Posts about Blender
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QGIS2Blender - A Plugin for Preparing Terrain Data for Use in Blender
If you’ve ever tried bringing terrain data into Blender, you’ve likely found yourself repeating the same geoprocessing steps to prepare the data. DEMs often need to be merged, reprojected, clipped to an area of interest, rescaled, and finally exported as a 16-bit TIFF before Blender can use them as heightmaps.As an aside, if you’re wondering what Blender is, or why you might want to use it for geospatial data, I would highly recommend Daniel Huffman’s excellent series of tutorials. Shaded relief created in Blender has more realistic shadows, to my eye looks more beautiful, and just looks more 3D in general. It will make every hillshade you’ve created in QGIS feel like crumpled paper.
Alone, none of the steps required to prepare a DEM for use in Blender are particularly difficult but they quickly become tedious when repeated for every project. For Blender users who are new to GIS, the data preparation process can also be a barrier to entry.
QGIS2Blender is a plugin I made for QGIS, that brings this workflow together into a single tool, allowing you to quickly and easily create data that can be imported into Blender.
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Geologic Map of Japan in Blender
This is the first time I made in Blender using non-USGS data. The vintage map as well as the digital elevation model was readily available from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, but getting the data into a usable format was a bit of an adventure.
I haven’t done a full-size render of this one yet, so it might be a tiny bit fuzzy, but the key elements are all there!
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3D Topo USGS Topo Map
Several years ago I (and a lot of the internet) was very taken with Daniel Huffman’s techniques for creating hillshade in Blender, and the subsequent explosion of modern hillsahde imagery layered with vintage maps. After getting a new computer and basking in the increased processing power, I was able to make some pretty significant improvements on my original attempt in QGIS.
I stared with a USGS topo map, o which I added the hill-shade.
Which I then colored with the original map. I’m really pleased with the level of detail, even close up. Here is Point Reyes station and the surrounding hills.
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