Terrain Map of Egypt with Natural Color and An Ambient Lighting Effect

Looking at published terrain map of Egypt in different web map services and I come with the same results feeling that some areas in the terrain look like washed out and doesn’t visualize the natural colors for Mountains, Hills, Plateaus and Plains, So I decide to apply (John Nelson-Esri) video steps, on all of Egypt once I saw the impressive result on small area of mountains at South of Sinai, you will find the references at the end of article,.

Usually working with elevation surface may be slow and take your time down to produce a realistic surface to use in 3d visualization, in this article I will share with you results for terrain map of Egypt which I did in really short time today from SRTM 30m and using Mosaic Dataset in ArcGIS pro and different Raster functions tools which I applied in one step on all of Egypt area.

Watch my video for terrain map of Egypt to check all relief details and I highlited some location which affected by extreme slope and more susceptible for flooding:

Below main perquisites that you need to produce this terrain look:

• ArcGIS Pro (Standard or Advanced license)
• Spatial Analyst Extension
• Using Adobe Photoshop
• You should be familiar with raster functions and spatial analyst tools

Underneath, I will let you with original article and video by Esri team to enjoy practice and add you touch on the final output, I use the same steps with minor changes for color schema style, then using color matching and overlay for land surface , merging some layers as main streets basemap to visualize impact of the most flood-prone streets/areas in Egypt.

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/multiscale-hillshade-how-to-hack-ambient-occlusion-and-terrain-curvature-in-arcgis-pro/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZkXZnw-tsc&list=PLPjPOZQjCWEn2rU_CJ92EC8ury9ybEoCd

Enjoy practice, let us see how your country, region will look like in natural color.

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