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I found a lot of interesting tutorials about how to import terrains from the real world into Blender.

For example,this : tutorial 1 or this : tutorial 2

What about the buildings of the cities?

A friend told to me you can use another approach to import your city map into Blender. You can make a screenshot of the place, you wanna use and using Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape turn it into vector graphic (.svg) and import into Blender.

I did something better than that. I used the tool Maperitive, selected an area on the OSM and then I converted the file to .dae format, this is the result that I get :

Here

As you can see, there is no separation between the vertices, so when I extrude the points this is what happens :

here

It's not good at all. I know that I can go on the Open Street Map web site, select an area, export it to OSM file and then import it in Blender, but the problem is that a lot of areas (including the area where I live which is my biggest interest) aren't mapped; because when I try to import it I see only a small geometry.

So, what's the fastest and nicest way to do this?

Thanks.

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  • $\begingroup$ Have you looked into Blender addon Import OpenStreetMap? If your area is not mapped or doesn't have any building iinformation around it you wnt have much success with that. Otherwise I was under the impression that OSM could export PDF files. You could them import them into Inkscape, clean them up and import the SVG into Blender $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦
    Oct 15, 2016 at 23:08
  • $\begingroup$ By the way that addon (called now blender-osm) can be downloaded for free at gumroad.com/l/blender-osm $\endgroup$
    – vvoovv
    Mar 5, 2020 at 10:34

1 Answer 1

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Go to OpenStreetMap, and make sure you are using the default layer on the right-side menu.

Use the Share Option, then on the lower part use the SVG (or PDF) option to export the visible area. Adjust the scale before exporting if you want any semblance of metric precision or accurate measurements

OSM SVG Export

Either import it directly into Blender, or if you wish do some cleanup in Inkscape and remove unwanted or unneeded parts.

You can then easily extrude buildings directly as curve or convert to mesh for more complex or detailed modelling.

Extrude Buildings

Have in mind that it still requires the desired area to be mapped and have actual building information.

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    $\begingroup$ very thanks for your help,but on the Open Street Map website there are a lot of areas not mapped,also in Italy,where I live. So,this approach,that I knew partially,it is not useful for me. Anyway,I accept it as useful. $\endgroup$
    – Marietto
    Oct 16, 2016 at 8:43
  • $\begingroup$ In that case I'd probably go with your friends suggestion, go to Google Earth and download an aerial view of the area and manually trace it with a mesh or curve objects $\endgroup$
    – Duarte Farrajota Ramos ♦
    Oct 16, 2016 at 13:05

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