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Of the four versions, the "Merged" one is usually best (finest detail). When opened in TextEdit the ReadMe.txt was in Chinese characters (?), but was OK in another word processor. The unzipped files appear in your personal folder (the one with Library, Downloads, etc.).
CHEETAH 3D GOOGLE ZIP FILE
If the downloaded Zip files don't unzip by the usual double clicking ("error 1 - Operation not permitted.")(?), click the Spotlight icon in the Finder menu bar, type Terminal, in the Terminal window type "unzip " and drag & drop the zip file after the space, then hit the enter key. locations include OpenStreetMap, USGS shaded relief, and USGS topographic imagery. Make a screen grab of the map with the selection grid overlay as a reference. Refer to the attached Relief object settings. Add the Earth to your menu of Polygon Objects. The function is complementary to the C3D Relief object, if you want a specific location or topography. It's incredible push-button access to a planet-load of fine-grained 3D contiguous satellite imagery.
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Like C3D it packs its power behind an interface that anyone can figure out in minutes. Some versions have 10-meter resolution, one is very coarse 400-meter, but 30-meter is typical. Choose any location in the world, (type the name or scroll the map on screen), zoom in or out, specify the "resolution" of the selection grid - increments from 8 to 60 square kilometers - and it instantly downloads four versions of 16-bit 1081 X 1081 grayscale PNGs, plus a ReadMe file explaining the satellite data sources and the technical aspects of how the height map represents scale. Its primary purpose is to create real-world custom landscapes for a PC-only game, Cities: Skylines, but it's a valuable resource by itself. Terrain Party works great: easy, fast, and fun. are kludgey, complex, and yield inferior results. Various techniques using Google Earth, SketchUp, QGIS, etc. Since the Bryce era I've wanted to make terrain reliefs using real-world grayscale height maps, but online sources of satellite data were frustrating. Photoshop and Cheetah 3D suffice for 99% of my creative graphics.
CHEETAH 3D GOOGLE GENERATOR
Terrain Party: Real-world height map generator
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