2D topographic map visualized in 3D?
I've been looking for an easy/user-friendly way to turn a 2D topographic map into 3D. Something I found that seemed to be what I was looking for was rayshader. But unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to use my own map. If there is anyone capable of figuring out rayshader and maybe making a step by step tutorial for noobs that would be amazing. Here is a lecure I found for it: https://upenn.hosted.panopto.com/Pan...c-aafb00e00129
If anyone knows of something else to achieve my goal that would also be truly appreciated.
Thank you
Don't know how to automatically do it, but you could use bucket fills of various greys for each level and just build it that way, then take that and run it through Wilbur to get some nice erosion effects then import that height map into a 3d program, most of which can convert it to a 3d object. If you already have a greyscale height map you can skip all of that stuff and just import it to the 3d program.
What do you plan to do with your 3D image?
What does your existing 2D map look like?
How important is the fidelity of the results?
Depending on what you already have for a map, it can be easy or hard. As Falconius suggests, any 3D package such as Blender should be able to import an image as a height map and typically will offer a near-endless array of rendering options to get pretty pictures out. Getting the heightmap (altitude image) and possibly an image overlay matched to the heightmap will be the hard parts of the process.
The video that you referenced appears to be a discussion of using a programming language and a rendering package for that language to create images. Writing a tutorial for such a package is a difficult proposition at best, because you would need familiarity with the R programming language as well as the tools associated with it. The video seemed to already be a pretty good tutorial and I'm not sure how much it could be further simplified to allow a novice to use the tools.
Last edited by waldronate; 05-24-2020 at 12:52 PM.
Thank you Falconius and waldronate for replying so quickly.
I plan to use the 3D image to more easily find the ridges and catchment areas for river placement. Right now I find it difficult to do so "correctly".
My 2D has step of 500 meters upto 7500+, so 16 steps. I hope that answers your question.
That's not an issue to me as long as it's good enough to easily spot ridges and catchment areas.
Does sound like Wilbur would be your best bet but maybe have a look through this post and see if it helps:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=3822
Most GIS systems will find catchments and ridgelines. Even the venerable Wilbur will do this (find rivers, turn up the river length to max and the gaps will be the ridgelines between catchments). Having a set of contours that are so far apart can be tough to work from because there is a lot of flat parts for the system to get lost in. https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=33087 shows an example of using Wilbur to convert contours into a 3D map. A real GIS system will do a better job, of course.Originally Posted by MrTopGamer
Thank you Redrobes for your reply, but your guide is what got me here in the first place :p
Thank you waldronate for your reply, I really appreciate your advice. I have used Wilbur somewhat but I'm still a novice and have a couple of question.
When you talk about "find rivers" do you mean Texture > Other Maps > River Flow?
How did you get the 3D view in Wilbur?
How did you load in each mask as a selection and fill them in with the appropriate altitude?
How did you scale it by 2?
mbartelsm mentions that he get terraces when he tries to use Wilbur and it seems that your method solves this. Would it work for me as well?
mbartelsm seems to already have detected the ridges in his map before using Wilbur, won't that be an issue?
Yes. As an example of how the tool can work, I make a quick terrain and did a regular find rivers, and a find rivers with the longest rivers to mask off things that aren't ridgelines:Untitled-1.jpg
Window>>3D Preview Window. You'll probably need to adjust vertical scale to something like 0.01 or less to get the altitude into the preview. If you want "correct" scaling, then you'll need to adjust the map boundaries to have the same units as your altitude. If your map is in meters and is 10km on a side, use Surface>>Map Info to set the edges to top=5000, left=-5000, right=5000, bottom=-5000 (you will want to keep the boundaries symmetric if possible because the 3D rpeview controls are a bit twitchy).
Use Select>>Load Selection for each mask. Filling it can be done with Filter>>Fill>>Set Value and the appropriate value. You could also use Filter>>Mathematical>Offset (Add) with the contour interval to avoid calculating out the absolute altitude.
Filter>>Mathematical>>Scale lets you scale the altitude of the data. You can also adjust 3D preview scaling using the Vert Scale value on that window.
It should. You may find, however, that the erosion process described will tend to shift the contours somewhat.
He appears to have drawn ridgelines and rivers and done contours from there (or maybe not). In any set of contours, there are already ridgeline, even if you haven't seen specifically located them yourself.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=29412 has some example tutorials for Wilbur that might help. I referenced the Muna one because it most closely matches your description of the problem. The fun with Wilbur page shows some other ways to get results without having a detailed set of contours.
Thank you once again for your help. I went through the steps and everything seemed to go well, but when I added rivers everything turned black and my land disappeared.
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