Low polygon 3D europe map

Hello my latest little project is a 3D low polygon map. I used Blender and Gimp to create this map:

I've started with an elevation map of Europe I found on the website from "The European Environment Agency" (EEA). Thank you EU for this image:

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/elevation-map-of-europe

Then I had to cut of the black border with Gimp and created a second image as height map:

For this step I converted the image to black and white and then used the curve tool to make the mountains darker. This will make the mountains in the final image higher and easier to discover.

Then I used this tutorial to create the 3D image in Blender:

http://johnflower.org/tutorial/make-mountains-blender-height-maps

But I didn't  subdivide in as many parts than the tutorial ans I haven't smoothed, because I wanted a low polygon look of my image and not a realistic one.

After this step I gave the plane the original colour image as texture. How you can do it is described in this YouTube video:

Now I had just to position my camera right and save the image.

Next I'll add some text and the flight route and then use this image in a photo book as map.

Here are the two updates in this series:
Low polygon 3D europe map UPDATE
Low polygon 3D Europe map UPDATE 2