Matthew Toro
Matthew Toro is a broadly trained geographer and the Director of Maps, Imagery, and Geospatial Services at Arizona State University Library in Tempe, Arizona. He founded and leads the Map and Geospatial Hub, a hybrid map library and GIS center that supports teaching, research, public engagement, and geospatial project work across the university. His work sits at the intersection of geography, cartography, spatial data, visualization, and map collections, with a growing interest in workflows that translate geographic data into interactive and tangible forms.
Session
QGIS’s plugin ecosystem makes it possible to move beyond traditional 2D mapping into web-based 3D visualization and physical terrain modeling. This 90-minute hands-on workshop introduces a complete terrain-to-3D workflow using freely available elevation data, QGIS, and widely used plugins.
Participants will work through a practical sequence: acquiring elevation data, choosing an appropriate coordinate reference system, defining an area of interest, extracting terrain with a vector boundary, designing a web-based 3D terrain scene, and exporting a model that can be used for interactive visualization or prepared for 3D printing. Along the way, we will discuss the key decisions that shape the final model, including scale, raster resolution, terrain representation, vertical exaggeration, base elevation, and printability.
The workshop is beginner-friendly and appropriate for intermediate QGIS users. No prior 3D modeling or 3D printing experience is required, though basic familiarity with QGIS layers, raster data, and coordinate reference systems will be helpful.
Participants will leave with a digital 3D terrain model and a reusable workflow that can be adapted for teaching, research, outreach, public engagement, or geospatial storytelling.