CTM image gallery

Staunton Partnering Video

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:21:57 -0600

With Spike Productions, we recently finished a video for Colorado State Parks focused on promoting partnering opportunities at the soon-to-be-opened Staunton State Park. Here's the entire video from the vimeo site:

State Parks - recently merged with the Division of Wildlife - is facing an incredibly challenging fiscal environment. Due to budget constraints, General Fund revenue is gone. They're relying on fees, grants and allocations from the the Colorado Lottery and GOCO (Great Outdoors Colorado). In this new financial landscape, they've got to partner with individuals and organizations to make things happen at the Park.

Staunton State Park is sure to be a very popular destination - it's only about 40 miles from Denver. It'll offer a wide spectrum of outdoor amenities: from hiking and riding trails to technical rock climbing to outstanding wildlife viewing opportunities. To find out how you can help, check out http://www.stauntonpark.com.

Valley Haze, Part II

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:24:26 -0600

In this post, I introduced a hybrid attenuation model that combines contributions to attenuation from distance and elevation. For simplicity, if we "clear the air" at higher elevations, we can simulate the crisp high country views while adding valley haze that increases with distance from the viewer.

Here's another illustration. Here's a view of Copper Mountain with no attenuation. The skyline peaks show a beautiful crispness, but the middle of the image - around the ski area itself - is a bit ho-hum (click for high res image - ~13.3 Mbytes):

This next example includes the hybrid attenuation. The peaks retain most of their crispness while the valley attenuation increases the realism and enhances the 3d feel of the rest of the image (click for high res - ~12.7 Mbytes):

And if you really what to go wild, here's an example with the lower valleys completely obscured by haze (click for high res image - ~8.8 Mbytes):

More Ridgeline Stuff

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:29:04 -0600

In this post, I discussed using attenuation to help highlight ridgelines, particularly those that run nearly parallel to the viewing direction. While this is generally an effective technique, there are occasions where you get some undesirable results.

Take, for instance, this (no attenuation) image with Keystone ski area in the foreground and the Tenmile Range in the background (click for high res version).

I really like the crispness of the background mountains, but the ridgelines to the right (West) of the ski area don't "pop" as well as I'd like.

So, let's try distance-based attenuation (click for high res version):

There's better ridgeline definition, but the background peaks get washed out by the attenuation.

So, what if we "cleared the air" at higher elevations, still keeping the distance-based attenuation? I then got this result (click for high res version):

I still get good ridgeline definition, but much greater clarity in the high peaks!

Photo simulations for assessing development impacts

nospam@example.com (hiho) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:08:49 -0600

A picture is worth a thousand words ...

For public meetings, photo simulations can answer questions about visual impacts to the most laymen of crowds.
These images were generated for a proposed silo on the NREL campus near Golden, Colorado.

The Power of Custom Imagery

nospam@example.com (Mike Hinke) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:55:02 -0600

The Edware on the Web Elevation Server is the talk around the proverbial water cooler this week. We are testing the software, and based on feedback from our reviewers, we are really excited about the possibilities. Yesterday, while talking to a reviewer about the future of EdWare ES, the topic of visualization of EdWare imagery in Google Earth came up. In past posts we talked about using the Edware ES to brand web maps...yesterday's conversation reminded us that the output from elevation server can be brought in to brand a Google Earth project as well.

As we all already know Google Earth is a powerful visualization software application. The top image – of the Grand Canyon – is a screen shot taken straight from Google Earth. In my opinion, the shadowing in the foreground (southeast corner) of the image provides a compelling view of the canyon. Obviously the tiles in the foreground were captured when the sensor on the satellite was at some angle past nadir. While informational, the first image lacks continuity and clarity. I would go so far as to say that the tiles form a dissonant patchwork of imagery.

The second image (below) was developed by the EdWareontheWeb Elevation Server; the KMZ was then imported into Google Earth (the kmz for this file can be accessed from this link). Besides providing a clean, consistent base layer I think the addition of the EdWare Elevation Server imagery gives me a better idea of what the landscape actually looks like.

Hillshading With Multiple Light Sources

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:38:07 -0600

Hillshade or shaded relief imagery provides an informative view of topography. This technique involves illuminating the virtual landscape with a light source, most commonly a directional light source located to the northwest (upper left) of the image area.

Here's an example with the traditional lighting (click for high res version):

Directional light sources are typically implemented as a vector, indicating the direction to the "sun" or light source. Alternatively, you can use point light sources, located at specific locations. Direction vectors are then calculated from each locale on the landscape to the point source.

Here's an example of the same area illuminated by a point light source located just above and left of the image center (click for high res version):

Mixing the light sources from the above examples produces this image (click for high res version):

...and here's one more where I've added a red-hued directional light source from the East (click for high res version):

Mixing light sources can help accentuate landscape features that aren't easily brought out with a single source. This feature is coming soon to the elevation server.

Elevation Server and Commodity Mapping Sites

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:53:38 -0600

We've mentioned the elevation server here and here. It's a versatile web service that provides DEM data, slope maps and highly customizable hillshade imagery.

Recently, I've played around with producing imagery for use with the major commercial web mapping APIs - Google, Bing, Yahoo - to dramatically improve the appearance of web-served maps and provide options for branding web maps to stand out from the overcrowded masses.

Here are some samples, centered on the Grand Canyon:

Bing

Yahoo

Google

Here's a link to an interactive site deployed via openlayers:
http://206.168.217.250/openlayers_gc.html

There's a simple opacity control at the bottom left. Turn the hillshade off and on to see the difference.

Also, here's a link to try it out in Google Earth:
http://192.231.196.243/gc_tiles/gc.kml

Let me know what you think!

Order and Chaos

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:06:18 -0600

This bizarre landscape juxtaposes regular and random geometries. A blue cylinder pierces a fractal monolith while a sphere emerges in the foreground, all faded in an attenuating haze.
(Click for high res version):

Guess I'm just bored today...

Yellowstone National Park map wins award

nospam@example.com (hiho) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:47:50 -0600

Periodically we like to showcase our clients' successes - successes that we feel we've made some humble contribution toward. Beartooth Publishing, from Bozeman, MT, has been producing a plethora of award-winning maps. They've published 2 maps that have won "Best of Category" for recreation and travel, and three additional maps winning "honorable mention" in Cartography and Geographic Information Society's annual map competitions. The latest (2010) winner was for Yellowstone National Park (cover shown below).

CTM has provided Beartooth Publishing the base data for these fabulous maps for many years, including hillshade imagery from our elevation server profiled in this post. Here's a hillshade example from their Yellowstone Map:

More on the elevation server coming soon...

In The Shadow Of Pikes Peak

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:11:03 -0600

Pikes Peak is the monarch overlooking the City of Colorado Springs. It's a tremendous tourist draw. Although you can drive to the top, the 13-mile Barr Trail is the longest of any Colorado 14er. In addition, it's got fantastic technical rock climbing on numerous alpine crags.

Here's a rendering of Pikes Peak high over Colorado Springs (click for the high res version):

We're on a team that's submitted a proposal for a master plan for the open space properties that are shown in orange and yellow. The yellow colored property - Red Rock Canyon - is already open and a popular destination for visitors and residents. The orange properties - White Acres and Manitou Section 16 - have just been acquired and will add 700 or so acres to the north.

Chaining Web Services

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:34:02 -0600

In a previous post I alluded to using OSM as a texture map in a perspective rendering. I created the tiles through a mapserver-based WMS serving up the OSM data through postgresql.

Years ago I wrote an "elevation server" that - among other things - generates hillshade with elevation colors based on custom color lookup tables. I've been playing around chaining these two services to produce distinctive looking images. Here are a few examples.

The "desert" motif (click on image for high res version):

The "winter" motif (click on image for high res version):

...And something for people who like really saturated colors (click on image for high res version):

The elevation server has great potential for generating custom tiles for web mapping apps and very high resolution images for cartographic projects. In the coming weeks, we'll roll this service out to those who are interested - so stay in touch!

Prezi Presentation on GIS for Real Estate Development

nospam@example.com (Mike Hinke) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:26:38 -0600

A month or so ago I presented to graduate students in the CU Leeds School of Business on the potential uses of GIS in Real Estate Development. The idea was to help the students understand the basics of GIS and to get them using Google Earth a basic GIS. The students were great, they picked up on the concepts and the application of GIS to Real Estate Development very quickly. Some of the students were able to download and open up data in Quantum GIS within the one hour allotted for the presentation.

I used Prezi to create this presentation. It was my first go at it, and I was fairly happy with the results. I am not sure how the class felt about it, but I felt like the presentation flowed more naturally than it did when I have used PowerPoint. The presentation can be found below.

2D vs 3D maps

nospam@example.com (hiho) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:00:13 -0700

I have been working on a map of the Red Mountain Open Space in Larimer County (see below). It connects to an open space in Wyoming called the Big Hole Open Space. Though hill shading is a very effective tool to illustrate underling terrain, until we moved the map into 3D space, I completely missed the dramatic geologic "hole" that the area encompasses!

(Click on image for high res version)

(Click on image for high res version)

OpenStreetMap - 3d View

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:31:24 -0700

I've been playing around with Open Streetmap (OSM) lately for a couple of web mapping projects. While the import to postgresql was a bit challenging, the results are great!

Here's an example (click for high res version):

I generated tiles from a mapserver-based WMS that accessed the pgsql data. I'll need to play around a bit with scale to make the text readable in the 3d rendering.

Emphasizing Points

nospam@example.com (Ed Russell) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:28:59 -0700

In previous posts we've discussed emphasizing ridgelines, linework, and property boundaries.

Suppose you want to emphasize a point set. Here's a fun way by converting the points into spheres (click for high res version):

The points are raised above ground based on an attribute value. A couple of tricks help them stand out. For one, there's a nice specular reflection to help define it as a 3d object. Also, the spheres cast a shadow that helps highlight their position above ground level.

Here's a close up view (click for high res version):