August 2015 Entry: Do a 3D Map

[Francissimo]

Hello everyone!
This month topic is a good idea to share our knowledge in cartography! I'd like to share a method to quickly do a 3D map using QGIS.
To do so you need to download QGIS, a free GIS app and some digital elevation model from a part of the world, i'll try to explain the process the best i could

### Winner ###



next step will explain how to add the data in QGIS and how to simply make a 3D view with the qgis2threejs plugin

[Chashio]

Huh! That's a pretty neat topic for a tutorial.

[Meshon]

I fell pretty much completely out of my depth! This is great!

Just a couple of suggestions. And I should repeat, I am out of my element almost completely, surrounded by terminology that I don't understand, so it is entirely possible I am just making silly mistakes. Please forgive

First, it seems like there's a few dependencies for the downloads. You probably already have everything you need installed, but just so people are aware, you might want to mention that there will be other things to download. Fortunately QGIS seems to tell me what I need to download, and all the files have so far been available either on or close to the link you provided.

Second, this isn't exactly lightweight, you might want to point out that folks could be installing around 800MB to get up and running. That's roughly the total that the three installers said I would need. It's not a ridiculous amount of space, but a heads-up could be useful.

I also couldn't seem to get anything out of the download link you used. I would make my selection, click Download and then nothing happens.
Aha! I was (most likely) choosing an area that is too large. When I zoomed right in and made a selection I was able to download the .tiff file. The website doesn't seem to give feedback about this though. I also found that when I went back to try again I had to clear my browser cache before I could use the tools at all.

However, it looks like there's lots of sources for DEM data. I got some from a nearby national park in the Rocky Mountains. I loaded it into QGIS, ran the plugin and…

… obviously I am eagerly awaiting the next step in your tutorial. It seems I need further instructions

Francissimo, thanks for putting this together! I will do my best to follow along and comment. As I mentioned before this is completely out of my realm of experience, so I am excited to learn new things.

cheers,
Meshon

[Francissimo]

Thx for the feeback guys, and very usefull comments Meshon, i'll try to add a warning about the size of the file!
For further instruction : you need to change the projection in QGIS for the 3D to work :

The render should work if you set the projection to 3857
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[Ilanthar]

This should be really interesting!

[arsheesh]

Nice! This is something I know nothing about but have always been curious about.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Francissimo]

Thx guys, i'm trying to be clear in my explanations but explaining GIS can be a bit hard
Here's an update with an alomost finished tutorial, i'll try to put a pdf version with clickable links soon
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[jparkerm]

Hmmmm this is neat I just joined the Cartographers guild today because I was curious to see if people incorporated GIS into the art side of cartography, and what do i find but a tutorial right off the bat nicely done.

[ChickPea]

This is a good job! I know nothing about GIS at all, but this makes it sound quite simple to get started.