Styling our data

Let's start with a gentle introduction to the representation model in GIS. For these examples, we will need our modified administrative boundaries layer, our GeoNames layer, our river network, and one of our elevation maps.

From now on, you can use the extract of your GeoNames layer, if your original one is too large.

Not only do the data models of rasters and vectors differ, but also their representation models. As rendering in every decent GIS software is hardware-accelerated, raster data are converted to textures, while vector data are tessellated in the rendering pipeline. Hence, raster values have to be mapped to 8-bit or 24-bit textures (images), while the capabilities of vector visualization depend on the implementation. The minimum capabilities are drawing icons as textures, regular shapes, connected lines, and polygons with user-defined fill and...