Issue 1, Topic 3
Real Terrain, Real Context: Full Site Modeling in Blender
Last updated: September 22, 2026
Real elevation and OpenStreetMap building data, pulled into Blender by scrolling to your site on a map. No manual GIS downloads, no separate desktop GIS app. Exports to Rhino via OBJ or any BIM tool via IFC4.
Tested on a real, hard site
I. M. Pei's Bank of China Tower, Hong Kong: real topography from the slopes of Victoria Peak, real building footprints from OpenStreetMap for the dense Central district.
A real limitation, stated plainly: OpenStreetMap's 3D building schema only supports prismatic extrusion. A curved or tapered tower comes in as a crude box. We chose a site where the real building's massing is close enough to prismatic that this isn't a problem, and we say so.
Confirmed working
- OBJ export into Rhino, confirmed
- IFC4 export via Bonsai (same
ifcopenshellengine as the Image-to-BIM kit), with a known open issue (large UTM coordinates can break some BIM tool imports) documented with a workaround
What you get
The full step by step, exact coordinates for the demo site, and an honest account of which registrations are actually required (fewer than you'd think).
