[HN Gopher] Shaded Relief Maps in Blender
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       Shaded Relief Maps in Blender
        
       Author : mooreds
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2021-10-04 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | a_large_rat00 wrote:
       | Why would you want to do this rather than using the built-in
       | hillshader and 3D map view?
       | 
       | https://opengislab.com/blog/2018/3/20/3d-dem-visualization-i...
        
         | xemoka wrote:
         | My guess is that Blender's 3D rendering and lighting is far
         | better than most GIS packages, including QGIS.
        
       | jblindsay wrote:
       | These blender-based shaded relief images have been popping up a
       | fair bit in the geomatics space recently. I really love them, but
       | they are fairly complicated to make. I developed the open-source
       | geospatial platform WhiteboxTools (developed in pure Rust) to
       | help with tasks like this. You can create multi-scale hillshade
       | images with it and the type of shadow model displayed above as
       | well with one click:
       | 
       | https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/...
       | 
       | Better yet, you can create a dynamic shadow model based on a DEM
       | using the ShadowAnimation tool:
       | 
       | https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Guelph_Shadow_Animation/shadow_a...
       | 
       | multidirection hillshade:
       | https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/...
       | 
       | TimeInDaylight tool:
       | https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/...
        
         | jblindsay wrote:
         | Here are some more examples of the dynamic shadow models, that
         | you may enjoy:
         | 
         | https://whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/small_farm_shadows_...
         | 
         | https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/Kitchener_shado...
        
         | xemoka wrote:
         | Thank you John for your work with WhiteBoxTools, I was
         | introduced to it when a former student of yours entered our GIS
         | program at Selkirk College a couple years back and have been
         | keeping one eye on it since.
         | 
         | You've got some really excellent algorithms and tools in WBT,
         | I've used them to shortcut some obnoxiously long
         | lidar/pointcloud processing with other packages.
         | 
         | I'm not sure that this is "less complicated" than the linked
         | tutorial though, but some great exploration for someone who
         | knows a little more ;)
        
           | jblindsay wrote:
           | @xemoka Thanks for the kind words. I will respectfully
           | disagree about the level of complication involved though. In
           | this case, you simply open the ShadowImage tool, specify your
           | input DEM, choose a palette, name the output and press run. I
           | realize that there is a lot of GIS knowledge that is required
           | in many cases, but this one is fairly straight forward to
           | run.
        
       | MilStdJunkie wrote:
       | Easier geodata workflow is to use the addon BlenderGIS
       | 
       | https://github.com/domlysz/BlenderGIS
       | 
       | Advantage of DEMs is you can make fictional stuff as well.
        
       | dymk wrote:
       | This is really neat. I dabble in woodworking, and the workflow
       | for making these maps is pretty similar to what I do to create
       | the 3D models for CNC caved wooden relief maps:
       | https://imgur.com/a/ZihtlwN
        
       | tylermw wrote:
       | For doing this type of work programmatically in R, check out the
       | rayshader package:
       | 
       | https://www.rayshader.com
       | 
       | It has a high-quality pathtracing renderer built-in
       | (https://www.rayrender.net) that only requires a single line of R
       | code to produce results similar to what's offered here (without
       | all the manual work).
        
       | DIVx0 wrote:
       | This is apropos. I am buying some land and wanted to model it to
       | help visualize building site options. There are publicly
       | available topomaps and some DEMs but there was also LIDAR data
       | sets too.
       | 
       | I spent hours learning how to render lidar point clouds into maps
       | using QGIS and some other tools. Very steep learning curve but it
       | was fun to do. Now to apply what I learned with this to make some
       | neat shaded maps too!
        
       | winkeltripel wrote:
       | I use https://terrain.party to source heightmaps as image files,
       | and perform any manipulation of the heightmap in normal image-
       | editing software. It's a lot less funky if you already have the
       | image-editing skill.
        
       | ashtonkem wrote:
       | Now to just send it off to a high quality printshop for framing.
        
         | dfgasdgsd wrote:
         | looked into doing this last year for a bit - there are a few
         | people selling these maps that are pretty cool:
         | 
         | https://scottreinhardmaps.com/ (from what I can tell he was the
         | first one to do this?)
         | https://twitter.com/geo_spatialist?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7C...
         | 
         | https://eastofnowhere.co/collections/best-sellers/products/t...
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-04 23:00 UTC)