From Radar to Relief: How a CS2 Map Becomes a 3D Print

You have looked at the CS2 radar thousands of times. It is a flat drawing of a place that is not flat — and almost everything that makes a Counter-Strike map interesting is the part the radar cannot show you.

Turning a CS2 map into a 3D printed relief is largely the work of putting that information back. Here is how one of our pieces is made.

1. Reading the map as a volume

The starting point is not the radar image, it is the geometry of the level itself: where the ground rises, where a platform sits above another, how deep a tunnel runs beneath the surface.

On Dust II that means the elevation between long A and the bombsite. On Nuke it means two floors stacked on top of each other. On Vertigo it means a building with nothing underneath it. Each map needs a different decision about what to keep.

2. Deciding what to leave out

This is the part that takes the longest, and it is a design problem rather than a technical one.

A full, literal 3D scan of a Counter-Strike map is unreadable as an object. Too much detail and you get noise; too little and it stops being recognisable as the map you have played for years. The target is the point where a player glances at it from across a room and immediately knows which map it is.

In practice that means keeping the structures that carry the callouts — banana on Inferno, the donut on Ancient, the canal on Anubis — and simplifying almost everything else.

3. Printing in PLA

Each piece is printed in high precision PLA. Layer height is the constraint that matters: too coarse and the small architecture disappears, too fine and a single piece occupies a printer for an uneconomic length of time.

PLA holds sharp edges well, which suits maps built out of right angles and stone. It is also stable indoors, so a framed piece does not warp on a wall.

4. Assembly and framing

Prints are checked one by one, then mounted and framed in A4 by hand. Nothing here is automated, which is why a piece takes as long as it does and why each one is inspected before it ships.

5. Basic or Premium

Two framing options, and the difference is straightforward:

• Basic — a slim frame. Lighter, more discreet, sits close to the wall.
• Premium — a 30 mm frame with real glass. More depth around the relief, and more physical presence.

Both arrive assembled and ready to hang. The relief inside is identical; you are choosing how much the frame contributes.

Why relief and not a poster

A printed poster of a CS2 map is a picture of a radar. It carries the same information your screen already gave you.

A relief carries the information the radar was always missing. Heaven is above hell on Nuke. Long A slopes. Vertigo has an edge you can fall off. Those facts exist in the geometry of the map and nowhere on the overview, and they are what a player recognises when they stop in front of one of these frames.

See them

Every framed piece is in our CS2 3D Maps collection. The same maps are also available without a frame, as standalone 3D models, for a shelf or a desk.

Not sure which map to start with? Our guide to all CS2 maps in the 2026 Active Duty pool goes through the current seven.