Re-creating Trippy AI-Generated Terrain Contours

A while ago I saw a sizzling AI-generated topo image and it was glorious and beautiful and sinuous and tactile and inspiring and intimidating. The more I looked at it, though, the more I suspected I could tease out some tricks to replicate the aesthetic, but using ArcGIs Pro and real honest to goodness data. A topo map of a real place?! Let's do this. 0:00 Dazzling intro 0:34 DEM elevation download, thanks NASA! 0:50 Blur the DEM for smooth generalized contours 1:20 Creating contours from a DEM 2:02 Ferris Bueller style summary of the hack 2:16 Hack that turns 2D elevation polygons into isometric 3D looking things 3:34 Color thievery 4:11 A crisp edge highlight 5:18 Isolating the shading into a separate layer with delicious blend mode 8:15 Poster paper texture 9:58 Pepper gets a scratch Check out some other social channels where I share how-to's and updates on random map adventures: http://adventuresinmapping.com https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/auth...   / john_m_nelson     / johnmnelson     / johnmnelson