Help / Build a model
Color by height
Print the ground in bands of color by height, like forest, rock, and snow on a mountain.
Color by height is under Layers > Terrain. It prints the ground above each height in another color, like a color change in the slicer but for the terrain alone. Roads, buildings, and water keep their own colors.
- Open Terrain under Layers and tick Color by height.
- Pick a Style. Auto picks the one that suits the area.
- Generate the model.
- Alpine
- Forest green up to the tree line, gray rock above it, and snow on the peaks.
- Canyon
- Layers of brown, red, orange, and tan rock up the canyon walls.
- Volcanic
- Green slopes, dark lava, red cinders, and a white summit.
- Atlas
- The tints of a relief map, from green lowlands to brown tops.
- Slate
- Grays from dark in the valleys to white at the top.
The style places the bands where the landscape changes, using the elevation data and the land cover: the tree line, the snow line, the layers of a canyon wall. Moving the area fits them to the new ground, until a band is changed by hand.
A style shows its bands over the land cover, so parks, forest, and trees are left out and the bands show everywhere. Atlas and Slate keep them on low ground that's mostly town, so a city keeps its parks. Roads, buildings, and water always stay.
Set bands by hand
- The chart shows how much of the ground is at each height. Drag a band's line on the chart to move where it starts.
- Open a band to type its starting height in meters above sea level and pick its color.
- Add a height adds a band, up to four. Spread evenly spaces them between the lowest and highest ground.
- Show over land cover on a band leaves parks, forest, and trees out above its height, and applies to every band above it too. Untick it on the lowest band to get the land cover and trees back below the next one.
Each band in a color of its own is one more filament, and the line under Style says how many the bands add. A band doesn't add color changes within a layer. Color by height only works on map data models, and needs Terrain on.
Bands work best on hills and mountains. In a flat city most of the ground is under roads and buildings, so they mostly show on the sides of the model.