Basemaps

Basemaps are used to overlay terrain detail onto the baseboards. This detail can

be obtained from topographical maps, Google maps or any other source that

shows a vertical view with or without an indication of elevation changes of the

landscape you wish to model. However, if your source does not indicate

elevation you will be left to your imagination or knowledge to fill it in.

I chose topographical maps because I wanted to accurately recreate the terrain

the Canadian Pacific Railway followed through the Kicking Horse Pass in the

Rocky Mountains and Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia,

Canada.

At the time I started, there were only 1 km basemaps available. There are in

fact two sets on Content Manager, one set of 9 labelled A through I by g0akh and

a more extensive set of 36, A through Z plus 0 to 9 by halfdan. These 1 km by 1

km basemap assets work well but have the disadvantage of being larger than the

720 m by 720 m baseboards.

More recently willem2 has produced a set of 5 720 m by 720 m basemaps. These

basemaps are easier to use because they “fit” the baseboards. In this tutorial I

will use these 720 m basemaps and explain how to use the 1 km basemaps later.