A Project Page

This page: [_What's New_|_Current Project_|_MicroDEM_|_SW History_|_Poser_]

This section of the 3dartist.com site has been set aside to share information encountered by 3D Artist magazine editor Bill Allen in pursuing some of his own graphics projects as "Columbine Studio," including making available and supporting an original free cross-platform utility, PullSDTS, for extracting files from "tarballs" (.tar.gz) and soon also for inspecting USGS SDTS transfers.

Current Project

The current long-term project here is ongoing work at inventing a utility dedicated to organizing and manipulating large collections of best-resolution terrains--larger than can be handled practically by today's GIS and 3D landscape programs. Early byproducts are the PullSDTS utility, and a growing collection of miscellaneous Python programming tips.

PullSDTS - This is both a general-purpose utility for everyday users to inspect and extract the contents from TAR and "tarball" (.tar.gz, _tar.gz, and .tgz) files, and an artists' GIS utility for inspecting USGS SDTS transfers and GeoTIFF files, and for working specifically with SDTS DEMs. PullSDTS requires the freeware Python language interpreter to be present, but is easily used by non-programmers.
Python Notes - Info learned about using this multi-platform computer language, mostly on topics not covered or easily found elsewhere.
Tkinter Notes - Bamboozled by trying to put a cross-platform GUI on your Python code? Here are "The Six Things You Need to Know," additional pointers on how to escape some pitfalls, and a section especially on getting Mac Tkinter to sing.
Code Samples - Among other working and demo code here, here is ImageEmbedder for turning GIF icons into embedable base64 Tkinter statements.
SDTS Notes - A work in progress, an exploration of how to read DDF files in an SDTS DEM transfer.
"DEMpy" - Working title of the GIS utility project (nothing here yet).

What's New

PullSDTS

Python Notes
Tkinter Notes
Code Samples

File Formats
SDTS Notes

Glossary
Index

MicroDEM
A recent related project has been learning and then helping to explain to artists some aspects of the essential MicroDEM freeware GIS application for Win95/etc.

MicroDEM for Artists - How to merge 10 and 30m DEMs, dealing with some output resolution limitations, and a lot more help for getting started.

Southwestern History
Many of the above pages for GIS tutorial purposes make reference to four quads that center on Mt. Ellsworth in the Henry Mountains on the northwest side of upper Lake Powell. It was a surprise to learn that the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management (which holds title), and Utah geological and historical authorities apparently do not know what the name source was for the mountain. As a member of an Ellsworth family line, this little mystery intrigued me enough to marshall facts and resources on a "collaborative research page" to try to help get it solved. Even without the sleuthing, there's some fascinating regional history and geology to learn more about here.

Who is this mountain named for? - A desert mountain mystery.

Poser
This much older project was an effort at showing that modeling and mapping can be done within Poser 3 without resort to any other modeling tools. Poser 4 users may find some of the info to be still useful, especially as regards mapping and working around Poser's lack of units for measurement and scale.

Columbine Studio - Warp modeling, measure props (footCubes), prop texture templates, figures from props, buildings, and animated textures.

Project Page News
27 Jan 2001: This page first posted (reverted to common HTML on 26 April 2001).