Environment and Prop Artist Gilad Gurantz created this impressive panorama of Bergerac, France, combining procedural technology and data taken from real maps.
The highly detailed representation is procedurally created in Houdini, with the use of landmark data from Open Street Maps and geo data using Manticorp's Heightmap tool. The artist used the Open Street Maps data to define behavior and terrain types by leveraging property names, such as forest, meadow, vineyard, residential, etc., and to locate buildings, railroad foundations, and tracks.
Some of the elements were made manually; for example, bridges and the cathedral spire were modeled in Maya. The artwork was rendered in Houdini using Solaris/Karma.
Have a closer look:
