Introduction

This is the tutorial about adding a shaded relief to your map in Geoserver.

Step 0: add your DEM map as GeoTIFF to GeoServer, see this tutorial.

Step 1: create a shaded relief

• Open OSGeo4W Shell
• Set your path to the directory your DEM map is in. You do this by typing 'cd D:\test' for instance. Now this appears: D:\test>
• Make use of the gdal library (which comes also together with QGis installation) to generate a DEM. The utility to analyze and visualize DEMs is called gdaldem. Type in the shell:

  gdaldem hillshade input_dem.tif output_hillshade.tif

Step 2: open GeoSever

• Click on your windows start button. Open your GeoServer folder. There should be four options: Start GeoServer, Stop GeoServer, GeoServer Homepage Geoserver Admin Page. Click on ‘Start Geoserver’.
• Now go to your GeoServer folder again and click on the ‘Geoserver Admin Page’ and log in.

Step 3: create new layer style

• Go to 'Styles' and 'Add a new style'
• Name your style, e.g. Hillshade, select the workspace you created for the DEM layer and type this:

• It is important that the opacity is 0.3 so you can still see your original map underneath your hillshade.
• Click 'Validate' and 'Submit'.

Step 4: create new store and save layer

• Go to 'Stores' and 'Add a new store'
• Select 'GeoTIFF' under 'Raster Data Sources'
• Select your workspace, fill in 'Data Source Name' and for 'URL' select your output_hillshade.tif. Now click 'save' and 'publish' your layer.

Step 5: style your layer

• Go to 'Layers', click on the layer you just created and in the Edit Layer screen click 'Publishing'.
• Scroll down to 'WMS Settings' and set the 'Default Style' to the hillshade file you just created. 
• Click 'Save'

Step 6: create layer group

• Go to 'Layer Groups' in the left and 'Add new layer group'
• Write down the Bounds or 'Generate Bounds' automatically
• Click 'Add Layer' and in 'Drawing order' select your DEM layer as '1' and the Hillshade layer as '2', so the hillshade is rendered on top of the DEM layer.
• Click 'Save'

Step 7: view your layer group

• Go to 'Layer Preview' and press on 'OpenLayers' for you layer group. Now both the hillshade and the DEM should be visible.