Shaded relief maps

[nomenklatura]

Hey all,

I'm trying to create some maps for a book I'm publishing based on the diary of a World War One soldier on the Western Front. It contains a series of hand-drawn maps (done many years after) but I want to re-do the maps in Illustrator to give them a consistent look and feel. I also want to lay them over a toned down shaded relief background. If you're not familiar with the shaded relief, it looks like this:

My question is anyone know a source of these kind of shaded relief maps (or datasets to generate them) that can be re-used - I don't mind paying for them in the first place, but I need to be able to use them royalty free.

On top of the shaded relief maps I need to overlay roads, trenches, gun emplacements, balloon barrages, railways, towns, etc, using Illustrator.

Anyone have experience in doing similar projects? Any advice welcome

[garricks]

Welcome to the forum nomenklatura. We ask all new members to read the forum rules posted here and here. They will give you all the info you need on how the forum runs, the rules and regs, and give you some background info on our long running, inside jokes

[PanToshi]

Welcome to GDF!

[PrintDriver]

We usually hire an illustrator to do that kind of thing. Never really looked around but NASA may have something (MODUS or other satellite imagery). Also National Geographic.

[MikeHun]

Yup I'd hire an Illustrator and by the look of your example you want highly accurate topographical reliefs that depict the battle fronts in Belgium and France.
There is lots of research involved, mucho $$$.

Topographical government site for France

http://www.ign.fr/

[skribe]

You came to the right place to ask! I have done exactly what you are wanting to do. Unfortunately I am only familiar for relief data for North America, so you will have to look for the zones your book needs. I used the free DEMs (Digital Elevation Maps or Modelss) available from USGS NED project. 1. http://ned.usgs.gov/ and 2. http://nationalmap.gov/viewer.html You will probably find the second link most useful for the map data. The digital elevation data for the United States quadrangles is the most readily available, but I know there is also data available for the whole earth from the USGS. You can try looking at the following links. 1. http://glovis.usgs.gov/ 2. http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ 3. http://earthnow.usgs.gov 4. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/topo/globe.html 5. http://eros.usgs.gov/#/Find_Data/Pro...e/gtopo30_info


There is also STRM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data that may be usable but I have no experience using it. http://srtm.usgs.gov/

Some terms you might want to search for are, Digital Elevation Data/Maps/Models and Topographic Height Fields. Also you might want to have a look at ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer).

While there is other software that can render the relief maps, what I used was a software called World Machine. http://world-machine.com/index.php WM is capable of making the reliefs from the top down as well as 3D models of the terrain. It has a bit of a learning curve, but I got what I wanted by just experimenting.

[nomenklatura]

Thanks Skribe! And to all for the welcomes.

Skibe, appreciate the detail