Create Accurate Maps with Blender GIS and QGIS

In this video we use QGIS and Blender GIS to import maps, heightmaps, and OSM data accurately into Blender.

QGIS:

ESRI map service (XYZ tiles):

WKT Reference Text (enter your latitude and longitude):

PROJCS["Orthographic",
GEOGCS["GCS_WGS_1984",
DATUM["WGS_1984",
SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137,298.257223563]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],
PROJECTION["Orthographic"],

PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin", ],
PARAMETER["central_meridian", ],

PARAMETER["false_easting",0],
PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
UNIT["Meter",1]]

Blender GIS:

OpenTopography:

Tape Measure Model:

Earth Globe Model:

[khairulhazmizaini]

I've been working with both QGIS and Blender separately and this is absolutely what I need for my workflow! Thank you for the tutorial. Keep enlightened us Nicko~

[SowedCastelli]

I have no idea what you just did but I loved every second of Nicko. Thanks for the video. Another satisfied subscriber here.

[Cosmo_]

Thank you oh so much for this, plus the way where you clicked was highlighted, the general editing, the clear instructions. Thank you so much. Like and subscribe VERY well deserved

[CB_GAMES]

Whoa, I'm accustomed to ESRI products but now i have another reason to use QGIS. 😂 This is awesome!

[atropostr]

You are my hero. I was trying to solve vector coordinate errors in my Unity OSM project. Thank you very much

[rexsip]

Hello NICKO
Thank you very much for your efforts !
I am a satisfied subscriber. Thanks to this subscription I didn't miss this video.

[AnneLeschallier]

I want to say you are my hero too! thank you so much!

[AshT]

This is crazy, Thank you for all your effort.

🤯

[gerardt.]

Very informative tutorial. I subscribed!

Curious. Could you share the method used to achieve the synchronized animation between QGIS view on the left and Blender on the right from the time interval of 0:41 to 0:59?

[michaelsmusicinstruments]

great tutorial, interessting topics, thank you for your work 🧡

[lewisgibson]

Hi ! Great tutorial ! Just wanted to mention, when you change the CRS by going in the bottom right corner, it does a "on the fly" reprojection and not a "true" one (which you can get by using the toolbox). This usually has an impact when trying to merge data in QGIS but it might have implications when saving as a shapefile or when importing into blender but it's probably nothing

[benjaminbaltar]

if you wan to follow along and the link to the esri xyz-files is not working, just open it in a browser and copy the link from there. the link posted in the video discription has a redirect from youtube in it and that did not work for me with direct copy and paste. thanks nicko for the vid! really good job 🙂

[nicolas]

Hi man, great job and thanks for sharing your knowledge. I'm trying to get the whole map of the USA for a 3D job, could you do the same process but instead of selecting a rectangular area, select only the country in question? And if possible, could you do QuickOMS but for the division of the states?

[ishaanxgamer]

2:21 well the ESRI is only showing coordinates and not showing map in 3.38 verison

[homemade_vancity]

Love this! Have had various levels of success and failure with other methods and add-ons for Blender 4.2 ... Using this method seems much more straightforward and the results seem better

Now a question or two; Is there way to bump up the texture/image resolution? Also, when I bring in the heightmap to Blender, it seems very not-smooth and rather pixelated, would subdividing the image first before applying the heightmap help do you think?
Lastly, my first couple of attempts created this crazy stretched out side and I'm wondering if there is a clip method that adheres to the dimensions of the rectangle put on the map.

[laurent]

At 8:33 minutes, when I choose to "calculate from" my "layer area", all the north, south, east, and west values reset to 0, and I can't export, even though I followed the tutorial to the letter.

Thanks for this tutorial

[JamesBrett]

Thank you for the information Nicko, what are the pros and cons of Blender GIS/QGIS over Blender osm (blosm)?

[HeroesLeftInMan]

New to Blender, but using this tutorial to help me produce some geometry in some other software. I was wondering is there a node setup that could read the top faces of the building mesh, and flatten them. Right now the extrude moves up in Z fine, but inherits the slanted geometry from the shrinkwrap, and I'd prefer if the top of buildings were planar in Z but still having variable heights.

[bicukow]

is there a way to extract roads with thickness, not just curves? like cadmapper do (cadmapper also using OSM data as far as I know)
I mean clean contours of roads

[mercaruby]

How can I automatically export multiple high-resolution images from a specific area in QGIS, so they align perfectly like a mosaic? I'd like each image to be closer to ground level, rather than a single high-altitude shot. Is there an efficient way to do this? Very usefull video by the way, thank you very much!!