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Graphics Software

Landscape Projection with Blender? 29

Posted by Cliff from the heightfields-and-polygons dept.
polyp2000 asks: "I am working on a project that requires me to generate 3D terrain maps from bitmapped contour files. I need to then be able to apply a texture over the top of the terrain. I've been looking for a utility that will enable me to convert from bitmap to 3D landscape projection that can be imported into Blender (either VRML or DXF). After googling around I haven't really come up with anything useful. Might seasoned Slashdot readers know of a solution?"
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Landscape Projection with Blender? More

Landscape Projection with Blender?

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  • Height Modeling (Score:5, Informative)

    by glk572 ( 599902 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @12:53AM (#9244645) Homepage Journal
    http://www.linuxgraphic.org/section3d/blender/page s/didacticiels/paysages/index-ang.html

    Is, I think, exactly what you're looking for, just replace his step of generating the map, with your own to create the image that you need, and out pops your image ready to be textured.
  • A program we use in the labs at school is called Surfer [goldensoftware.com]. I'm not sure if it can read a graphic file and turn it into a 3D contour map, but it seems to have enough options that it should.

    We took quite a few field measurements using a Total Survey Station, plugged them into a spreadsheet and had Surfer read them, it then created contour and 3D surface images for us to use and characterize the terrain with. Best of all, the data can be exported in DXF format.

    The one drawback may be the price tag... $599 USD.

  • GMT (Score:2, Informative)

    by Zapper ( 68283 )
    I'm sure that Generic Mapping Tools [hawaii.edu] will do all that you want and more.

    It may take some time to learn to use it properly though...

  • povray (Score:4, Informative)

    by krymsin01 ( 700838 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @01:44AM (#9244819) Homepage Journal
    If all you have to do is render it, try povray [povray.org] It's excedingly easy to do what you describe in it. Also, I think there are povray -> blender converters, not sure though.

    • Re:povray (Score:2, Informative)

      by klaasvakie ( 608359 )
      I have done what you want before, povray is a excellent tool for this.

      If you go to the blender scripts page you can get a pov->blender converter.

  • Terragen (Score:2, Informative)

    by BigT ( 70780 )
    It's a Windows app, but Terragen [planetside.co.uk] may do what you need. There are several plugins to it that allow you to use various things, such as bitmaps, to generate the terrain. The plugins also output in a variety of formats.
  • Search for Vista Pro..
    this program exists for about 10 years now,
    I remember using it on the Amiga and then there
    was also a program available to convert bitmaps to
    the maps VP could use.
    • Wow, that's a flashback. I used to run that from floppy on my Amiga 500. It took all day to render a mountain that would be far below-average by today's gaming standards, but it was SO DAMN COOL. Especially since they included bitmap data for Olympus Mons on mars along with the nifty fractal landscape generator.

  • It's proprietary... It's Windows-based
    (at least, last I heard)... but - if
    none of the others do it... have a look. ;-)
  • You will probably have problems using blender. Even if there is a way to import landscape heightmaps, you will be severely limited by the maximum 64K vertices per mesh, which is way to low to create a high-resolution landscape. If you have access to windows or use wine, have a look at TerraGen, it will do the job.

  • what for? (Score:3, Informative)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:18AM (#9247281) Journal

    What is the purpose of creating 3d terrain maps? What type of textures or data do you want to overlay? Is there any economic value to your project? Do you want to be able to do a virtual walkthrough, or just generate static images?

    If you are trying to program a flight simulator, your needs are totally different than if you were trying to do mapping or GIS analysis. Also, you could just be trying to make a pretty picture.

    Pretty picture:
    Use terragen (as mentioned by previous poster)

    Mapping/GIS analysis of geospatial data:
    ArcView [esri.com] (not cheap)

    Architectural rendering:
    Lightwave (not cheap) or RapidSite 3d [rebuz.com] (not sure if they are still making this one)

    Goofing around with flight sim:
    some game engine

    You might want to take a look at this site:
    Vterrain [vterrain.org] is a pretty cool place to get started. The community is pretty helpful - some French dude who programs flight sims gave me some pointers in developing a commercial 3d mapping application.

    Finally, if you need a source for terrain maps, check out the USGS's National Elevation Dataset [usgs.gov] (NED). This is the best thing since sliced bread in the GIS community.

    Good luck...

    • Thanks for bringing up the National Elevation Dataset. You say it's the best thing since sliced bread for the "GIS community." But what does "community" mean here? I found it rather offensive that my government spent all this tax payer money on creating maps that only work with one particular commercial application. Sure, it's an awesome resource but only for those in the "community" that consists of the priveleged group having enough bucks to buy proprietary software at a thousand bucks a seat.

      Did ESR

      • You definitely raise some valid points. Although, I think the USGS actually distributes the NED data in SDTS format.

        SDTS is crappy - it isn't directly loadable by any software that I know of. (there might have been an ArcView 3.x extension to view it, I don't remember)

        It's possible to export it from GRID to ASCII in ArcInfo command line. I've heard of people doing raster analysis with ASCII DEM's directly in visual basic.

        The USGS is full of bloat, no doubt. I hate their strategic "partnering" with ge
      • The National datasets are created to support various government agencies to help eliminate the overlap of data collection (an attempt to be efficient).

        I found it rather offensive that my government spent all this tax payer money on creating maps that only work with one particular commercial application.

        The data format chosen to represent the dataset is a tough point. Some agencies, I'll use NGA (the agency formerly known as NIMA - they had a 3 letter acronym complex), have created their own data stan
        • You ended up at the end doing a bit of preaching about the glory of GIS, and I think if you look back at my post you're not going to find me badmouthing GIS technology. As a matter of fact, I believe I was quite careful to close up my post by saying that I think satellite imagery is an excellent investment of government funds. So there's no need to preach to the choir as though they were a buncha sinners.
          You mentioned my point exactly if you'll permit to quote

          "they have become the industry standar
          • Sorry for preaching about GIS. My main argument is that if you want to get your data to the masses, you publish it in a format that the masses can read. GIS data isn't generally the type of data that most people would be interested and the software development reflects that by being a higher cost. GIS software, namely the main stream market leaders, is quite expensive due to the fact that development cost is spread over a smaller number of sales.

            ESRI certainly has it's foot in the door of most agencie
            • Well cool. I really appreciate all your info. You are clearly well in the GIS community. In fact, you even listed the reason I was looking at the dataset. I bought some land and I wanted to use the data to help in planning the building of a house. That's where I picked up the idea that ArcView was NT only because the free viewer definitely is. See, how that works? Sure they use Linux on the way expensive stuff, but when it comes to the casual user it's lock-in time.
              But I think the best analogy here
              • I'm not sure of the exact dataset that your reviewing, but please do check out ArcExplorer from ESRI (the free multiple platform viewer) to see if it can work for you. Depending on the exact format of the dataset, you might be able to find some conversion scripts to move between formats. I recall someone writing some C code to convert several of the ESRI format into others, but I've never actually needed it myself so I don't know a website or codename to search on.

                Right now the most common "open standa

  • I think I have some expertise here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by XenonOfArcticus ( 53312 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @12:39PM (#9249306) Homepage
    Considering this is what I do for a living.

    I won't be able to give you much advice for doing this on Linux, or with Open Source software, since I'm actually not aware of anything that meets both those criteria. I know you didn't stipulate those criteria, but this is Slashdot.

    The first issue you face is converting bitmapped contour data into a heightfield. This is not the same as converting greyscale to heightfields, which is a trivial matter. Most of the links proposed already cover using a greyscale image.

    A helpful site for you will be http://terrainmap.com/ [terrainmap.com]. He has an application (Windows, $free) called Blackart that tries to extract meaning from scanned topo map contours and build a DEM/heightfield out of it. A commercial app (Windows, $1500) that does the same thing is R2V [ablesw.com]. I've not used either so I can't comment on what you get for your $1500.

    Once you have a DEM, you can probably find a way to convert it into a file format that Blender can use as a 3D object and apply texturing to.

    The next step is, what kind of texturing? If you just want to be able to slap some pretty-looking colors or natural-looking dirt/rock/grass/snow effects onto it, you can probably do that in Blender. If Blender can't do everything you want, you might try Terragen [planetside.co.uk] (Windows/Mac, $free), which is a little more landscape-oriented. I would not recommend VistaPro at this point, it's pretty outdated. TG is at least still being developed, although it's going commercial.

    If you need to be able to place real-world image information onto the terrain (airphoto or satellite images, GIS databases, other scanned maps, etc) then Blender is really becoming a poor choice for your needs. (What were your criteria for choosing Blender anyway? It's not known for its landscape capabilities.) The trouble becomes that data like these are usually stored in a different Coordinate System [vterrain.org] (read the whole VTP site [vterrain.org] while you're there, Ben's got GREAT info). This means that lining up the position, size and rotation of the two pieces of data is difficult if your software doesn't know how to do it for you. Even most low-end landscape software (Terragen, VistaPro, more free here [vterrain.org]) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial [vterrain.org] 3D landscape software with a GIS tie-in, such as ESRI's 3D Analyst (Windows, $3500) read info on commercial page above) and my company's Visual Nature Studio [3dnature.com] (Windows/Mac, $2500).

    I won't pretend that my company's product meets your needs, but I have to mention it. I suspect that you'll be able to meet your requirements using some of the tools I outlined first. If however, you find yourself doing this sort of stuff a lot, that's where the polish, integration, support and other frills of commercial software like mine may start to become valuable to you.

    Hope you find what you're looking for. If you (or anybody else) have more questions about this, I'd be happy to answer them privately or publicly. As you can see from the above, despite selling my software, I try to be objective and don't always tell you my product is what you need. ;)

    • Depending on how features he wants to include, generating a 'terrain' given a DEM and a sat photo is a simple exercise with OpenGL. I did it years ago with gl as an intern. Adding the extra features to make it look 'real' is the hard part. Thanks for the terrainmap.com link. It reminded me of the work I used to do when it was fun to be a low paid Govt employee.

  • Never thought to use my Blender in such way... I know high speed rotation can generate such an effect, but never though to use a Blender for that... Back to the drawing board...

  • Try GRASS!! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    check out GRASS [baylor.edu], a free, open source GIS program.

    I've been doing quite a bit of work with it. it takes some time to figure out, but once you figure out how to import your data, making 3D topo and draping an image over it should not be impossible.

    i haven't needed this function, but i believe it should work well. also be sure to check out the NVIZ 3D visualization module in GRASS. this may also have the functions you need.
  • Check out Surfer, www.goldensoftware.com

    windows program, $600 roughly. Very good at making surfaces from DEM or other grid type data sources.

    You can overlay a raster just fine.

    You can automate the process with a fairly simple vba script system, that you also can access through ASP to make nifty websites. ... oh, and use Jump .. www.vividsolutions.com/jump/ as your GIS viewer. its easy to use unlike GRASS, comes with a nice user interface unlike GRASS, and is free.
  • I don't know if this is a school, work, or a personal project but you could try one of the following.

    ESRI may be willing to give you a trial copy of their software for a 30 day (possibly longer if you can justify it) period. Their software uses FLEXlm (off a hostID on UNIX or a "dongle" key on MS Win32 platforms) and they can generate a temporary license. If this is school related or possibly a charity, they may give or greatly reduce the license cost. As for applications from them, you'll likely want

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