Richer background/relief

[su_liam]

I have the student version free till june 8th. Well... I paid $30.00 for a usb dongle about a month before they discontinued the hardware-based DRM.

You need the ArcInfo license to do any of the interesting raster-based analysis. Actually, between SAGA-GIS and GRASS I can do most of the raster stuff, although getting anything into GRASS is a nightmare. Vector and georeferencing are the places where ArcGIS really shines. All that said, I think I will use the hell out of ArcGIS till my student license expires.

EDIT: btw, did you build those mountains by hand or are they repurposed real-world DEMs?

Aaaand... Anybody interested in real world DEMs, for whatever reason, there's a good source at seamless.usgs.org, though it's been a little buggy lately...

[hubbardmapworks]

su,
hey, you should buy this book while you still can, it looks like ESRI and many others have pulled it. but it's the only one left i think with a one-year version of 9.2 for $76.00. it's a great deal, you can add arcscene and arcglobe when installing too. i found one place still selling it:
http://www.seekbooks.com.au/book/Map...1589481817.htm

and that seamless server...always been clunky. it used to be a little faster, but never great. make sure to turn off unneeded layers in the directory to the right, because it may have many turned on when you first boot in, and leave plenty of time for screen refreshes. if you target a big area for download, you'll still wind up ith many grid files to download, and then seam together in a raster catalog to even get them to look good. pain in the ...
maybe you knew that, idk.

yeah, i love the raster. guess it shows. any hillshades or dem's i use, i have manipulated them pretty good to get a look i like, or is needed. some backgrounds are even 2,3,4, layers of raster to a final look underneath. then there's the usual contrast, trans, bright, etc.

you know what i really want? the Map-Publisher plug-in for Adobe.
talk about some pricey stuff though...

[Hai-Etlik]

I have the student version free till june 8th.

Same boat here, though it's April that they cut me off from the license server. I've been playing with Quantum GIS a little when I have free time.