Blender + QGIS 3D Elevation Map

hey guys Pete here with GIS Solutions today we're going to be using qgis adding digital elevation model data sets along with some mapping layer and add that to blender to create a three-dimensional elevation model such as this stick around [Music] so the first thing we need is our data set stick around to the end of this video and I'll show you how to obtain a data set such as this for many places throughout the world so in addition to that we also need a base map image in this case I'm just using openstreetmap the open topo map so the first thing we need to do is extract this image so we can go over to project the import export export map as image now the tricky thing here is let's start with the output width and height then we do the resolution if you do resolution first it's just going to get a little wonky so I'm just going to change this to a thousand by a thousand pixels and then come up to resolution and say 400 DPI okay this is not necessary so I'm going to uncheck these say save now I already did this so I'm just going to overwrite what I have okay and just to make sure it looks okay all right and the next thing we need to do is take that digital elevation model data and Export that out so go to projects import export export map to image again I'm just going to do the same pixel size solution in this case we can leave these and I'm going to overwrite that file all right so the next thing we need to do is this oopa blender screens so I'm gonna bring this guy right over here okay so the first thing we need to do is we'll delete the cube so I'm just selecting it and hitting delete we need to add a mesh plane so we could do is do shift a so that means we're adding a mesh plane okay now what I'm doing is scrolling in just kind of zooming in so first thing we need to do is add some subdivisions so or more polygons to this plane to get some more definition so by clicking onto this we're gonna you hit the tab key on our keyboard which goes into edit mode if I tab again I go back to object mode alternately I could just go down here the drop down edit mode or back to object mode so tab to get edit mode I'm hovering over this plane and if I right click I say subdivide and you can see that there's now from one polygon now there's four polygons if I right click and certified again it defines it one more time now a shortcut you could do is shift R and is that means repeat so just repeat in this process now I just add a bunch of subdivisions a bunch of polygons you can always come back to this step and add more if you need to okay so the next step we need to do is add a modifier in this modifiers can be under deform displace and we're going to say new and we're going to rename that texture as elevation you could call whatever you want but this is going to be that digital elevation model data set that Dem okay so now I'm going to click on to texture properties and say open and here's that elevation jpeg that I exported from qgis and open the image and it's not showing here because I'm still in that mode so let me just go back to object mode so here we go okay so it looks a little bit too extruded here so if we go back to this wrench here which is modifier properties I could reduce the strength so if I just arrow to the left you can see about 0.2 might be good this is a little more realistic of the island I I selected again you could be a little more specific you could say Point like one five that might even be better okay okay so the next thing you could do is it's a little rough and you could either play around with adding more subdivisions by tabbing or going to edit mode right clicking and subdivide and then going back to object mode that could clean things up or you could also right click in shade smooth and that kind of Smooths things out again these are just simple steps I'm not an expert by no means with blender this is just something I've been working on and I thought I'd share it with you guys okay so we have that the next thing we need to do is get that map base map layer right on top of this so we need to come over to material properties new leave the surface as this principle bsdf now if we click onto this little yellow dot next to base color we're going to select image texture when we do that this opens up down here so if we click on open we'll just direct to that map image that I have say open image okay so we're not going to see anything right now uh just the view we we're in we're going to go into this uh other rendered view but before we do that let's go up to render properties the render engine we need to change EV EV to Cycles uh Cycles is a it's going to take a little a little bit longer to render but it's more accurate than the EV so let's go ahead and come up here to the top click on the globe and already you can see it's going to take a little while to render as you see all these pixelations and you see right here sampling but it's a lot more accurate a lot more crisper and clearer okay so now you can always go back to using the scrunch the modifier properties you could always lower the Extrusion here by you know bringing down this number if it's still a little too high for your liking um I could just definitely play around with that I'm going to go five I'll just bring it back up okay the next thing you could do you could add some lighting so some natural lighting like the sun was out so to do that let's go over here to World Properties and again with color if you click onto that little yellow Dot and you come over here to Sky texture when you do that it's going to look a little overwhelming at first but you could definitely adjust these settings here to your liking select the sun size you need to bring that up a little bit sudden intensity you could bring that down a lot um just so it's not so washed out um you know the elevation you could bring the Sun so it's a little higher in the sky now the big thing right now it's coming from the north which you know the sun's not really in the north it's either you know come across more East and West uh so change that zero degree you can see something like 90 degrees and you can see it's probably maybe from the East now displaying the shadow um you could say 180 kind of bring it down or more likely 270 might look a little better as the sun's kind of setting you can even bring this down just a little bit less and then finally down here with strength you could also bring this down too just the overall kind of saturation of that Sun so just kind of bring it down just so it's not so washed out again you just play around with these and then finally you could render the image and this might take a little while just depending on file size and whatnot but you know this will be like if your your final export you can always add some you know Graphics to it some text um again this is just something real brief I wanted to show you guys um hope that helps and by all means let me know if there's any questions along the way be more happy to to show those to you okay guys so to get that Dem or digital elevation model data set I simply search USGS Earth Explorer and it comes up to this platform here and I'm logged in right now if you don't have a um login this is all free you can just create a profile and log in so the first thing is the search criteria and you could do something as far as uh zooming into an area and using the map as your your boundary or you could add certain coordinates if you have those but I'll show you what I do with this island it's off the Baja California coast is the Guadalupe Island and I say use map so what it did is it created the the coordinates so it knows the um the area that I want this digital elevation model for now you could also be a little more specific you can see if you want cloud cover or not date ranges but I just kind of keep this all defaulted so next is the data set and for that let's go down to digital elevation and srtm and let's select srtm one Arc second global okay and then the results and here are my results in my case I actually had two different files which is still worked out fine I just downloaded um like this and what it is I just selected uh geotiff and again with my I brought them into qgis and you see these were the two I used so I hope that helped okay guys so I hope this brief tutorial helped um just adding that digital elevation model and base map data from qgis into blender helped again I'm not expert by any means this is just something I've been playing around with and I thought I'd share it with you guys so if you have any questions as always please leave a comment down below and I'll be sure to get back to you thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: GIS Solutions

Views: 18,540

Keywords: Blender + QGIS 3D Elevation Map, Blender, Blender GIS, blender tutorial for beginners, blender elevation map, blender qgis & digital elevation maps, blender elevation tutorial, blender gis, blender gis tutorial, Blender QGIS, blender gis texture, blender gis terrain, QGIS, blender gis 3d map, blender gis map, blender gis 3d print, blender gis download, QGIS Blender, QGIS Blender elevation map, qgis blender, gis blender 3d

Id: J8wkghNmsWc

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2023