Maps of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth using DEM (Digital Elevation Model) and place vectors
Maps of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, using a DEM (Digital Elevation Model), which is a 10k x 10k pixel black and white jpeg image, and place name vectors.
This project was originally created by users on the Outerra Worlds Forum - monks and Redrobes created the DEM using real-world 3d elevation data, hand-editing, and simulated erosion; and monks, SeerBlue, and Redrobes created the place names.
Arda) was the name of the entire world, which included the part known as Middle Earth.
The folder ‘data’ includes:
arda_attachments.zip - auxiliary project data stored in a sqlite database, eg for custom overrides to labels. This is a QGD file, and would be included in a .qgz file.
rasters
vectors
The entire map covers 2000km on each axis, so the resolution of the 10k x 10k DEM is 200m/pixel. Somewhere there is also a 40k x 40k DEM version with 50m/pixel resolution.
The font is Tolkien, originally from https://fontzone.net/font-details/tolkien.
Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/bburns/Arda.git
cd Arda
Note: if you just want to look around without making edits, you can save repo space with a shallow clone -
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/bburns/Arda.git
Install the Tolkien font (fonts/Tolkien.ttf) in your system - eg in Windows, right click on the file and say Install.
Install QGIS
Open data/arda.qgs in QGIS
You can turn different layers on and off, adjust opacity, change the map colors, add labels, etc.
If you change the DEM and need to rebuild the hillshade layer - Raster / Analysis / Hillshade - enter a Z factor (vertical exaggeration) of 100.0 and click Run. Then adjust the global opacity of the resulting layer to 50% - Layer Styling sidebar / Transparency / Global Opacity. This allows the underlying colored map to show through.
Some users on the Outerra Worlds Forum created the original project, called ME-DEM.
monks and Redrobes created the DEM using real-world 3d elevation data, hand-editing, and simulated erosion.
monks, SeerBlue, and Redrobes created the place names.
jvangeld took over project maintenance.
bburns made the project Arda - added curved Tolkienesque labels, colored the different elevations, and added a hillshade layer.
andewheiss took over project maintenance for the old vector layers - https://github.com/andrewheiss/ME-GIS - so these need to be merged…
tetrakai1 fixed accent characters and moved the shapefiles into geopackage files
This project is MIT, though the original 3d DEM elevation data (10k.jpg) and vector layers are uncertain.