Tutorial: Make mountains in Blender 2.4 from height maps

Submitted by John on Thu, 06/01/2011 - 1:30pm

 

Introduction

This tutorial is for Blender 2.4, for the most up to date tutorial go to the Tutorial for Blender 2.5 & 2.6.  Blender can make mountains from height maps, and this is a tutorial to show you how. The height map I've used is represented by a grayscale bitmap. Black being the lowest point, white the highest. Blender is able to deform a mesh based on the pixel colour of a texture. Download the following height map of two New Zealand mountains, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe.png, for use in the tutorial.

Blender is free, and open source, from blender.org. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This tutorial is for Blender version 2.4, if you're using the latest version of blender then you may find it difficult to follow this tutorial as the UI has changed, a lot, since creating this tutorial. If you've never used it before, may I suggest following these, 2.4 version, introductory tutorials. They can be followed from the web as text, or video, or you can download a pdf.


Tutorial

 

Download this tutorial

If you want to jump to step 12, download Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe - Start.blend.
You can see the final result in Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe - Final.blend.

I also recommend the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro Tutorial: Making Landscapes from Heightmaps. It is how I learnt to do height map modelling, and covers concepts that I don't.

 

Getting height maps

To get the height map in the first place I downloaded a Data Elevation Model dataset from NZDEM. You may use this data to create derivative works for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes without royalties or restrictions except as stated in the Terms & Conditions. The format is .hgt, which can be opened using QGIS and exported as a .png. QGIS is cross platform and open source.

There are height maps for other parts of the Earth. NASA has released data from it's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in a variety of formats. Here are some useful links:-

 

Was this tutorial useful? Do you have questions? Comment below...

AttachmentSize
Tutorial - Model a mountain from a height map.tar.gz1.12 MB
Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe.png198.38 KB
Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe - Start.blend6.15 MB
Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe - Final.blend6.15 MB
Submitted by John on Fri, 14/01/2011 - 12:28pm.

I've found an even more detailed source of heightmaps for New Zealand. Their maps are 25 metre DEMs as opposed to  the 90 metre DEM used in the tutorial above. They are from Landcare Research. They are in TIFF format, which can be opened with QGIS. The North Island map is 781mb and the South Island is 1gb. You can use this data personally, but you can't on sell it. Landcare intends to review their license, and may change it to Creative Commons, which may allow commercial use. Check their website for the most up to date license.

You can use the heightmap below to make your own, improved, mountains. The noticeable refinements of the model are that the mountains now have craters. To get the increased sharpness I subdivided the original grid twice (Whilst in edit mode, Press W and select Subdivide Multi).

Submitted by John on Mon, 24/01/2011 - 6:31pm.

Here's an example of adding a topographic map to the model.

I made this by adding the map below, to the mountains created with the improved height map. Land Information New Zealand provide these maps free of charge at this webpage. To use them you must acknowledge the Crown as the copyright holder, see their Terms & Conditions.

Sourced from 1:500,000 The North. Crown Copyright Reserved.

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