4 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

Taking the hint...

Here's some of the stuff I've been working on in the past few weeks.



This is an attempt to (automatically) recreate the elevation shading style used on late 19th-century (generally copper-engraved) maps. Not quite there yet, but it's showing promise.

Big jpg

A map I'm working on for fun. Combining SRTM elevation data and the VMAP vector information. This is a trip from Oakland to Lake Tahoe that I did last June. Photos are all mine too. I need to fiddle a bit with the size and resolution to keep the texts readable. Tried to make a PDF, but it's 15 Mb...

Any comments are welcome.

[Nick Springer]

Hans,

Any chance we could see a higher-res version of the elevation shading example? It looks impressive, but the embedded image looks like it got compressed.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Nick,

Actually, I made it low-detail on purpose, as you zoom in, the quality degrades.

Here's a more detailed sample:



The stripes are places based upon the slope aspect. However, since that is calculated for every cell of the DEM, it will quickly end up in a big mess. So I had to classify them into 8 groups. Stripes are not being shown if the slope is not steep enough and there are 200m elevation intervals.

Forgot to add: this is standard SRTM data, somewhere near Lake Tahoe IIRC, processed with VNS.

-- edit --
I worked some more on it (got the rotations correct this time...) and replaced the image.

Edited by Hans van der Maarel, 16 December 2004 - 03:03 PM.

[ELeFevre]

Hans,

It's great to see what other people are working on ( thanks for taking the hint! )!

Relief:
Your relief image is very impressive! I would be interested in learning more about your overal process in creating your reliefs? What software and data do you use for a project like this? Nice work.

Tahoe Trip:
This is a good map as well (and fun!). My only suggestons would be to remove the green stroke on the text for "Golden Gate Bridge", "Bridal Veil Falls" et cetera. It's difficult to read and would better if it was a solid color (white). You could do the same with the lableing of some of the rivers. The text is to small and the stroke makes it difficult to read. Other than that, the map looks great.

As a final note...you could also play around with the layout. The shape of the basemap creates an interesting design challenge. I was thinking that you could have a couple of the pictures overlap each-other on the corners, to create visual depth and interest. Maybe have one of the pics or perhaps an edge of the legend overlay the base map? Nice work....and nice pictures! Looks like a great trip.

Erin

[Hans van der Maarel]

Erin,

Re. relief image:
I've done this one with VNS (Visual Nature Studio). It's mainly used for landscape visualisations, but since I'm a cartographer, I often use it to create all kinds of shaded relief backgrounds for maps. The data used is, again, SRTM. However, I can use the same process on any kind of data that can be somehow loaded into VNS.

I know images like this are generally made manually, but I'm looking for a way to generate it automatically. I'm slowly getting there...

Re. Tahoe trip:
Yeah, I'm not too happy with the texts either. I had first planned to export this to PDF and show that, but that resulted in a 15 Mb file, so I went with JPG, in a bit of a rush. Usually I do take more time for this kind of stuff. As for the layout, I'd like to either try and compact it a bit more or add more information. Maybe I'll rotate the map image back to true north (it's rotate about 45 degrees clockwise in order to create a more or less rectangular area). Trip was fun indeed, except for the snow... (mind you, it was mid-july...). I know my talents aren't really in DTP work so I could really do with some expert help in that respect.