Shaded Relief Maps in Blender | Hacker News Reader

Shaded Relief Maps in Blender

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224 pointsmooreds26 comments

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/...

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...

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 ;)

@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.

As a one-time guelphite, seeing the University of Guelph in that TimeInDaylight tool link caught me quite off guard!

Thanks! I've been looking for an accessible explanation of the hillshade algorithm, without much success.

This explanation is also quite nice: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/3d-a...

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).

That's gorgeous!

Thanks!

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

That's beautiful work. Do you have any resources you'd recommend to start learning how to make these?

I'd recommend with simple projects like edge-grain cutting boards and moving up in complexity. I got started making cutting boards, signs, and drink coasters [1]. A cutting board is the kind of project that's easy to start off with, but has a high skill cap if you're trying to make something _very_ nice. Plus they make great gifts.

John Katz-Moses - YouTube channel [2] for learning traditional woodworking (cutting boards, joinery, frame making, etc). He's recently been getting into CNC.

Frank Howarth (also on YouTube [3]) - Resource for woodworking, commonly incorporating CNC with traditional woodworking methods.

Winston Moy (YouTube - [4]) - Go-to for learning how to use the Shapeoko line of routers, but the knowledge on his channel is applicable to any CNC platform. He has lots of parametric modeling tips-and-tricks as well. Lots of ideas for starter projects on a benchtop sized CNC.

I use a Shapeoko Pro for my work, but you can get started at a lower price-point by going with a used Shapeoko 3 to get your feet wet. The "Shapeoko and Nomad Users Group (Unofficial)" group on Facebook [5] has lots of projects, and is a good community for getting support with projects, and finding used machines for sale. There's also the X-Carve platform (that I'm not as familiar with, but they're pretty comparable feature and ability wise).

I'd recommend getting familiar with a parametric 3D modeling suite such as Fusion 360 (which does both CAD and CAM in the same package), which is what I use to generate toolpaths once I've created a reasonable looking topographic model in Blender.

My favorite resource for Fusion 360 is "Fusion 360 School" [6]. It has tons of little tips and tricks. The first videos in the channel are a primer on how to use the the software, assuming zero previous knowledge. 3D printing channels are also a good resource for Fusion 360 knowledge.

[1] - https://www.longtailwoodcraft.com/gallery.html

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXBNF-A7QlYT3tT-B9N4ElA

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/user/urbanTrash

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxdCeHBUOlcCWr6RM8acEog

[5] - https://www.facebook.com/groups/232744457133521

[6] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU7QDqWAeIdCK5aNFXPgX2g

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...

My guess is that Blender's 3D rendering and lighting is far better than most GIS packages, including QGIS.

As well as higher-quality output with Blender, it's also possible to add atmospheric effects such as fog and reflection in water bodies.

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!

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.

The other advantage is if you are working with other industrial design people (for stuff such as roads / bridges / buildings)... Having it all spatiall mapped correct to each other makes life SO much easier (and more realistic).

I feel like with Computer Graphics, the whole GIS understanding is very limited.

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.

Does anyone know of code for simplified triangle geometry rendering of dem data? Usually these renderings use the color data from satellite images which blows up storage cost. But simplified geometry might be small enough to both be useful and pretty to look at.

This is awesome. I've got a resin 3d printer which is perfect for small details, I might give that a go. Ironically just as I got a dedicated windows computer beyond my workstation specifically for stuff like fusion 360 and whatnot.

Now to just send it off to a high quality printshop for framing.

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...

Ooh, interesting.

Now comes the difficult question, buy or make? The links you provided are certainly better than I can do, but making art is an enjoyable experience in its own right.

Using Subsurface on BSDF instead of ColorRamp gives also nice result.

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