About 3D Terrain
A free browser tool for turning real elevation data into flat maps, 3D relief, printable models and game-engine heightmaps. This page documents what it uses and how it works.
What it is
3D Terrain renders the real ground of any place on Earth: pick a region from the global boundary data or draw a box anywhere, and the tool fetches elevation for that area, builds a mesh and paints a styled map. Everything runs on the visitor's machine — there is nothing to install and no account.
Data sources and licences
| Data | Source | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Elevation & depth | AWS Terrain Tiles — SRTM, NED, national programmes (~30 m) | Open data, attribution via AWS |
| Administrative boundaries | geoBoundaries gbOpen ADM0/1/2, 232 countries | ODbL |
| Place names | GeoNames cities500 gazetteer | CC BY 4.0 |
| Rivers & lakes | Natural Earth 10m | Public domain |
| Buildings & roads | Overture Maps (built from OpenStreetMap) | ODbL 1.0 |
| Base map & satellite imagery | Esri World Imagery / Street / Roads | Esri terms, attribution required |
How the pipeline works
- You choose a region or draw an area; the browser requests only the elevation tiles and overlays that view needs.
- A web worker decodes the terrarium elevation tiles, builds the mesh and bakes the surface texture with your palette, water and boundaries.
- The 3D scene renders locally; exports are generated from the same data, never re-fetched from a server rendering farm.
- Share links store only the region, style and annotations you chose — never the elevation data itself.
Privacy and cookies
No accounts, no advertising cookies and no cross-site tracking. Drafts stay in browser storage; share links are stored so the URL can be reopened on Cloudflare's network since that is where the tiny edge API runs.
We do keep cookieless usage counts: page paths, product events (e.g. “generate”, “export”), country and timestamp. We do not store IP addresses, user agents or any identifier, and the data is only used to see which features and pages are useful. The analytics endpoint is first-party and runs on the same Cloudflare Worker as the rest of the site.
Place search uses Photon, an open-source geocoder built on OpenStreetMap data. Your search text is sent to Photon through our Worker with a one-week cache and a per-IP rate limit; it is not stored by us. Search results © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
Questions
- Who makes 3D Terrain?
- 3D Terrain is an independent browser tool, built and maintained as a small project. There is no account system, no paid tier and no advertising network on the site.
- Where does the data come from?
- Elevation from AWS Terrain Tiles (SRTM, NED and national programmes); boundaries from geoBoundaries (ODbL); place names from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); rivers and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain); buildings and roads from Overture Maps (ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); imagery tiles © Esri and contributors.
- Are my maps uploaded anywhere?
- No. Elevation decoding, mesh building, rendering and exports all run in your browser. Local drafts are kept in your browser’s storage. A share link saves only the parameters and annotations you choose to share, on Cloudflare infrastructure, so the link can be reopened.
- Can I reuse the data and exports?
- Yes, under the source licences. Keep the attribution line that ships with exports. Boundary data is ODbL; place names are CC BY 4.0; Natural Earth is public domain; Overture data is ODbL.
- Why is it free?
- It runs on serverless infrastructure on a small budget and the elevation, boundary and place datasets are open. There is no per-map cost worth passing on, so every feature is available to everyone.