How to Create 3D Terrain with Google Maps and Blender!
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange askers cite it as the step-by-step reference they followed for BlenderGIS terrain workflows and then got stuck on version differences, SRTM errors or finishing steps.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2020 to 2024.
What it is
A 12-minute Blender tutorial from CG Geek on building 3D terrain from real-world Google Maps imagery. It uses the free BlenderGIS add-on to pull in map and elevation data, then covers displacing, texturing and thickening the terrain mesh.
What people said
Cites Joe Crozier · 2020-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “BlenderGis get SRTM”
I'm running Blender 2.80 and I installed the latest BlenderGis download. I am following this video tutorial [this video] to download data and it works MOSTLY. I can download a basic map, download OSM building data, etc.. but whenever I try to get SRTM elevation data, I get the error: "Cannot Reach Open Topography Web service, check logs for more info" 1- How the heck do you check the logs? 2- anyone ran into this error before? Any ideas. I couldn't find anything when googling.
Cites Johnny B · 2020-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Convert satellite image terrain mesh colours to new solid colours”
To attempt to explain - I followed CG Geek's tutorial for converting a satellite / aerial photo to a terrain mesh ( [this video] ) - which worked fine, however I am curious if there is any way to convert the existing mesh colours (which are basically the colours from the photo) to different, more 'solid' colours (i.e. replacing each mesh grid colour with a similar colour within a certain threshold). I am basically trying to make the terrain look defined. The only aerial photos available are fairly low resolution so when you zoom in it becomes obvious that it's a low-res photo stretched over the terrain. Any suggestions appreciated.
Cites meta1214 · 2024-01 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “I can't find the modifier apply button”
Premise: I am trying to use Blender to make a 3D map and embed it in Spatial. I am using the following video as a reference to create it, but is it a difference in the Blender version? （The Apply button for the modifiers (which appears at 5:15) does not appear in my version. The Blender I am using is 3.6.5. If anyone knows, please let me know. video: [this video]
Cites meta1214 · 2024-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to add thickness to an object?”
I am converting a map to 3D. I have succeeded in getting the elevation, but I am unable to add thickness to the data as shown below. I would like to add thickness to the terrain data as shown in the video 5:26 [this video] , but the procedure is not clear from the video alone. If you know how to do this, could you please tell me the procedure? [LINK]
Cites jkwang · 2024-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Pipeline for creating 3d topography using true displacement break from Blender 4.0 to Blender 4.1+”
I wrote a python code that generates both a height map and texture map (see example below) from USGS topographic data. The idea is to create a coding pipeline that allows the user to generate a rendered image of topography anywhere in the world without a whole lot of data wrangling. I do know of the existence of BlenderGIS, which is awesome. I then take the height and texture map to displace and texture a plane in blender. I saw an example of this workflow in a [this video] a few years ago. Below shows the heightmap, texture map, example renders from 4.0 and 4.1+, and the shading node trees from 4.0 and 4.1+. To me, it looks like the renders from 4.1+ are applying the basic shadows, but not from