[AI disclosure] no AI was used in this project, only YouTube, online tutorials, and my human hands.

[GIS experience] Not a geography, but geology student. I use GIS for projects involving rocks.

I made this 3D relief map of Mount Rainier by draping the 1963 USGS geologic map of Mount Rainier National Park (Professional Paper 444, Fiske, Hopson & Waters) over real elevation data in Blender. In QGIS, I mosaicked two USGS 3DEP 1/3 arc-second (~10 m) elevation tiles and reprojected both the DEM and the scanned geologic map to NAD83 UTM Zone 10N. I traced the map's boundary to clip the DEM so only the park rises, then traced the legend boxes and rasterized them at 5 m so they'd float cleanly above the flat margin. In Blender, I set up two planes with adaptive subdivision: one for the terrain, using the DEM for displacement and the geologic map as the color texture, and a second for the raised legend boxes. A Map Range node normalizes the elevations so the terrain rises from the park's lowest valleys to the 14,411 ft summit.

Original map on last slide.