If you want a permanent reminder of an amazing ski trip or climbing adventure, here’s a good idea: a new website called The Terrainator lets you select your favourite geographical features and get ’em 3D printed.
Dan Wilson, the man behind the project, explains how it came about:
I’ve had the good fortune to be able to visit some gorgeous places over the last few months, including Yosemite in California, and Tignes in the French Alps. Having been steeped in the world of 3D-printing at MakieLab last year, I naturally wondered whether I could make tiny scale models of these places to remember them by.
So… he decided to build a website to offer that exact service. You simply find the area you’re interested in on a Google Map, and then Wilson’s site creates a 3D model which can be printed for you. A small, 19sqm model costs in the region of $US45.
There’s currently data available for the UK, the Alps and the western half of the US, but Wilson says that more data is being added all the time — and he hopes to add “bigger prints, accurate colourisation, buildings” in the future. Seems like the perfect gift for the outdoorsy types in your life. [Terrainator]