (wildfire progression, road network increasing over time)
Each change is represented as a separate feature and each feature has a different date.
You can choose to show the active features for a time period or show all features from the beginning of the animation to the current time period (progression of fire).

10. Spatial Data Feature Class Layers Raster Catalog Layers NetCDF layers
Coverages, shape files, regions, feature classes
Raster Catalog Layers
Need a time field in the raster catalog attribute table
NetCDF layers
You choose a dimension to animate through.

11. Primer on Animations
Bring up the Animation toolbar in ArcMap, ArcScene, or ArcGlobe (view> toolbars>animation)
You need to clear your animations to start or the last one you used will still be there (you can save and reload animations).
Read up on the help. It’s pretty good, but it’s easy to get lost.
Things don’t always work as they should. Sometimes it’s good to save, exit, and reload.
When doing graphs, turn off all the layers in your arcmap session as it’ll try to automate that instead of your graph.

12. Primer on Animations Step 1: Create the time layer track
click on animation on the animation toolbar and click Create Keyframe
Click the Type drop-down arrow and choose Time Layer
Click the source object drop-down arrow and click the layer or table you want to animate
The track can be bound later to multiple layers or tables to animate more than one layer or table at the same time
Click new to create a new track (use default name) or type in a new name and click new.
Keyframe name input box, alter the default name for the first keyframe (start time)
Click create to create a new keyframe for the track
Keyframe name input box, alter the default name for the second keyframe (end time)
Click create to create another keyframe for the track
Only two keyframes are required, but you can have more if you want different time intervals (see notes in help)

13. Primer on Animations Step 2: Manage track and keyframe properties
Click on Animation and click Animation Manager
Click the Tracks tab, click the track you created, and click Properties
Click the Time Track Properties tab
Specify the start time field (and the end if necessary)
Click the Format drop-down arrow (for date-formatted fields you don’t have to set the format. Use the blank if non of them fit)
Check Animate fields cumulatively if desired
Click Calculate Times
Check Show time in display if you want time displayed (very useful)
Check Show track name in the display if you want to see the name of the track in the animation
Click OK
Click the Keyframe tab
Click in the Time column to alter the time values
Click in the interval column to alter the interval
Click in the units column to set the units to use
Click close on the Animation Manger
(you might want to save this so you can reload it later, especially if the computer bombs out on you) There is also no ‘undo’ in the animation manager

14. Primer on Animations Tips: Step 3: Play the Animation
Two ways to do it:
Play the animation automatically using the Animation Controls dialog box
Play the animation manually using the Time View Slider
Tips:
You can remove the time text from your arcmap display with the select elements tool from the tools toolbar and delete.
Look at the options under the Animation Controls.
restore state after playing
You might want to check this off
Change your play options and recalculate

15. Making a Video
You can export your animation to a video (from the animation toolbar).
This can take a lot longer than you think. If you don’t use the option to enable off screen recording, you could run into problems with the FS 15 minute screen time-out)
Be sure to click on the options tab before starting the recording process.

16. Demo Videos and ArcMap Data from HJ Andrews Experimental Forest
Cooperative program with Willamette National Forest, PNW Research Station (Corvallis Lab) and Oregon State University
Long Term Ecological Research Site (National Science Foundation)
for more information

17. Resources/Help ArcGIS Help: Mapping and Visualization
Animating data through time
Contact Theresa Valentine