I love making maps.
When my parents moved to a hilltop overlooking distant mountains, I 3D printed a relief map of the surrounding countryside as decoration for their new home.
The geology at the center of the map is a 1:1 ratio. I used Softimage to compress the landscape along the radial in a logarithmic scale to bring distant terrain closer. This had the added bonus of simulating the effect of how far-away mountains become ‘flatter’ with distance.
The final 10-inch diameter model was printed by Blue Edge in Manhattan who had no problem printing my bajillion-polygon model at a 100-micron level of detail.
Details of the final model. I love how even the river (upper left) has an elevation stair-stepping based on the height maps which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense.
Detail of the height map from the USGS website.
Unfamiliar with 3D printing, I wanted to make sure my model had enough resolution for the final model. This close-up shows the mesh ‘before’ polygon reduction and optimization.
Softimage: “2.1 billion polygons? Sure, I’m fine with that.”
Same close-up, after polygon reduction and optimization:
Believe it or not, this is a wireframe view, not shaded.
Shaded view of the above wireframe.