Zion National Park
Lake Placid, New York
Yosemite National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Introduction
AI enhancement is the marquee feature in NSD Pro 10, due for release in March. The example above shows a grayscale rendering of Mount Everest transformed to a photorealistic image by using this Google Gemini text prompt:
"Preserve terrain shape and horizon. Mount Everest on a clear summer day. Put wispy clouds in the sky."
The enhanced Everest image is surprisingly accurate, although I have no idea where the rock and glacier textures come from. For reference, they are similar to those on Mount Everest 3D, an interactive map that uses recent satellite images.
The successful Everest experiment led me to test AI enhancement with other landscapes. Accuracy was often poor if I started with unadorned grayscale 3D terrains before entering the text prompts. But draping the same 3D terrains with aerial images greatly improved accuracy, as the examples below demonstrate.
Click images to see GIF animations
Procedure
The following is an overview of the steps for creating AI-enhanced 3D scenes in Natural Scene Designer Pro 10. My procedure is deliberately general because the technology is new, changing rapidly, and I still have much to learn about it.
1. Prepare a 3D oblique scene of an area that interests you. The new Download menu in NSD Pro 10 offers a convenient way to download worldwide terrain models via a map interface.
2. Drape your terrain model with a satellite image or aerial photograph. For terrains in the contiguous US, you can use the download menu to automatically drape NAIP aerial photographs at 60cm resolution on your terrain.
3.Go to Render/Render Picture... and select Google Gemini. There is also an option for OpenAI, which I rarely use. Compared to Gemini, OpenAI images are less accurate and coarser in quality.
4. In the Gemini window (see below) select an output size—larger is better. (I opt to do any upscaling in Photoshop afterwards because it better preserves fine details.) Click the Render button to preview your 3D scene and then click the Enter Prompt button.
5. The Enter Prompt window (see below) is where the magic happens. Succinct prompts work well. I always start with "Preserve terrain shape ..." to ensure that the overall geography will be correct. The other descriptive text is up to you.
Click Make Changes when finished writing the prompt.
6. It will take a minute or two for your Gemini enhanced scene to process depending on the speed of your internet connection. The image below resulted from the above text prompt.
7. You can also apply AI enhancements to targeted parts of a 3D scene by using masks. For the Yosemite example below, in the Gemini render window, I created a mask for slopes greater than 70 degrees. This placed the AI enhanced rock textures only on El Capitan and other steep slopes that otherwise would appear stretched.
Comments
- To use AI enhancement in NSD Pro 10, you will need an API key from Gemini or OpenAI. NSD Pro 10 provides links for obtaining these keys.
- There is a small charge for each AI enhancement you do over a certain threshold. For the last 90 days of Gemini use, I have yet to incur a charge.
- Even with the same 3D terrain and text prompt, AI enhancement results vary from one try to the next. I will sometimes create several AI enhanced images and then pick the best one.
- Some 3D scenes are better suited to AI enhancement than others. Natural landscapes seem to work better than built up places. And famous natural landscapes seem to work better than those that are obscure.
- AI enhancement sometimes will take liberties with your 3D scene, adding background terrain that looks plausible but which is fake. For example, the distant mountains in this rendering of Great Basin National Park.
- AI enhancement takes into account NSD Pro 10 light settings. If light in the 3D scene comes from the southwest, so too will light in the AI enhanced image.
- You can change seasons with AI enhancement. For example, I created the Alta example below from a terrain draped with a summer aerial photograph.
- AI enhancement tends to exaggerate the height of trees.
- Double and triple check AI enhanced scenes for accuracy. Important little details are sometimes incorrect.
- Cartographic ethics: If you use an AI enhanced image as a map background, always inform readers about its origins!
Parting image
Text prompt: "Preserve terrain shape and horizon. Aerial view of Alta Ski Area, Utah, on a nice winter day with fresh snow. Put wispy clouds in the sky."
Check out the Alta GIF animation.
