3D mapping with Aerialod (for Windows) – Free Udemy Courses

Aerialod is a fantastic piece of 3D rendering software for Windows, from ephtracy

**UPDATE** Thank you to everyone who has signed up for this course so far. We have more than 1,000 learners from nearly 100 countries across the world.

Aerialod is simple, but also deceptively powerful – and at first, it can be a little confusing, so that’s why I’ve put together this short, FREE Udemy course. It doesn’t cover everything, but it has more than enough to get you up and running.

This short course is for anyone who wants to learn how to make stunning 3D visualizations of terrain data, population density data, or any other kind of data that varies across geographic space. It doesn’t even have to be geographic data – you can use it to visualize any raster image (e.g. png files, jpg files, tif files) in incredible detail. In the introduction, I even show you what it looks like when I open a photo of myself in Aerialod – weird, yet also fascinating!

Want to make a 3D map of Scotland? No problem. Want to create a beautiful 3D representation of a cityscape? No problem. Want to create a 3D visualization of population density in a country or the entire world? Yep, no problem. Aerialod can do all of this, and much more.

To really maximize the potential of Aerialod and render images quickly then you’ll need a high-end graphics card in your computer – like the ones in most good gaming PCs. But even without that, you can create some truly stunning visuals – you just need a little bit more patience.

What exactly is Aerialod?

In technical terms, Aerialod is ‘an interactive path tracing renderer for height maps’. This may not mean much to you but, to put it another way, Aerialod is a small piece of software that lets you create realistic 3D representations of real-world things like mountains and cities, or visualize patterns of the human population such as population density. You could also visualize things like weather (e.g. hurricane tracks), rainfall, and a whole lot more. You just need imagination, patience, and – usually – a bit of guidance to get up and running.

Structure

After the course introduction, we dive straight in with videos on how to use all the different settings in Aerialod. Don’t forget to watch the introduction though – this explains quite a lot. Here’s the basic structure of the course, with each section having multiple video tutorials within it.

• Section 1 – introduction (background, installation, navigation, adding data)
• Section 2 – visualizing landscapes (using example data from Scotland)
• Section 3 – visualizing cityscapes (using an example from Manchester in the UK)
• Section 4 – visualizing population density (using an example dataset for Asia)
• Section 5 – The End Zone (extra tips and tricks you might find useful)

We hope you find this course useful and interesting 🙂

Look out for other courses from Alasdair Rae in the future!