hTile

Convert geotiffs and other images to STLs for printing or machining.

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Getting Data

If you are looking for topographic data to use with this, I recommend getting it from https://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MEASURES/NASADEM_HGT.001/2000.02.11/ https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/aw3d30/

Usage

> hTile --help
Usage: hTile (-i|--input SOURCE) (-o|--output TARGET) [-h|--hex]
             [-s|--scale ARG] [-p|--pitch ARG]

Available options:
  -i,--input SOURCE        Source image
  -o,--output TARGET       STL destination
  -h,--hex                 Build hexagonal prisms
  -s,--scale ARG           Scale factor from geotiff values to STL units
                           (default: 100.0)
  -p,--pitch ARG           Pixel pitch of geotiff measured in geotiff values,
                           e.g. SRTM data -> 30 m/pixel (default: 30.0)
  -h,--help                Show this help text

The hex output option also performs a bilinear resampling of the input data on a regular hexagonal grid. This produces more aesthetically pleasing surfaces in the STL, since the surfaces are composed primarily of nearly equilateral triangles.

Known Bugs

1. Breaks on tif files with nonstandard metadata which includes many geotiffs. This is a problem upstream with Juicy-Pixels. The workaround is to preprocess the images by stripping the meta data with

   mogrify -strip inputFile.tif
   

1: preview rendered with https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/fstl/