The goal of this project is to create a custom relief map in the form of a lithophane. When topology is printed in semi-transparent material it naturally creates a lithophane effect when backlit where dark spots mean high elevation and light spots mean low elevation. This is a cool effect, but it could be better. The problem with this method is that the scale of the relief is set by how transparent the material is. If the material is too opaque the relief will barely be noticeable. If the material is too transparent the relief will be massive. One method is to match the opacity of the material to the desired relief. This is pretty difficult, especially in 3d printing.

The solution I am using is that, instead of having a flat back plane like most lithophanes, both the front and back plane follow the desired relief. What makes this a little difficult is that it takes multiple steps. The first step translates the DEM data into a surface with the correct relief scaling to create the front face. The second step creates a surface offset from the front face by a distance determined by the opacity of the material. The third step stitches these two faces together into a body that can be exported as an stl. This stl is then printed to produce the a lithophane that has the desired relief scale.

The end result is a lithophane that looks good whether lit or unlit. When turned off, the high relief scale makes it look impressive. When lit, the saturation gradients exaggerate scale of the mountains. Another advantage of this method is that it allows a reverse effect where the high points are lighter than the low points. This is the effect that I think looks the best.