(Update) 3D Reconstruction of the Dnipro river valley

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(Update) 3D Reconstruction of the Dnipro river valley before flooding to create
a reservoir in 1956

For many years I have been engaged in graphic and cartographic reconstruction of the Dnipro (Dnieper) river valley, on the site of which the Kremenchug reservoir was formed in 1956. This process is complex, as there is not much publicly available information. I improve the map every year, at this time I am reconstructing the main riverbed and the centers of settlements. In the future I will plan the towns and villages that were convenient. This is part of our common history.

For the documentary film, I made small fragments of animation of the reconstruction of the relief and settlements position.
GIS + 3D + Animation
Link to the video at the end of the post

Stage of information collection

Search and verification of settlements. Archive maps are georeference in QGIS and vectorized manually. This is the longest and most difficult stage.

Concept stage

Due to the lack of planning and terrain details at this stage of research, it was decided to create a minimalist model.

The stage of creating a model

At this stage, there is no more detailed SRTM (1 px 30 m) in this area, so based on it, I interpolated up to 10 m per pixel and reprojection of the layer to EPSG: 32636 - WGS 84 / UTM zone 36N. I also added an old channel to the digital terrain model, adjusting the data with the terrain values.

Modeling stage

I modeled the relief in Blender with subsequent texturing of the territory and creation of a scene. The names of the settlements were transferred from QGIS and processed in Inkscape. Subsequently, all layers were imported into the Blender.
Heavy model on an already weak 5 year old laptop...

Draft versions of render

The final result

...But this is not the end. Research is ongoing...

Gone with the Water

these maps were developed for the documentary series "Gone with the Water" and appear in the 1st series of 7:12 to 7:52 minutes
The author of the idea and director of the series - Olexiy Khutorny.

The first of four series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_wGiZubKpM

The whole series
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeF0JKpVsB7Yxswz1yCT6Ey1pEowRYQa8