The better landscape
After modelling another cityblock next to the Trocadero I decided to re-creatre the landscape once more. I suddenly became aware of my original landscape ending shortly above the Trocadero, and I didn't want to have "land's end" being visible from the top of the tower:
So I decided to get it really large this time. I defined an area including the Charles de Gaulle airport at north east and Versailles at south west. The so defined rectangle is about 45 x 32 km and should be big enough to fit to all the funny ideas coming into my mind in the future...
Unfortunately this means that the Tower itself has to wait. But that's okay - this whole project became part of my life, and I'm expecting some serious mental problems after having finished ;-)
I thought about working with height lines again but unfortunately didn't find any qualified reference. I even thought about contacting Paris' Town Government and ask for some qualified maps, regardless if I had to pay for the stuff. But then I found out that in most cases height lines aren't unique data anymore but are dynamically calculated from other elevation data. So I decided to look for the original informations instead.
Some internet research told me about a thing called "SRTM" (stands for Shuttle Radar Topography Mission): Apparently several years ago good old NASA launched a Space Shuttle to survey our planet, and the data is free for everyone to use.
I was totally fascinated by the imagination of a Space Shuttle just cruising around our planet, collecting data not only for some few famous scientists but for little me as well... I decided to work with that data.
I did some more recherches to find out how to integrate the raw SRTM data into my Blender model. Didn't come along too well with that but discovered a wonderful addon called "Blender OSM" which did the job perfectly.
Generally speaking I try to keep this website free from advertisements, but I'll take an exception in this case and introduce it in the next chapter.
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