QGIS route definitely works, and will likely work with any of the geoTIFFs you’ve already downloaded (it’s worked for the two I’ve tried, specifically from the USGS site, but I haven’t done extensive testing yet).
- Simply download QGIS, install it, open it, drag and drop the file you’re trying to use into the program (or use the built-in file browser to navigate to the file) to open it.
- If you want to use the data as-is, just right click the layer on the left-hand side, go to the Export submenu, “Save As”.
- You can leave all settings as default and just select where you’d like it to be saved as well as the filename you’d like, hit OK, and you should be good to go.
- The file exported from QGIS seems to work natively in World Machine with the File Input device.
If you’d like to crop out a section of the downloaded file, you’ll want to (after loading up the file):
- Head up to the Raster submenu, then go “Extraction → Clip Raster By Extent”.
- Once there, on the “Clipping Extent” line, you’ll want to select the drop-down option button next to the text box, and select “Draw on Canvas”. This will let you manually select the area you’d like to mask out for export.
- Once done, click the “Run” button at the bottom of the dialogue box.
- You’ll see a new layer on the left hand side, the top-most layer is your cropped extents that you can now export as above and use in WM.
I’m working on finding out if there’s an easy and effective workflow for using the LiDAR point cloud files for even better results, but that could take awhile.
(Edits for clarity, links, and formatting)
