Usually, when I need to import a terrain, I use the Google Earth tool of Sketchup. Infortunatly, The importation of the terrain did not work for this project. Sketchup could have imported a portion of the terrain, about 10 miles square while I was willing to import a terrain of 29,199 square miles. As any time when I don't know to move forward, I go on a forum. Someone on a Sketchup forum recommended to use QGIS. I downloaded it, but it was hard to understand so I uninstalled QGIS and gave up with it. I found a STL Generator which was easy to use, but very imprecise, and like Sketchup, I would not import a large terrain. Lastly, I though that Blender would be the solution.
Blender and Unity are built quite the same way. If I could import a terrain in Blender, I would be able to export it into Unity. I started to look after Google Earth plugins for Blender and I started to understand what QGIS was all about. QGIS is an editor for maps. You can import raster images, Google maps, Google terrain and have a cohesion between the different maps. That means that if you have different layers of maps, they will match exactly. You can modify a map, and publish it online. The information from QGIS would always match any other program. QGIS is a real Geographic Information System. Also the software is free, the functionalities are a professional level.
After a reserach on the internet, I found the USGS website where it was said that I could download ratser images. Still, the bigger problem was the scale of the terrain I wanted to create. I found a Google Earth tool on gelib.com that could match the USGS references on Google Earth. When I downloaded the raster images of Nevada and assembled them, here below was the result (click on the picture to enlarge):
The colors did not match from one area to an other and the white areas of the picture where translated into flat zones by Blender and Unity. Here below, we can see how Unity was interpreting the picture. When I zoom in with QGIS, the black still very black and the white still very white.
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The size of the images downloaded from USGS are:
- N36W114 = 455,764 KB
- N36W115 = 448,649 KB
- N36W116 = 454,879 KB
- N36W117 = 455,899 KB
- N37W114 = 456,811 KB
- N37W115 = 438,338 KB
- N37W116 = 455,305 KB
- N37W117 = 451,126 KB
That's a total of 3,616,771 KB for a very low quality result. On the diaporama above, I show the kind of result I shall have be able to read from the USGS files. This is where I am now when I start this project. There still be many solutions to be found before we are able to draw an accurate map of Las Vegas, at least, to have the feeling that the perspective is good and that the rendering of the map could be real.
The follow up of this section will be posted on the blog. We hope to find answers.
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