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These blender-based shaded relief images have been popping up a fair bit in the geomatics space recently. I really love them, but they are fairly complicated to

These blender-based shaded relief images have been popping up a fair bit in the geomatics space recently. I really love them, but they are fairly complicated to make. I developed the open-source geospatial platform WhiteboxTools (developed in pure Rust) to help with tasks like this. You can create multi-scale hillshade images with it and the type of shadow model displayed above as well with one click: https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/geomorphometric_analysis.html#ShadowImage https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/... Better yet, you can create a dynamic shadow model based on a DEM using the ShadowAnimation tool: https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Guelph_Shadow_Animation/shadow_animation_Guelph_downtown.html https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Guelph_Shadow_Animation/shadow_a... multidirection hillshade: https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/geomorphometric_analysis.html#MultidirectionalHillshade https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/... TimeInDaylight tool: https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/geomorphometric_analysis.html#TimeInDaylight https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/manual/wbt_book/available_tools/...

wcarss 5y ago
As a one-time guelphite, seeing the University of Guelph in that TimeInDaylight tool link caught me quite off guard!
hoseja 5y ago
Thanks! I've been looking for an accessible explanation of the hillshade algorithm, without much success.
- folli 5y ago
  This explanation is also quite nice: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/3d-analyst/how-hillshade-works.htm https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/3d-a...
jblindsay 5y ago
Here are some more examples of the dynamic shadow models, that you may enjoy: https://whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/small_farm_shadows_may21.html https://whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/small_farm_shadows_... https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/Kitchener_shadow_animation3.html https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/Kitchener_shado...
xemoka 5y ago
Thank you John for your work with WhiteBoxTools, I was introduced to it when a former student of yours entered our GIS program at Selkirk College a couple years back and have been keeping one eye on it since. You've got some really excellent algorithms and tools in WBT, I've used them to shortcut some obnoxiously long lidar/pointcloud processing with other packages. I'm not sure that this is "less complicated" than the linked tutorial though, but some great exploration for someone who knows a little more ;)
- jblindsay 5y ago
  @xemoka Thanks for the kind words. I will respectfully disagree about the level of complication involved though. In this case, you simply open the ShadowImage tool, specify your input DEM, choose a palette, name the output and press run. I realize that there is a lot of GIS knowledge that is required in many cases, but this one is fairly straight forward to run.

wcarss 5y ago

As a one-time guelphite, seeing the University of Guelph in that TimeInDaylight tool link caught me quite off guard!

hoseja 5y ago

Thanks! I've been looking for an accessible explanation of the hillshade algorithm, without much success.

folli 5y ago
This explanation is also quite nice: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/3d-analyst/how-hillshade-works.htm https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/3d-a...

jblindsay 5y ago

Here are some more examples of the dynamic shadow models, that you may enjoy: https://whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/small_farm_shadows_may21.html https://whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/small_farm_shadows_... https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/Kitchener_shadow_animation3.html https://www.whiteboxgeo.com/Shadow_Animation/Kitchener_shado...

xemoka 5y ago

Thank you John for your work with WhiteBoxTools, I was introduced to it when a former student of yours entered our GIS program at Selkirk College a couple years back and have been keeping one eye on it since. You've got some really excellent algorithms and tools in WBT, I've used them to shortcut some obnoxiously long lidar/pointcloud processing with other packages. I'm not sure that this is "less complicated" than the linked tutorial though, but some great exploration for someone who knows a little more ;)

jblindsay 5y ago
@xemoka Thanks for the kind words. I will respectfully disagree about the level of complication involved though. In this case, you simply open the ShadowImage tool, specify your input DEM, choose a palette, name the output and press run. I realize that there is a lot of GIS knowledge that is required in many cases, but this one is fairly straight forward to run.