Unity, SketchUp, LightUp and Max: Progress Movie

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We have been working on the new exhibition space for the city and agent based modelling work here at CASA for around 4 days. Our development path has changed in favour of SketchUp with LightUp plugin for the rooms layout and 3D Max for the agent based models. The movie below shows progress so far running in Unity:



You can view the previous example, built as a proof of concept for Windows and Mac from here.

Realizing Spatial Intelligence on the GeoWeb: Where 2.0

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The video above comes from the presentation at the Where 2.0 by Jack Dangermond. Jack discusses realizing spatial intelligence on the GeoWeb and its well worth a look...

Unity Progress

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Apologies for the lack of posts today - its all due to the screen shot above. A mix of SketchUp/LightUp, 3D Max and Unity have eaten up our day as we develop the exhibition space for the latest work.

The movie below take a look at the model so far in Unity - the 3D agents are via Max, the room layout and lighting are from SketchUp:

Progress in Unity: SketchUp and 3D Max from digitalurban on Vimeo.

We seem to have a reasonable workflow in place, all we need now is to build some more crowd/delegate models in Max, tweak the lighting, add a fantasy city section, work out how to do panoramas and its ready to go - hopefully next week...

The Geospatial Revolution: Penn State Public Broadcasting

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The video above is by Penn State Public Broadcasting who are developing the Geospatial Revolution Project, an integrated public media and outreach initiative about the world of digital mapping and how it is changing the way we think, behave, and interact.

The project will feature a web-based serial release of eight video episodes—each telling an intriguing geospatial story. Overarching themes woven throughout the episodes will tie them together, and the episodes will culminate in a 60-minute documentary. The project will also include an outreach initiative in collaboration with our educational partners, a chaptered program DVD, and downloadable outreach materials - we really like it - especially the model around 4.09.

We live in the Global Location Age. Where am I? is being replaced by, Where am I in relation to everything else?

http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu/

CityEngine 2009

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Procedural have released a new version of their CityEngine - 'CityEngine 2009'. The updated version provides new innovative tools for urban design and modeling on a citywide scale with he aim of working with complex 3D urban environments easier than ever before.

Key highlights of the CityEngine 2009 include:

#1: Interactive Editing (immediate mode, undo/redo, etc.)
#2: Improved 3D Export (Collada with instancing, 3ds Max, etc.)
#3: Support for Geospatial Data (import/export of GIS data)
#4: Improved Street Geometries (with round curbs, junction handling, etc.)
#5: Occlusion in CGA Shape Grammar (to query the spatial context)
#6: Reporting Functionality (Excel tables for master plans)
#7: Python Interface (to speed up and streamline repetitive tasks)
#8: Floating License (enables flexible network licensing installations)

Of particular note is the ability to import .shp files opening up the possibility to import MasterMap data into The City Engine and the report output for urban planning, the video below provides details on this feature:



There is also a free 30 day trial which is well worth a go..

SketchUp, LightUp 1.5 and Unity: Progress

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We have been giving LightUp the light simulation plugin for SketchUp a spin this afternoon and we are impressed.


LightUp is remarkably easy to use, you can simply click on any textured shape and allow it emit light, opening up the way for quick and easy renders out of SketchUp. The screen shots here are from our developing City Exhibition Space in Unity - you can download a beta version for Windows and Mac. We should have a new example ready to go next week now our workflow is in place.

Of note is the ability to run LightUp in the free version of SketchUp allowing models to be exported in .fbx without having to upgrade to the pro version.

We will have more on SketchUp, Unity and LightUp next week as our city exhibition space develops...

Tele Atlas: 3D Photorealistic City Models on Mobile Devices

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Engadget is reporting the announcement from Tele Atlas that its photorealistic "Advanced City Models" ares destined for in-car and portable navigation systems and mobile devices in June.

In-car and portable navigation systems are currently one of the main pushes for innovation in the field of city modelling, the movie below provides a view of the details available in the models:



The launch will include 40 cities maps across Europe with North America and Asia following in 2010. The main aspects of portable navigation is the street level view, while these models are impressive are they any use for in-car navigation and gaining a sense of the up coming environment?

GMapCreator: Clickable Thematic Maps Preview

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Over at the GENeSIS blog Richard Milton of CASA has put up a sneak preview detailing some of the functionality of the latest GMapCreator. Traditionally clickable maps have been built using a server and database to translate the click on the client into a geographic area using point in polygon and then sending the query data back to the client. This method doesn’t scale when you have limited server resources and are looking to handle high numbers of hits, for example with the Mood Maps that we’ve been doing recently. An alternative solution is to build feature coded tiles and let the client handle most of the work displaying the data.

In short, its clickable Google Maps at a large scale without any slow down compared to other solutions, take a look at the GENeSIS blog for more info...

This build will be integrated into our MapTube site as soon as ready for wider use. As a side note MapTube is now includes the option to view your data on top of OpenStreet Map layers.

Second Life: Agent Based Models Update

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As part of joint work with gisagents.blogspot.com we have just finished another part of Agent-Street where agents and avatars can interact with each other. The idea here is to merge iconic and symbolic urban models in a multi-user real time environment:

Agent-Based Modelling in Second Life from Andrew Crooks on Vimeo.

The movie below details Agent-Street and how one can download the models we have created by clicking on the model vending machines. Such vending machines are common features in Second Life and allow users to store objects and scripts in their personal inventory for later use such as rebuilding the models on their own Land or in free sand-boxes. We have been using the Mauve Land for this (SLURL).

In our previous models avatars could only visualise and initiate the models. For example, in the pedestrian evacuation model users could only observe how agents exited the building (in a similar way to professionally developed 3D pedestrian modelling software packages such as STEPS - more on STEPS in a future post.). In this new model, we extend the basic pedestrian evacuation model, so that agents not only consider their environments but also other avatars. In this sense we are not only incorporating iconic and symbolic modelling styles but also adding a further human dimension, moving towards an augmented reality (i.e. as if the agents and the humans were in the same crowd). The movie below details how pedestrian paths change when avoiding an avatar, note how an avatar stationed near the exit impacts on pedestrian egress as agents have to move around it.

We have also set up a website outlining the work in detail (click here) or alternatively if you have a Second Life account this SLurl will take you to the Land, once you teleport to the area, follow the red arrow (beam of red light) into the sky to find Agent-Street. If the models are running slow let us know as we having problems with fish entering our land from a neighbouring island.

Thanks as ever go to NATURE for allowing us use of Second Nature Island to set up the experiments.

Netlogo Import into 3D Max: Tutorial and Code

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Flocking in NetLogo exported to 3D Max from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Music "Funkmelon Blooz" (Electronica)

A few months ago readers may remember we posted a series of movies produced using output from NetLogo direct in 3D Max - examples included the flocking simulation above and the basic traffic model below:

NetLogo to 3D Max - Proof of Concept from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Music by The Tedd-Z Cookbook, Aerodrome (Funky Shuffle Remix)

Both proofs of concept the source code and a tutorial are now available the Crowd Simulation Blog by the Ateen Patel a PhD student at CASA. Ateen has written a short tutorial (including the code) and several other posts on how to get information from a simple NetLogo Traffic Model and visualise it in 3D Max from Autodesk.

NetLogo is a cross-platform multi-agent programmable modeling environment that is widely. It is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Modelers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of independent "agents" all operating concurrently. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behavior of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from the interaction of many individuals.(Nation Master Encyclopedia).

CASA, home of digital urban, has a few blogs of note now, the Crowd Simulation Blog is defiantly worth keeping an eye on for those interested in pedestrian modeling...

Tutorials Updated

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We have updated our tutorials page - it now includes the recent tutorials on the iPhone timelapse system, image stacking to create star trails and city lights, how to use a torch and webcam to set up a HD timelapse system and finally the new reactor tutorial for 3D Max - see them all via the Tutorials Page.

Tutorial: Reactor - 3D Max, Bouncing Balls in a 3D City

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3D Max Balls in the City from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Music by Portoponte

The movie above is surprisingly easy to make, the following tutorial is aimed at creating a series of bouncing balls in a cityscape using Reactor in 3D Studio Max.

We covered the building of the cityscape in our previous tutorials - Greeble a 3D City: Tutorial 1: Greeble Skyscraper and Greeble a 3D City: Tutorial 2: The Cityscape

The tutorial works just as well with a simple plane if you would like to build the city at a later date.


You will need:

1x Copy of 3D Studio Max (a 30 Day trial can be downloaded from here)

Time Required: 5-10 Minutes

Level: Beginner

Step 1:


Step one is to start with your cityscape or any scene you wish to add the bouncing balls. We created the balls by simply creating a grid of spheres, in our case 100, using Shift/Move to quickly clone a number of objects.

Once created move the balls up to a suitable distance to drop over the city - as pictured above.

Step 2

With out balls in place we now want to add the reactor settings to add basic physical properties to the scene. Select all your object and then click 'Create Rigid Body Collection' as illustrated in the top left, below:


You have now set all the objects up as a rigid body, we now want to change the properties so the balls bounce around the scenery. First of all select all the balls open the 'Property Editor' (notepad shaped icon, fourth from the left in the tool bar), we used the settings of Mass 1.0, Friction 0.1 and Elasticity 1.5, you can play around with these numbers to get any effect you require. Increasing the Mass and Elasticity makes the balls bounce higher with more energy.

Step 3

With the balls set up we now need to do the same with the scenery, select your cityscape and again open the 'Property Editor', set the 'Simulation Geometry 'to be a 'Concave Mesh'. This will allow the balls to react to the buildings.

Step 4

You are ready to go, to preview your scene press 'P', the simulation will run and a preview window will appear, you can now tweak your settings until you are happy.

Step 5

Once you are happy with the preview click 'Create Animation' to allow max to set the keyframes for each ball, we normally have our timeline set to 1000 frames.


You should now have a movie like the one at the top at the post, quick and simple yet with a few tweaks a useful visualisation technique...

Visible Tweets: Visualising Twitter via Animated Tag Clouds

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Visible Tweets is a visualisation of Twitter messages designed for display in public spaces and its really rather nice. The movie below shows visible tweets of the terms 3d virtual city with a tag cloud animation:

Visible Tweets from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Head over to http://visibletweets.com/ to give it a go, be warned it can be addictive...

Web Stats as a Populated CityScape: VisitorVille

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VistorVille is a city based visualisation program for your webstats, each building represents a web page; each bus a search engine; and each animated character a visitor to the site:



Setup is as easy as pasting in a tracking code, we would try it out but the combination of cities and stats is probably a step too far if we want to get any work done this week...

Take a look at http://www.visitorville.com/ for a free trial and more info.

Pedestrian Modelling: Oxford Circus London Video

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Oxford Circus in London is a busy intersection between Regent Street and Oxford Street with more than 200m visitors a year (BBC). Work is about to begin on a £5m project to pedestrianise part of Oxford Circus. Based on crossings in Tokyo, the new design will stop all traffic in all directions, and allow people to cross diagonally as well as straight ahead. Street clutter and barriers at the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street will also be removed.

Graphic showing the Oxford Circus redesign

The movie below created by Designhive details how Atkins' two-dimensional traffic and pedestrian models can be coupled with 3D Studio Max in such a way it is difficult to distinguish the model from a real piece of video footage. Combining the models in the simulation in this way makes the finished product particularly compelling. Furthermore it has the benefit of being based on the technical models developed to test the proposals prior to their implementation (such as the removal of street clutter).

The pedestrian model is a particle-based system controlling 5000 agents to match up the data produced by Atkins Intelligent Space. When the final simulation was rendered, the 'particles' were replaced with animated people, programmed to walk while the points were moving and idle when the points stopped for traffic lights.

Thanks to Duncan Smith and gisagents.blogspot.com - another blog from CASA worth noting, see their post on Interesting Articles.

Social Explorer: Online Demographic Information

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Social Explorer provides easy access to demographic information about the United States, from 1790 to present. Their online tools are aimed to help you visually analyse and understand the demography of the United States through the use of interactive maps and data reports. The free collection on the website features historical census data maps and reports. This includes a limited subset of socio-economic and demographic data on the United States from 1790 to 2007. Subscribers have access to over 12,000 maps between 1790 and 2007, and over 50,000 variables of data in reports.

Communicating and portraying geographical data is not an easy task, as to be honest it can all come across as a bit dull. That said, the video below provides and insight into Social Explorer:

Social Explorer Maps -- Intro from Social Explorer on Vimeo.

Still awake? Its not the most gripping of videos but the tool is actually well worth a look - head over to http://www.socialexplorer.com/ to give it a try.

realXtend: SketchUp and Dynamic Shadows in a Virtual World

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The image above by Visibuild, a host and solutions provider for the AEC industries, is running in realXtend, currently in early phase alpha, it is a platform to watch. The main attraction for us here at digital urban of realXtend is the ability to import models via Revit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp, 3DMax etc, something that Second Life still lacks in any quick and easy form.

The technology demo below provides an insight into the possibilities:



With a notable rendering quality, combined with the dynamic shade and shadows, realXtend creates an interesting and comparably low-cost way to experience an architectural design.

If you are at all interested in Virtual Architecture we recommend a trip over to The Arch Network, set up by Jon Brouchoud it focuses on the communication of architecture via Virtual Worlds. We will be taking a closer look at realXtend while our development using Unity is put on hold (our Mac was stolen).

The Unity work will return as soon we get a replacement laptop sorted and our files restored via Time Machine.

See The Arch Network for more details on SketchUp models running in realXtend.

Photosynth Now Integrated with Virtual Earth

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We have been big fans of the Photosynth technology here at digital urban, it has huge potential for portraying the cityscape from the level of external architecture through to inside buildings and down to individual objects.

Microsoft have just launched Photosynths integration with Virtual Earth along with some tweaks to the interface, the slightly corporate and stumbled through video below provides details:



While it is still early days the example of the House Synth over at http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/ details the possibilities, now if they would just let us open the the resultant point cloud in application such as 3D Max....

Life on the Bus: Timelapse by UrbanTick

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Fabian over at UrbanTick notes that most of us travel to work daily and most likely we travel in a mass of fellow travelers towards a destination most likely in a inner city location.

This collective daily migration also known as the rush hour is part of the city beat and pumps trough the city’s veins of streets like a liquid. The public transport plays a major role in this choreographed routine. Here in London its the tube and the big red buses that take the lot.

The daily trip on a London bus as seen from the back, in a timelapse animation by urbanTick for the urbanDiary project. Shot with an iPhone using TimeLapse, processed via Quick Time:

tlBusDailyRoute_090512 from urbanTick on Vimeo.

Music “If You Are the One to Take Me Home” by ::thinkstandard:: at mp3unsigned.com

UrbanTick is a blog that comes out of the CASA fold, take a look at his latest post on the mental maps of daily commuting.

Textured LiDAR Scan of London: 1.5 Billion Points

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The movie below provides a quick glimpse of our latest dataset in CASA - a LiDAR scan of London within the M25 ring road, the model is made up of in excess of 1.5 billion points:

LiDAR Scan of London - Textured from digitalurban on Vimeo.

The points have been converted to a surface, texture mapped with aerial imagery and visualised in LandXplorer by Autodesk. A non textured mapped version can be seen below:

LiDAR Scan of London from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Thanks go to Duncan Smith at CASA for doing the processing and Cities Revealed for the data supplied by Landmap.

Note - the movie is slightly lower quality than our normal output here at digital urban as our Mac has been nicked, normal service should return next week...

Pixel City: Creating a Procedural Cityscape

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Shamus Young of Twenty Sided has a fantastic walk through of creating a Procedural City, complete with source code. Shamus's goals were to create a night time cityscape that made predominantly of of lights and suggestions rather than real detail. The movie below provides a look at its creation:


The city is entirely procedurally generated, no art assets, textures or models are used - which makes for a really interesting approach, especially from our point of view of always starting from the basic model/texture and building up to the cityscape.

See the 11 part write up, complete with code and demo over at Twenty Sided.

Thanks go to Radek for sending us the link to http://flowingdata.com/ who covered the project, a blog that is now bookmarked...

Mobile Blogging - BlogPress

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We are currently on our way out of the city on the delayed 17.40 from Waterloo. As such we thought it was worth giving BlogPress, an iphone app that allows mobile posting, a spin.

Mobile blogging is of use for conferences or for those moments out of range of a laptop. In short the app seems to do the job quite well, you are able to format photos and the app will host them via a free server.

Expect some more 'on the fly' posts now we have the app...

-- Posted via the iPhone

Portland 3D City Model

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The movie above details a digital 3D model of Portland, Oregon created by NC3D using information gathered from Metro, the City of Portland, ODOT, Tri-Met and numerous firms and individuals including Williams and Dame Development, Ankrom Mosian, FFA, GBD, Hennebery Eddy, Thomas Hacker and ZGF Architects.

The Portland City Model was created in 3D Studio Max and is available for license direct from NC3D...

London Timelapse: Fluffy Clouds and Full Moon

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The timelapse above is the latest from the HD webcam housed on a roof in Camden Town - note the full moon rising above the cityscape towards the end of the clip. An image was grabbed every 5 seconds to create the movie.

London TimeLapse - Full Moon from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Music by Ghostlight over at mp3unsigned.

Want to make your own timelapse? - See our full tutorial.

Our City Exhibition Space will feature a timelapse room, you can walk a walk around the beta version from here (Windows and Mac). At the moment we are experimenting with 'LightUp' in 'SketchUp' to go direct from SketchUp into Unity, more on this soon.

Profiles: B720 Architects

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b720 architects – architectures in process from Francisco Dulanto on Vimeo.

The movie above is a short documentary about b720 architects, one of the largest architectural practices in Spain, detailing their methodology and building work.

The video aims to capture an innovative form of team work and the resulting design processes, in a series of sequences of studio life, under construction projects and dawn to dusk scenes about the buildings relationship with their environment.

Movie upload to Vimeo by Francisco Dulanto.

Digital Urban City Exhibition Space: Downloadable Preview

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The following exhibition space is a proof of concept, looking at the ability to share and display city datasets and simulations within an interactive game engine. Available for download on both the PC and Mac (intel) platforms the space is the result of a few days work with the Unity Engine, it is intended to be viewed in the spirit of development rather than a completed product.

The room includes our first 'crowd and delegate' models direct from 3D Max, created as basic wander and avoid simulations they provide the building blocks of emergent behaviour within the cityscape.

City wide data sets can to be honest be very 'dry', the whole point of digital urban is to look at new ways to outreach, visualise and ultimately communicate urban data. The ability to include 3D models via ESRI ArcScene is a notable step forward, pictured below is the retail and office space in London measured on a 500m grid. We note some polygon issues here but these are known and we think we have a way to fix them - its to do with the way ArcScene exports, the model forms the centre of the exhibition space:

The room features various architectural models, including the Swiss Re building and the GLA in London, it also features a number of our latest output movies, the London LiDAR and Second Life Agents are of particular note.

The model is, as we mentioned, proof of concept, the next step is the addition of themed rooms and a more organised structure. We think the concept of virtual exhibition spaces is a strong one, so as ever any comments are most welcome, if you would also like to know how any of it was done just ask, as is the spirit of digital urban.

Download the model for Windows XP/Visa (221 Mb zip file)

Unzip the file, open the folders and run the Exhibition1.exe file.

Download the model for Mac (Intel) (222 Mb zip file)

Extract and simply run the .dmg file.

We recommend running the application in 'Window' mode at 1024 x 768: use the mouse to look around, W/S move forwards/backwards, Space to jump, click and drag the digital urban cube to throw it around...

Unity: Creating a City Exhibition Space - Update 2

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Regular readers will know that we have spent the last few days giving the game engine Unity a spin. The pro version has various additions to the lower cost indie edition, most notably for our use the ability to import movies as textures and use dynamic shadows. Our movie below provides an update on progress:

Unity: Creating a City Exhibition Space - Update 2 from digitalurban on Vimeo.

If people are interested we can post the executables to walk around, we now plan to add a number of rooms and create a full city exhibition space.]

*Update - The preview room is now available in Windows and Mac versions from here.*

Google O3D: Web Based 3D

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New out of Google Labs is O3D - an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. The API is in it early stages aimed at being part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.

The video below provides some insights:

Having Google do 'Web 3D' is intriguing, we have been down the embedded path before with VRML, Metacreations, X3D etc all sadly well before their time. Perhaps Google is well placed to push Web 3D, that said we got excited about the Google multiuser world as well and that was pulled.

See http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/ for full details.

LiDAR Scan of London in LandXplorer

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The movie below details a 1 meter resolution scan of London using LiDAR (an optical remote sensing technology that measures properties of scattered light to find range and/or other information of a distant target via laser pulses, Wiki). The ability to load in the entire scan of London - some 1,500 kmsq - is thanks to LandXplorer by Autodesk and we are impressed:

LiDAR Scan of London from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Autodesk LandXplorer offers a collection of functions to interactively compose, present, explore, analyze, and edit geodata-based 3D models. In a sense, they represent a content management system for 2D and 3D geoinformation, which supports the effective handling of geodata assets.

Take a look at http://www.3dgeo.de/products.aspx for more info, we will have more on the LiDAR scan of London in future posts.

Thanks go to Duncan Smith at CASA for doing the processing and Cities Revealed for the data supplied by Landmap.

Visualising City Wide Data: London Retail and Office Space

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The movie below is a visualisation of office and retail space in London. Using data kindly supplied by the Economics Unit at the Greater London Authority, Duncan Smith a PhD student here at CASA has calculated the amount of retail and office in London per 500 metre grid square:


Duncan carried out the analysis in ESRI's ArcScene as part of his PhD. Intriguingly it is possible to export from ArcScene into Autodesk's 3D Studio Max allowing a much higher level of visual fidelity. Of course once it is in max you can then export to a number of other platforms, such as Unity as our previous post explained using the same data.

Here at CASA we have just completed the initial phase of our London database, as such we will be exploring more ways to visualise city based datasets in forthcoming posts.

Augmented Reality for SketchUp: Now on the Mac

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We ran a post on ARMedia a while ago and now the Augmented Reality plugin for SketchUp is available for the Mac. The movie below sums up the possibilities:



If you are in the business of communicating designs to clients or setting up an exhibition space and need something that little bit different then augmented reality carries a large wow factor for very little effort.

You can download a free trial from http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/en/products/arplugin_su/info.php

Tokyo Timelapse: Remanence

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remanence : variance from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.

The timelapse above is by Samuel Cockedey - In Samuels own words the clip is entitled Remanence referring to:

a. The state of being remanent; continuance; permanence.
b. The magnetic flux remaining in a substance after the magnetizing force has been withdrawn.

Variance
a. A difference between what is expected and what actually occurs.
b. The number of thermodynamic variables, such as temperature and pressure, required to specify a state of equilibrium of a system, given by the phase rule.

The sequences were shot in Tokyo with Canon DSLRs (mostly a 350d), processed with Lightroom (raw files color adjustment and resizing)/VirtualDub (deshaker/deflicker filters)/Sony Vegas (editing). Original rendered in full 1080 HD@30p.

Music: "Is That What Everybody Wants" from Cliff Martinez's soundtrack for Solaris.

Unity: City Data and Simulation Exhibition Space - A Work in Progress

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We have spent the day giving the Unity Game Engine a spin and to be honest we are really impressed. The interface is simple to use and the ability to drag and drop files direct from 3D Max/Maya/Blender etc is refreshing. We have been able to import various simulations into a city exhibition space, a process that would taken of a good few days using other game engines.

By way of a work in progress we have a new video below:


We will have more next week... any thoughts, comments or questions are of course welcome...