Many weeks ago I saw an achingly beautiful bit of AI-generated terrain art shared by Esri’s glorious instagram account. Initially I was a bit intimidated by the robots; it was so charming and tactile and wondrous and dreamlike and sinuous. But also…inspiring.
I wondered if I could take a crack at re-creating this aesthetic in ArcGIS Pro, with actual for realzies honest to goodness geographic data. Here is my attempt, using NASA SRTM elevation data of the Mount Hood / Columbia River area of the American Pacific Northwest…
0:00 Dazzling intro
0:34 DEM elevation download, thanks NASA!
0:50 Blur the DEM for smooth generalized contours with Raster Functions
1:20 Create contours from a DEM using Spatial Analyst
2:02 Ferris Bueller style summary of the hack
2:16 Hack that turns 2D elevation polygons into isometric 3D-looking things
3:34 Color thievery
4:11 A crisp edge highlight
5:18 Isolating the shading into a separate layer with delicious blend mode
8:15 Poster paper texture from Living Atlas
9:58 Pepper gets a scratch
…
Here are some exports from this Pro-ification of AI-inspired topo art using real geographic data. I use them as my desktop background because it’s a fun way to start the morning.
Here are some without the cartoonizing outlines. I sort of like these better…
I hope you give this a try and apply your own riffs and styles. It’s a beautiful world we live in and the source of unlimited inspiration. Thanks for reading!
Love, John
Love that look! There’s an older approach, Tanaka’s illustrated contours, which this draws on. I have played with it for a Cold War vibe, especially in grayscale.
http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_contours
hi Ashton! good to hear from you. thanks for looking and for your comment!
yes, lots of inspiration from all round with this one. Tanaka yes, but Pauliny’s illuminated contours in 1891, and Matthew Maury’s topo chart before him, and E.H. Michaelis’ shaded contours before him.
I only recently learned about Paulini’s illuminated contours and was stunned at how early, and crisp, they were. Here’s a snapshot from Jim Eynard and Bernie Jenny’s paper. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Left-Illuminated-contour-lines-on-a-manuscript-map-by-Pauliny-1891-Right-Shadowed_fig3_299924411