Choosing the Right Relief Exaggeration for Your Map
November 3, 2026 · 3 min read
The Relief slider is the single most opinionated setting on a terrain map. Here is how real terrain types respond, and how to pick a value that fits.
3D Terrain Blog
Practical guides for real-terrain maps: printing them, building with them, teaching with them.
Where the Data in a Free Terrain Map Actually Comes From
November 2, 2026 · 3 min read
Elevation, boundaries, buildings, rivers, imagery — five open datasets stacked in your browser, and what each one is good for. No accounts, no servers of ours in the data path.
Teaching Sea-Level Rise with a Model Students Can Turn
November 1, 2026 · 3 min read
A flat flood map tells students where. A 3D terrain they can tilt, flood and compare tells them why — plus an honest note on what these presets are and are not.
Turn a GPX Route into a 3D Map You Can Share
October 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The ride or hike you logged is a list of coordinates. Draped on real elevation, it becomes a picture, a video and a printable model — here's the workflow.
Heightmaps for Unity, Unreal, Godot and Blender — the 16-bit Pipeline
October 27, 2026 · 3 min read
What a 16-bit heightmap actually is, why 8-bit breaks your terrain, and the exact steps to get a real-world elevation grid into each engine.
How to 3D Print a Terrain Map (from Any Place on Earth)
October 24, 2026 · 3 min read
From picking a mountain to a watertight STL in your slicer — the whole workflow, plus the settings that make the difference between a blob and a print you keep on the shelf.