Ok so its not urban but it is sort of digital and a fascinating movie displaying the techniques of stop frame animation and blue screen to mask out the background for effective visualisation:
The movie was created using a FUJI FinePix S3 PRO camera and AfterEffects 6.5 to extract the background/insert the shadow, final editing was carried out using Premiere 6.0.
Take a look at Nariomaru on YouTube for more info.
Modifying games for visualisation is intriguing, it opens up the game engine for real time data manipulation and with it access to some of the most cutting edge shaders and lighting/weather effects currently available. Yet, as we have discussed before see Game Engines for Architects? Architecture for Gamers? Escapist Article, mention gaming to academics/architects/city planners and you come up against a lot of opposition and scepticism.
With the new Crysis demo just around the corner it is looking like the Crysis Engine could give Oblivion a run for its money in terms of architectural visualisation but many other games can also be modified.
We are not recommending that commercial companies sit their clients down with a modded version of the Grand Theft Auto series of games but a lot of genuinely innovative work has been carried out with such engines.
One of which is the Back to the Future Mod which has reconstructed scenes from the film and subsequently imported them into the game – the image below is the main town square in pre-game form:
At this point the model is like any other model, it could be visualised in Google Earth, BSContact, Quest3D or any number of visualisation packages, or to give the visualisation an edge it could also be imported into Grand Theft Auto Vice City:
Movie 1: Using the Delorean for Navigation:
Movie 2: Flythrough of the City
If you also take into account the temporal dimension of the mod, allowing visualisation changes over time, then such techniques hold a future for both architectural, geographic and scientific visualisation.
Game engines also hold a lot of potential for outreach, how much easier would it be to communicate either architectural or scientific data to schools if you could fly about it in a Delorean?
This is of course after you have explained what a Delorean is after the company behind the car filed for bankruptcy in 1982..
Over the last few months we have taken a couple of looks at the forthcoming game Crysis using the CryEngine 2 for architectural visualisation.
The movie below provides a quick recap on the quality and realtime lighting:
The single player demo, apparently also with the sandbox included is due for launch on October 26th, a counter towards launch is currently running at http://www.crysisdemo.com/.
Recommended specs are:
OS – Windows XP / Vista
Processor – Intel Core 2 DUO @ 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Memory – 2.0 GB RAM
GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or similar
As ever with the coverage of games on Digital Urban we are interested in using the game engine for visualising architecture and the city in general.
We’ll bring our views as soon as we open up the Crysis Sandbox..
This week,
From Martha Stewart to renowned magazine creative director (and cK One bottle designer) Fabien Baron to graphic design team Massimo and Lella Vignelli (of subway signs and map fame), the feature covers the men and women who have changed the face of design.
The article on architect Santiago Calatrava is especially worth a read.
Read more at http://nymag.com/homedesign/articles/fall2007/
Also note the l