2022

The Austria-Hungary relief in two framed photographs: satellite terrain projected onto the physical model in a dark room, with points of interest lit up.

Austria-Hungary border relief projection

Projection-mapped history on a relief model

The break-up of the Habsburg Monarchy and the forests of its lands, projection-mapped onto a physical relief model.

  1. 1914

    The Habsburg Monarchy

    Austria-Hungary on the eve of the First World War. The relief lights up inside its outer border.

  2. Its lands

    Kingdoms and lands

    The borders of the lands within it appear, from Bohemia and Galicia to Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  3. 1914–1918

    War

    A symbolic wave of war sweeps across the map.

  4. 1918

    The monarchy breaks apart

    Its outline gives way to the borders and names of the states that divided it, shown here as they stood in 1923.

  5. 1 December 1918

    Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

    Singled out among them: the kingdom proclaimed in Belgrade on 1 December 1918, uniting Serbia and Montenegro with most of the monarchy's South Slavic lands.

  6. Baranja

    Belje

    And within it, Belje, close to Tikveš, where the real relief stands.

Borders: OpenHistoricalMap contributors (CC0): Austria-Hungary and its lands in 1914, the successor states in 1923 (Lastovo, Italian from 1920, added to Italy). Elevation: Mapzen Terrain Tiles (SRTM, USGS; ETOPO1, NOAA).

What we did

At the Presentation and Education Centre Tikveš, a physical relief model about two metres across shows the lands of the old Habsburg Monarchy. We made the animations projected onto it, in two parts.

The first tells how the monarchy ended. The terrain lights up inside its outer border, then the borders of the lands within it appear. A symbolic wave of war sweeps across the map, the monarchy breaks apart, and the borders and names of the states that divided it take its place. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is singled out among them, and within it, Belje.

The relief model in the exhibition room, with borders traced in light across the terrain and points of interest marked in green and blue.

The second part shows the forests of Europe across the monarchy's territory, with the most important woodlands named on the terrain.

How we did it

The model was handmade and not very precise, so real GIS data didn't line up with it. We 3D-scanned the model and bent the data to fit the scan.

Even then, the final adjustments happened on site. We moved, scaled or dropped details by hand until everything read well on the physical surface.

3D render of satellite-textured terrain from the Alps to the Adriatic, used as the projection content.
Untextured 3D terrain model of the Adriatic coast and inland mountains prepared for the relief projection.
Screenshot of the grey relief model mesh inside 3D software, framed by the default camera for projection alignment.
Photo of the blank white physical relief model on its stand before the projection is applied.
Built with
  • Photoshop
  • Cinema 4D
  • Rhinoceros 3D
Photogrammetry & 3D scanningProjection mapping3DAR