That is cool. I'll need to pick your brain on how to use that in Photoshop, Blender, and Autodesk Civil.
what dataset ?
the GMTED2010 Global Grids are in esri format and will need the use of ArcGIS or GDAL

or the strm 2.1
http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/
-- these have many different formats
the dem and hdr and jpg are likely of interest for the strm30
the rest uses .hgt so GDAL is needed