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Landscape Projection with Blender?
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?"
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.
Well art is art isn't it, but then again water is water; and east is east; and west is west; and if you take cranberries
A program we use in the labs at school is called Surfer. 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.
It may take some time to learn to use it properly though...
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
--
Try Mozilla
If all you have to do is render it, try povray It's excedingly easy to do what you describe in it. Also, I think there are povray -> blender converters, not sure though.
stuff
It's a Windows app, but Terragen 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.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
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.
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
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.
Homepage
+1 informative
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 (not cheap)
Architectural rendering:
Lightwave (not cheap) or RapidSite 3d (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 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 (NED). This is the best thing since sliced bread in the GIS community.
Good luck...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
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/. 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. 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 (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 (read the whole VTP site 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) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial 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 (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.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
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...
check out GRASS , 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
... 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.
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.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
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 their ArcScan product which can convert an image into vectors (capture contour lines) and ArcGIS or ArcInfo workstation to assign attributes (elevation) to the lines and ultimately convert to the other data format you require. They also have an extension called ArcScene that creates "fly throughs", but I've not worked with it myself to know what data formats it can export to (but I think I heard VRML before).
If you have school connections, your Earth and Mineral Science (or where ever your Geography program falls under) may already have access to ESRI or another GIS vendors applications. You may see if you could find a GIS student to do the conversion for you.
I've done this a lot with 3DEM, which is a great but free (as in beer) program for windows. It takes a lot of different input formats, including, IIRC, raw bitmap. Or you might find a link to the conversion software you might need at www.gisdatadepot.com. (Like their name suggests, they also have data available for download, some free, some not.)
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 standard (sort of the MS of the GIS community)."
And this puts the hammer right on the head of the damn nail. All you got to do is let her drop.
I know this I'm telegraphing this one for a mile and a yard, but why the hell does the US government need to take a taxpayer funded project and help to create the MS of the GIS community? If these guys are the MS of the GIS community then they should be the last ones getting subsidized with taxpayer dollars.
I'm not sure I see the utility of that from my outsiders perspective. Perhaps only people in the "community" have the vision to see how that is in the best interest of the public.
But hey, I'm not trying to be jerk about it. I just have a dramatic flair I find hard to tone down. It's not the end of the world although it is disturbing and I stick to my epithet of gross misdirection of government funds. But obviously there's hardly anybody intersted in GIS as the numbers in this thread show. It doesn't keep me up at night tossing and turning, but being a person of broad interests, I was definitely disappointed when I wanted to use the data in the National Dataset and found out what the restrictions were. I'm far from convinced that the best choice was made or that the advantages you elaborate were genuinely dependent upon that specific government/private "partnership." But what do I know?