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Thread: 3D Printers and Terrain

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  1. #5

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    There are some 3d printed maps out there.*

    http://www.vwmaps.com/2011/12/11/3d-map/
    http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/03/m...els-minecraft/

    My school had a 3d printer and one of the teachers complained about the high cost of the print material. Unfortunately, it operates rather unreliably, stopping in the middle of print jobs, and generally not working. We got a larger model, but it wasn't installed before the summer break started, hopefully I'll get to try it out when school starts back up.
    3d printers require a 3d model to print. A standard file format is stl. I found a height map to stl converter on thingverse. It is a free, open source java app called heightmap2stl.jar
    The instructions are a bit nonexistent, but I managed to convert an elevation map exported from Dwarf Fortress to stl. The file ended up being 1.7GB and my laptop is unable to do anything with it.
    I tried again with a smaller map and got a more reasonable sized file, which I checked in Blender, nice little 3d image of the map. I don't know how to do anything in Blender, so I took a screen shot.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	DF_el_map.bmp 
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ID:	45695
    The original height map.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	stl image.png 
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ID:	45696
    The stl in Blender.

    It obviously didn't work with the blue water.
    Last edited by Urist; 06-16-2012 at 01:06 AM. Reason: Added images

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