Blender and GIS and why you should take a look at it

What is Blender?
Blender is a free and open source 3D Software. It excells at its field and managed to get funds and is a very good example for successfull FOSS software. It can be used for 3D Modelling, Rendering, Animation and Architecture. You can imagine that this software may also be interessting for Archaeologists for different tasks.

What can i do with Blender?
I want to show you two things you can do with blender as an archaeologist. First will be a workflow how to create a hillshade in 3D and second how to use the addon BlenderGIS to explore a region. Blender is also a great tool when you work with structure from motion, so its a good idea to take a look at this software.

Hilldshades
The visualisation of 3D surface forms on a 2D was a challenge since the beginning of mapmaking. In recent times the art of hillshading has been lost, since it was easier to rely on algorithms like r.relief in grass or the GDAL hillshade, which only take a few parameters input.

Blender allows the free movement of lights, the placement of lights, simulation of sunrays and the usage of additional lights. That can really spice up your hillshading.

The tutorial for that workflow is mainly this documentation: https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/creating-shaded-relief-in-blender/
It also shows advacned techniques and what blender can do.

BlenderGIS
You can also use basic GIS tasks in Blender with the addon. Its really simple to use. Its also well documented:
https://github.com/domlysz/BlenderGIS/wiki/Quick-start

You can get a decent landscape render or even modern urban regions in only a few minutes.

This video might give you a better expression of what is possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj7Z1P2hUWk

The downside of BlenderGIS is that it only gives you some "eyecandy". But a nice looking render of a region might at least impress people that have potential funds for your project.