Make a Statistical Map in Blender
Learn how to make this:
A lot of us have probably seen those maps in magazines and newspapers where they raise up states based on numbers assigned like population or home prices, etc. Well, I’ve found a way to make them in Blender, and once you have you map, It’s easy to scale and raise regions for a statistical map. The tutorial also includes a free U.S. state map.
Link
good idea!!!
Blender is wide range graphic software. Good idea! :)
pretty cool – it would be awesome if the solidify modifier could be feed with an excel spreadsheet dynamically.
@claas Now this has been posted to Blendernation it’s just a matter of time until someone picks this up and adds some quick scripting for setting the scales based on a CSV file.
Heck, give me a few minutes and I’ll do it myself. I need to give proper names to all the objects first though, sheesh.
I like the idea behind this, but not sure why you’d use polygons here, taking all the effort to model, when you can get vector map files and just import the SVG and extrude.
Yeah, I would have used SVG files for mine when I did an entire map months ago, but instead I used 2D curves and the extrusion and bevel values in the curves menu for it. Gives a nice smooth result. This is a good way as well though.
Why didn’t he just use a SVG map of the U.S. which you can find at Wikipedia and import that into Blender?
This is cool, I was thinking of using Blender to create some live statistical maps for a reporting application I designed, and this is one of the steps in the process that I need.
My Python skill is pretty poor and my knowledge of the Blender API is also not great but I gave it a quick go. I grabbed the Europe .blend and some population figures from wikipedia. Such that I had the data
http://www.pasteall.org/23899/text
and the blend file (which should have my dodgey script)
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/8126
You have to manually change the path and file name in the script.
The objects (i.e. countries) did need to be named which was a pain but they can be coloured and/or scaled using this little script. It’s inelegant but it works. It uses a range of green for the colour (but it should be obvious how to change that) and I think the scaling actually gets in the way so you’re better off just using the colour.
This would be great if someone could import a world map, then import a spreadsheet of Blender Users location to show the populated areas by the number of Blenderheads…
Add this to a Blender website that would dynamically update the .jpg or .gif that is displayed whenever a new user profile is created on that website when they enter their location when they register on that website.
_______SysAdm
I’m being in the field of data visualization don’t like the general idea of such 3D maps. From a data point of view it has some siginificant issues like overlapping and perspective distortion.
But nevertheless its always nice to see blender being used in nonartist environments
Love the idea of directly importing svg into blender, however it seems, it does not preserve groups – try extruding Russia or France using this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-World6-Equirectangular.svg
and you will get a nightmare, because you would have to find and select all the little islands which are part of it. The same would be true for the US, Philipines and the whole lot of countries having multiple parts.
You don’t really need a separate script for getting the solidify applied to all meshes. Jus add solidify with the right settings. Select all objects and make the one with the solidify modifier the active object, then press Ctrl+L and click modifiers from the popup.