NACIS 2024

Terrain Cartography for Non-Terrainers
Lourdes Ginart, Department of State
Terrain cartography can be difficult for those of us who never received formal training in the skill. For years I struggled to understand how to create shaded relief and I didn't want to rely on pre-made relief all the time. I wanted to make some of my own! Yet, once I learned I struggled to accept the time and software commitment. Many of my maps require shaded relief, but only as a background component, it is rarely the main feature. Finally after much trial and error, I developed a workflow that allowed me to create beautiful yet simple shaded relief with a lower time and software commitment. In this presentation, I'll show you what that workflow looks like, the results, and will hopefully make terrain cartography less intimidating for folks starting out.

Freestyling: Mapping Mountain Landscapes with Blender’s Non-Photorealistic Renderer
Andrew Tyrrell, South Arrow Maps (freelance cartographer)
Blender has been adopted by many cartographers. It is a useful tool for generating natural (though also potentially unnatural) looking terrain shading. Its physical based renderer can be used to create realistic effects which can be incorporated into maps as one or more raster layers. Less well known is Blender’s non-photorealistic renderer: Freestyle. Freestyle detects silhouettes, edges, and creases of virtual objects, which can be styled as vectors either within Blender or in graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator. This presentation provides an overview of how I use Freestyle to create stylised oblique views of mountain landscapes, illustrating backcountry hiking trips, summers spent in the wilderness, and trans-Alpine adventures.

Procedural Mapping with Geometry Nodes in Blender
Peter Atwood, University of South Carolina
Blender has recently been updated with a new tool called Geometry Nodes, a powerful system for procedurally generating and transforming 3D geometry. This talk will provide a general overview of some of the cartographic applications of this new tool. We'll look at how to get our data into Blender, how to use Geometry Nodes plot it in 3D space, and how to use Blender's attribute system and material editor to dynamically generate and animate symbols and colours to bring our map to life.

Forget About Tilesets – How to Use Static Files for Performant Interactive Stories
William Davis, The New York Times
Slippy maps are essential to web cartography, but they often include unnecessary data and can render inconsistently as individual tiles are processed. In this talk, I’ll share examples of web maps that use static json, png and mp4 files to create smoother storytelling experiences on interactive maps. You’ll also learn how to start building similar maps using open-source tools like gdal, ffmpeg, mapshaper, and maplibre GL JS.

Basemaps Don't Have To Be Boring
Brandon Liu, Protomaps LLC
Basemaps for web mapping: boring, or exciting? Basemaps are an essential part of any web map, whether they're from Google, Esri or an OpenStreetMap-based provider. You might think basemaps are a "solved problem": choosing an existing off-the-shelf lets cartographers move on to more interesting problems. What if basemaps were exciting? What if, more importantly, interactive, global-scale basemaps could be downloaded, created and customized using simple open source tools? This talk will go over how to do just that using the Protomaps basemap, including data sources (Natural Earth, OSM, Overture), cartographic generalization strategies, label localization, and customization for the practical cartographer.

LEGO Topographic Mapping 
Atlas Guo, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Calling all LEGO enthusiasts! Have you ever dreamed of bringing your love for LEGO bricks into a topographic map? Join me in unveiling the secrets behind my physical LEGO map of Wisconsin, and a virtual 3D-rendered LEGO map of Colorado! Practically, ArcGIS Pro will be used for exploratory map design, and LEGO Studio for further configurations and 3D rendering. But the adventure doesn’t end there! I will try to briefly review and discuss the essential elements relevant to LEGO cartography. Feeling inspired? Let your imagination soar and get ready to craft your very own LEGO map masterpiece!

Making a 3D Relief Globe
Zhaoxu Sui, Pennsylvania State University
If you want to DIY a globe for yourself, I will give you my experiences of crafting a 3D relief globe when I was in high school, including what materials I used, how I sketched out the coastline and important topographic features, how I made 3D topographic relief, and how I painted based on the vegetation. It is really fun and family friendly, so try out!