Eric posted on his site about access to the new Series2 HGT radar maps for use with Ground Control. No doubt they are far superior to Series1. At least for South Australia, I found the setting for sea level of the infinite plain to be most accurate when Z set at 0.0025 (still reads as 00!) I am hoping that Eric, or someone, will explain usage of the other new downloads which, apparently, will more accurately set sea levels but, also, the water levels of lakes etc that are above sea level! I wonder what it will do for the many dry salt lakes we have in South Australia which are below sea level?

Right now the new downloads aren't really helpful, the cleaned up HGT files are the big thing. I've got on my short list to spend some time with the new water level data and see if I can pull some useful stuff out of that, but I don't have any definite timeframe for that yet. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Carrara plug-ins

Thanks Eric. My son works with this sort of stuff but was unable to apply in the DFX type format in a way that made sense to use in Carrara. If he comes back with anything more of value I will pass it on.

I've got some steps to get the data out. It's not native support, but it's a series of steps using ArcExplorer (free download) and your favorite 2D app to build a texture to be used as a Terrain Layer distribution. I'll have a tutorial posted in the next couple of days.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara plug-ins

Thanks again Eric. Have downloaded the Arc Explorer and looked through the PDF. A very comprehensive FREE programme---which badly needs your simple? tute!

I know I promised a tutorial, but my technique didn't translate well to some (most) of the other shapefiles, so I spent the last couple of days adding shapefile support to Ground Control. It will probably be a week or so before it's ready to release, tonight I got first render.

It's not full shapefile implementation, but it does do what the SRTM data requires. Perhaps later I'll do full implementation, that might be handy for GIS visualizations.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara plug-ins

Great Eric!