Vegetation and Views: Leskernick Revisited Pt. 3

Leskernick in CityScape

Back to the theme of investigating the landscape of Leskernick on Bodmin Moor.  The rapid landscape modelling facilities of PixelActive's CityScape, coupled with its rather wonderful cloud modelling facilities tempted me to explore using it to model part of Bodmin Moor.  So, here is a rough first attempt at visualising my 16 x 16km study area.  I've found that CityScape's import of GIS terrain data in Geotiff format is a little uneven, perhaps an issue with ArcGIS's implementation of Geotiff  as I've experienced similar problems with other Arc derived Tiffs in the past.  To get around this I've used a greyscale heightmap, "baked" onto a terrain set up with a frame of correct dimension and projection derived from a shapefile.  This seems to work well.  So, below, in homage to the original photograph, a rapid visualisation of the view through "Bender's door".  Interesting to note how changing atmospherics alter the viewing distance as the near horizon recedes into cloud.

I'll be experimenting more with CityScape for this project as I feel sure that it has much to offer and although lacking the first-person avatar-based facilities of CryEngine, its rapid landscape modelling and realistic clouds are perhaps more suited to this endeavour.

Vegetation and Views: Leskernick Revisited Pt. 2

Building the Terrain Model

The Leskernick terrain model is built using Ordnance Survey profile DTM data from the Edina Digimap service. One might equally have used lower resolution panorama data from the Ordnance Survey OpenData collection. The DTM covers an area of approximately 625km2 at a spatial resolution of 5m.  A rapid assessment of areas visible from the top of Leskernick Hill was used as a basis to select a focus area of roughly 16 x 16km, suitable for modelling in CryEngine.

The 5m resolution OS data was degraded to a lower resolution within ArcGIS, before selecting a square area 16384x 16384m and exporting this as a greyscale heightmap.

Using Sandbox a new level 2048 x 2048 units in size at 8m pixel resolution was created and the greyscale heightmap used to generate terrain.  After rough texturing and lighting the result is a CryEngine based map of the of Bodmin Moor centred on Leskernick.  Easy really, although the terrain looks a bit ropey up close and the final product will need some more work in ArcGIS and probably a smaller lower resolution heightmap for CryEngine.

Vegetation and Views: Leskernick Revisited Pt. 1

Over the next week or so I will be working on and off on an experiment using CryEngine2 to to investigate the views from the Bronze Age settlement at Leskernick, Bodmin  made famous by the phenomenological musings of Barbara Bender (Bender et al 1997) as epitomised in her photographs of views "framed" from the doors of the prehistoric houses.  Bender's work was critiqued by Chapman and Geary (2000) who pointed out that the ample evidence of past environment from the pollen record might suggest that vegetation, particularly Oak and Alder woodland, might have dramatically altered some of the views  in antiquity. So, using a combination of GIS modelling of landscape and vegetation, and CryEngine2 for visualisation, I plan to re-explore Bender's views of Bronze Age Bodmin.


BENDER, B, HAMILTON S, & TILLEY. C.1997. Leskernick: stone worlds: alternative narratives; nested landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-78.
CHAPMAN H.P. & GEAREY B.R. 2000. Palaeoecology and the perception of prehistoric landscapes: some comments on visual approaches to phenomenology. Antiquity 74: 316–319.