Introduction

This tutorial will go through the basic steps that are implemented within rayshaderanimate. The main functionality of the package is animating a GPX line on a 3d shade of an elevation profile.

Thus the tutorial will

Read in a GPX line
Download elevation data around this GPX file
Download a map overlay for the GPX file
Plot the elevation map in 2D to check the data
Create a 3d animated gif
Create a 3d animated mp4 (more frames possible)

Read in a GPX file

Reading in a GPX file is handled by the plotKML::readGPX function. It is automatically loaded by rayshaderanimate and used inside the get_table_from_gpx function. From this table the boundaries of the GPX file will be read in a standard bbox format as used e.g. by ggmap and in a second format used for receiving data from Arcgis.

Get the GPX file location from this package

## Loading required package: rayshader

## Warning in rgl.init(initValue, onlyNULL): RGL: unable to open X11 display

## Warning: 'rgl_init' failed, running with rgl.useNULL = TRUE

## Loading required package: ggplot2

## Registered S3 method overwritten by 'xts':
##   method     from
##   as.zoo.xts zoo

Get boundaries from GPX

## Calculating distances may take a while.

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Paint a map

To see if the right bbox was calculated, you can use the bbox_map function to simply double check the location. In this case you should see a map of the French alps around Alpe d’Huez.

bbox_map(bbox)

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Receive elevation data

The elevaton data will be received from SRTM. As SRTM provides only 5 degree x 5 degree sectors, the data is filtered for the bbox. Afterwards this data can be converted into a long format to use it in ggplot or into a matrix without any labels that can easily be used in standard rayshader functions.

el_mat <- bbox %>% get_elevdata_from_bbox()

# Use data from EUDEM project available at: https://land.copernicus.eu/imagery-in-situ/eu-dem/eu-dem-v1.1
el_mat <- get_elevdata_from_bbox(bbox = bbox, type ="EUDEM", file = "eu_dem_v11_E40N20/eu_dem_v11_E40N20.TIF")

data(el_mat) # load pre-stored data
elmat_rayshade <- el_mat %>% unlabel_elevdata()
elmat_long <- get_elevdata_long(el_mat)

Plot 2D with map overlay

To double check the data is the right elevation data, it will be plotted. You should see the shades of mountains where you would expect them.

# in case of EUDEM data you might need to transpose the elmat_rayshade
plot_2d_elevdata(elevdata_rayshade = elmat_rayshade)

Generate 3D video

The most important step of this package is the generation of a 3D video. The video generation works the following way:

A geom_tile plot is generated from the elevation data
The GPX line is painted on this elevation map
A 3D model of the landscape is generated by plot_gg from rayshader.
A snapshot is taken

The procedure is repeated number_of_screens times. In each step the GPX line is painted a bit further.

The main length of the line is calculated such that the intervals between snapshots have a similar time difference to generate a movie feeling.

On more than 50 screens the animation will look from different angles and different zooms on the 3D model.

All snapshots get rendered into a gif by the magick package or into a mp4 by ffmpeg. Therefore ffmpeg needs to be installed and inside the PATH.

output_gif <- video_animation(gpx_table = gpx_table, elevdata_long = elmat_long, make_gif = TRUE, number_of_screens = 4,
                output_file_loc = tempfile(fileext = ".gif"))

Sys.setenv("PATH" = paste0(Sys.getenv("PATH"), ";", "<Where is ffmpeg>"))

output_vid <- video_animation(gpx_table = gpx_table, elevdata_long = elmat_long, make_gif = FALSE, number_of_screens = 6,
                output_file_loc = tempfile(fileext = ".mp4"))

Make a video from a GPX file

Sebastian Wolf

18 Oct 2019