[Bf-committers] Geospatial Blender

[Brylie Oxley]

Hi All,
I am currently studying libre geospatial tools such as QGIS and GRASS, 
at community college in Nevada City, CA.
http://qgis.org
http://grass.fbk.eu/

I would like to figure out how to use Blender3D for geospatial analysis 
and visualization. For instance, there is a nation wide survey of 
elevation data, in the United States, called the National Elevation 
Dataset (NED). I would like to take some known terrain data (from NED, 
LIDAR scans, etc.) and distort a Blender3D primitive (such as a grid) to 
simulate the terrain. This would open up many doors such as watershed 
simulation, fire simulation, city planning, game development, etc..

There are several file formats involved in geospatial systems, most of 
which are already handled by Python GDAL/OGR. I think that my proposal 
is to integrate these tools into Blender3D via the compositor, game 
engine, or some other means. The compositor seems like a strong 
candidate for geospatial process modeling.
http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/index.cfm?TopicName=An_overview_of_ModelBuilder

I appreciate any feedback and/or mentorship that members of this 
community can provide. Would this be a worthwhile GSoC project? Thank 
you for your time and consideration.
--Brylie Oxley