Night time city maps

[ohmymaps]

Hi all,

New to the forum, so i hope it's OK to post this. But i wanted to show my night time city maps that i have been working on. Done entirely in 3dsmax/photoshop/after effects. No imagery used other than the sunset/earth curvature on the orbit shots.

I used OSM data of course with a technique i developed over the lat year. I'm still working on them and improving them and have over 50 more currently in the works..

My inspiration was the beautiful images taken by the astronauts on the ISS. I wanted to print a big one of London but found that they were not big enough and not sharp enough, so i set about making my own.

I would love to hear your opinions/advice.

Thanks for looking.

Flickr: Marc Khachfe's Photostream


Marc Khachfe
Oh My Maps
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ohmymaps

[Larb]

Not sure what to say really but they sure are very pretty. I imagine you could do some interesting things with a high resolution version of one of the city ones.

[jbgibson]

Very nice work - welcome to the Guild, and thank you for contributing!

So what WOULD be high enough resolution orbital photography? How many pixels are you putting in one city yourself?

[ohmymaps]

Very nice work - welcome to the Guild, and thank you for contributing!

So what WOULD be high enough resolution orbital photography? How many pixels are you putting in one city yourself?

I'm not sure what you mean? These images are cgi so, technically they could be done any size. The map info is from Open Street Map. Personally, i wouldn't print the flat maps bigger than 1mx1m if you are going to be standing next to them as the illusion is lost a bit. But if they are mounted on a wall away from the viewer, then as big as you want!

[ravells]

Beautiful! If you had not said that these were CGI, I would have not given them a second thought as real. Amazing work. I appreciate that you don't want to give away any secrets, but any chance you could share the general process? You should post these up at the Cartotalk forum which is geared towards real-world mapping.

[ohmymaps]

Beautiful! If you had not said that these were CGI, I would have not given them a second thought as real. Amazing work. I appreciate that you don't want to give away any secrets, but any chance you could share the general process? You should post these up at the Cartotalk forum which is geared towards real-world mapping.

Thank you for the kind words...i am a little bit hesitant to give away much as, at least for the moment, i seem to be the only one doing these kind of maps..although I'm sure that will change at some point.

But to give you a little hint, i used OSM data on roads and used that data in conjunction with my 3d and compositing knowledge to layer together the maps...there are LOTS of layers and they bring my machine (which is a beast) to its knees..

The hardest part is filling in the gaps left by missing building data (which is very common) realistically..to be honest, I'm still working on that technique. I only used the real images as reference only.

[Bogie]

Very pretty images!

[DarrelMorris]

Those are very pretty. Thanks for sharing them with us.

[seredemia]

Absolutely beautiful maps! Wow. Just wOWWWWWWWWWWW. And welcome to the guild!!!

[ohmymaps]

Absolutely beautiful maps! Wow. Just wOWWWWWWWWWWW. And welcome to the guild!!!

Thanks a lot..though im not really much of a cartographer...just stylised maps really.