Total development time: 15 minutes with rendering 1.5 hours, its getting quicker to make cities....
2012-02-11
15 Minutes with CityEngine and Lumion....
A quick weekend post - following on from our first look at CityEngine and Lumion we have expanded the visualisation to add in various standard items from the Lumion library along with a surrounding terrain and waterside setting:
2012-02-09
CityEngine: ESRI and Lumion a first look.
Yesterday a license for CityEngine landed on our desk from the nice people at ESRI and to be honest we were a little too excited for our own good, after all its only software. However, CityEngine and its integration with ESRI ArcGIS, while maintaining full export capabilities to load into 3DMax/Lumion/Unity etc, is a game changer.
It moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Over the coming weeks we will be putting the software through its paces and exporting into Max/Lumion and Unity as part of introducing CityEngines onto our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation. The clip below details out first output direct from CityEngine into Lumion, adding in a general landscape, sample trees and transport objects:
Linking in our previous post on ArcGIS Twitter Visualisation in Lumion it seems that the worlds of GIS and architectural visualisation/game engines are finally starting to become accessible.
It moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Over the coming weeks we will be putting the software through its paces and exporting into Max/Lumion and Unity as part of introducing CityEngines onto our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation. The clip below details out first output direct from CityEngine into Lumion, adding in a general landscape, sample trees and transport objects:
Linking in our previous post on ArcGIS Twitter Visualisation in Lumion it seems that the worlds of GIS and architectural visualisation/game engines are finally starting to become accessible.
2012-02-08
Demo - Live 3D Kinect Streaming: The Future of Webcams
George MacKerron here in CASA has been looking at using a Kinect or three in our forthcoming ANALOGIES (Analogues of Cities) conference + exhibition.
Inspired in part by Ruairi Glynn‘s amazing work here at UCL, along with Martin at CASA who has been happily experimenting with the OpenKinect bindings for Processing, George has recently got to grips with the excellent Three.js, which makes WebGL — aka 3D graphics in modern browsers. As a fan of making things accessible over the web he has begun to investigate prospects for working with Kinect data in HTML5 and the results are intriguing - a live 3D, movable webcam...
View the live stream here or click on the screenshot to connect (note it needs Chrome at the moment), you can also pan and zoom around with the mouse. Hopefully George will be at his desk for the full effect.
For those without Chrome, the movie below details the concept:
We view this as a glimpse of the future of webcams, the next step is to up the resolution (bandwidth heavy) and add image data. The implications for video conferencing or indeed that industry that academically we probably cant mention are notable...
Take a look at the blog post from George for full technical details.
Taxi! Data Viz of 10,000 Taxi's in Manhattan
Taxi! is an analytical model that maps the trip data for 10,000 taxi rides over the course of 24 hours. Geographic location data for the origin and destination of each ride is combined with waypoint data collected from the Google Maps API in order to generate a geographically accurate representation of the trip:
Taxi! from Juan Francisco Saldarriaga on Vimeo.
The team used data from taxi rides originating or ending in the neighborhoods of Lincoln center or Bryant Park. The visualization recreates a ‘breathing’ map of Manhattan based on the migration of vehicles across the city over a period of 24 hours, displaying periods of intensity, density and decreased activity.
This project was a collaboration between Tom McKeogh, Eliza Montgomery and Juan F Saldarriaga. It was done for SEARCH class taught by Mark Collins and Toru Hasegawa (Proxy), at GSAPP, Columbia University, Fall 2011.
As part of the reseach they acknowledge the support of the CUNY High Performance Computing Center under NSF Grants No. CNS-0855217 and No. CNS-0958379.
For any additional information please contact Juan Francisco Saldarriaga at jfs2118@columbia.edu
As a side note we also like the music by Rob Viola of statikluft.com/
This project was a collaboration between Tom McKeogh, Eliza Montgomery and Juan F Saldarriaga. It was done for SEARCH class taught by Mark Collins and Toru Hasegawa (Proxy), at GSAPP, Columbia University, Fall 2011.
As part of the reseach they acknowledge the support of the CUNY High Performance Computing Center under NSF Grants No. CNS-0855217 and No. CNS-0958379.
For any additional information please contact Juan Francisco Saldarriaga at jfs2118@columbia.edu
As a side note we also like the music by Rob Viola of statikluft.com/
2012-02-02
Data Space: Agent Based Models, SketchUp, Visualisation, ArcGIS and Lumion
Over the past few weeks we have been exploring exploring new methods and techniques for visualising data. Developed as part our Masters course in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation we are now looking into issues of scale, realtime rendering, rapid visualisation and 3D exhibition spaces.
Regular readers will know we have been exploring Unity due its interactive nature and ability to import various file types into its game engine (see Particles, Agents and Emergent Behaviour ). Unity is still an option but for rapid visualisation Lumion also offers distinct possibilities. The movie below details our first draft example of building an exhibition space (SketchUp), retexturing and adding various crowd/delegate models (3DMax) and the Twitter map (ArcGIS) using Lumion:
If Lumion offered a stand alone viewer rather than purely movie based output then it would be our engine of choice. As such it is currently a weigh up between Lumion and Unity, our Unity example is under development, we will post it soon as we can...
Regular readers will know we have been exploring Unity due its interactive nature and ability to import various file types into its game engine (see Particles, Agents and Emergent Behaviour ). Unity is still an option but for rapid visualisation Lumion also offers distinct possibilities. The movie below details our first draft example of building an exhibition space (SketchUp), retexturing and adding various crowd/delegate models (3DMax) and the Twitter map (ArcGIS) using Lumion:
If Lumion offered a stand alone viewer rather than purely movie based output then it would be our engine of choice. As such it is currently a weigh up between Lumion and Unity, our Unity example is under development, we will post it soon as we can...
2012-01-25
London Twitter Data as a Landscape
Readers will know that as part of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA, we are exploring new methods and techniques for visualising data. As part of the course we are looking at collecting data from the Twitter API and using the resulting .csv file as an input into a variety of software, including Processing and ArcMap. Data so far has been focused on displaying the output from ArcGIS as a slightly more traditional map, albeit in 3D via Lumion:
As we have mentioned in previous posts there are of course many arguments on the pro's and con's of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set.
Sometimes however an abstract route to visualising data can quite liberating in a world of visualisation dominated by more traditional and academic output, the screenshot above illustrates Kingston Peak with Soho Mountain dominating the background. The movie below details the landscape as a fly-through:
In future posts we will explore issues of scale as we take the landscape and move it into an online exhibition space.
Update - see Data Space: Agent Based Models, SketchUp, Visualisation, ArcGIS and Lumion for the exhibition space developments...
Taking a step back it is possible to take a more abstract view of the data visualisation and use the Twitter data collected to create a digital elevation model for direct landscape visualisations.
As we have mentioned in previous posts there are of course many arguments on the pro's and con's of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set.
Sometimes however an abstract route to visualising data can quite liberating in a world of visualisation dominated by more traditional and academic output, the screenshot above illustrates Kingston Peak with Soho Mountain dominating the background. The movie below details the landscape as a fly-through:
In future posts we will explore issues of scale as we take the landscape and move it into an online exhibition space.
Update - see Data Space: Agent Based Models, SketchUp, Visualisation, ArcGIS and Lumion for the exhibition space developments...
2012-01-24
When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution
As Editor of Future Internet i am pleased to announce that Nathan Jurgenson of the University of Maryland has just published a new paper entitled 'When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution':
The rise of mobile phones and social media may come to be historically coupled with a growing atmosphere of dissent that is enveloping much of the globe. The Arab Spring, UK Riots, Occupy and many other protests and so-called “flash-mobs” are all massive gatherings of digitally-connected individuals in physical space; and they have recently become the new normal. The primary role of technology in producing this atmosphere has, in part, been to effectively link the on and the offline.
The trend to view these as separate spaces, what I call “digital dualism”, is faulty. Instead, I argue that the digital and physical enmesh to form an “augmented reality”. Linking the power of the digital–creating and disseminating networked information–with the power of the physical–occupying geographic space with flesh-and-blood bodies–is an important part of why we have this current flammable atmosphere of augmented revolution.
The full paper can be read over at Future Internet
The trend to view these as separate spaces, what I call “digital dualism”, is faulty. Instead, I argue that the digital and physical enmesh to form an “augmented reality”. Linking the power of the digital–creating and disseminating networked information–with the power of the physical–occupying geographic space with flesh-and-blood bodies–is an important part of why we have this current flammable atmosphere of augmented revolution.
The full paper can be read over at Future Internet
2012-01-21
London's Twitter Island - From ArcGIS to Max to Lumion
As part of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA at The Bartlett, University College London, we are exploring new methods and techniques for visualising data. As part of the course we are looking at collecting data from the Twitter API and using the resulting .csv file as an input into a variety of software, including Processing and ArcMap.
One such known example is the London Twitter map by UrbanTick, developed using the data collector created by Steven Gray and imported by Fabian into ArcMap, it developed a style of its own as the 'NewCity Landscape' collection. From a digital urban point of view the next stage of the map is a 3D extension, a transformation that proved surprisingly difficult due to the nature of combining the worlds of traditional GIS and game engines such as Lumion.
We are still in the early stages of development but the movie below illustrates the NewCity Landscape Map of London visualisation in Lumion as a 'Twitter Island':
Music by Pigeman over at MP3 Unsigned. There are of course many arguments on the pro's and con's of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set.
We will have more updates as the visualisation develops, along with a walk through of how to build it. If your interested in such output our MRes is now open for applications, entry 2012-2013...
One such known example is the London Twitter map by UrbanTick, developed using the data collector created by Steven Gray and imported by Fabian into ArcMap, it developed a style of its own as the 'NewCity Landscape' collection. From a digital urban point of view the next stage of the map is a 3D extension, a transformation that proved surprisingly difficult due to the nature of combining the worlds of traditional GIS and game engines such as Lumion.We are still in the early stages of development but the movie below illustrates the NewCity Landscape Map of London visualisation in Lumion as a 'Twitter Island':
Music by Pigeman over at MP3 Unsigned. There are of course many arguments on the pro's and con's of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set.
We will have more updates as the visualisation develops, along with a walk through of how to build it. If your interested in such output our MRes is now open for applications, entry 2012-2013...
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