Full post with movies after the break below:

No. 5: Growing the Tube Network

The clip was produced in 3D Max, purely as a way to explore the rapid creation of transport networks for visualisation. It was easy to make – simply import a PDF of a transport network into a package such as illustrator and save as .dwg. This allows you to import into 3D Max and then the lines can be converted to ‘tubes’ – the network can be built up in under an hours work. Making the stations and naming the lines took a little more time but the result is interesting. The render has been used on the cover of a couple of books, been hung on the walls in the London Transport Museum and is the subject of future development with real network flows.

No. 4: Reactor and Particles in the City

Number 4 is a slight cheat as it contains two movies, firstly Reactor:

Secondly, Particles:

The movies were produced as part of exploring how 3D Max can be used for agent based modelling, we wrote a Complete tutorial on Reactor and Bouncing Balls in the City. The work is currently being imported into the Unity engine as part of our work on NeISS. Talking of which:

No. 3: Unity

Unity is our current engine of choice, simply for its ease of use for importing models and producing quality output that can run either online, via iPhones or on an iPad. As part of our work on Agent Based Models we are working on an exhibition space, below is the room layout:

Second up is an early prototype:

We are heading back to Unity in the next few months with an aim to create a complete exhibition space.

No. 2: Geography and Cities in Second Life

We used to have some land in Second Life as part of the Nature Publishing Groups presence. It allowed us to develop various urban, geographic and agent based models within the virtual environment.

The long term aim is to develop the techniques and move them into OpenSim, sadly all the above work is now lost in the ether….


No. 1: Step Inside Worlds

Number one is a look back at work before the days of Google Street View when the creation of panoramas was a work of art. Created from 36 photographs we took our panoramic images and put them into 3D space, allowing the camera to pan around the nodal point, our first example shows its age a bit but its still one of our favourites:

We developed the concept further with ‘step inside worlds’, allowing a series of panoramas to be embedded within a ‘holding’ scene and presents a looping movie suitable for large displays. The movie is just a concept but perhaps one that would work in a marketing suite or on display:

The clip was developed in 3D Max, but any 3D package would do, its simply a case of moving the camera around inside of spheres.

There are of course others, we have over 150 movies produced covering
all aspects of our work. We hope a few of them have provided some inspiration over the years or via our tutorials we have managed to show some useful tips and techniques.

The post Digital Urban: Top Five Favourites appeared first on Digital Urban.

Full post with movies after the break below:

No. 5: Growing the Tube Network

The clip was produced in 3D Max, purely as a way to explore the rapid creation of transport networks for visualisation. It was easy to make – simply import a PDF of a transport network into a package such as illustrator and save as .dwg. This allows you to import into 3D Max and then the lines can be converted to ‘tubes’ – the network can be built up in under an hours work. Making the stations and naming the lines took a little more time but the result is interesting. The render has been used on the cover of a couple of books, been hung on the walls in the London Transport Museum and is the subject of future development with real network flows.

No. 4: Reactor and Particles in the City

Number 4 is a slight cheat as it contains two movies, firstly Reactor:

Secondly, Particles:

The movies were produced as part of exploring how 3D Max can be used for agent based modelling, we wrote a Complete tutorial on Reactor and Bouncing Balls in the City. The work is currently being imported into the Unity engine as part of our work on NeISS. Talking of which:

No. 3: Unity

Unity is our current engine of choice, simply for its ease of use for importing models and producing quality output that can run either online, via iPhones or on an iPad. As part of our work on Agent Based Models we are working on an exhibition space, below is the room layout:

Second up is an early prototype:

We are heading back to Unity in the next few months with an aim to create a complete exhibition space.

No. 2: Geography and Cities in Second Life

We used to have some land in Second Life as part of the Nature Publishing Groups presence. It allowed us to develop various urban, geographic and agent based models within the virtual environment.

The long term aim is to develop the techniques and move them into OpenSim, sadly all the above work is now lost in the ether….


No. 1: Step Inside Worlds

Number one is a look back at work before the days of Google Street View when the creation of panoramas was a work of art. Created from 36 photographs we took our panoramic images and put them into 3D space, allowing the camera to pan around the nodal point, our first example shows its age a bit but its still one of our favourites:

We developed the concept further with ‘step inside worlds’, allowing a series of panoramas to be embedded within a ‘holding’ scene and presents a looping movie suitable for large displays. The movie is just a concept but perhaps one that would work in a marketing suite or on display:

The clip was developed in 3D Max, but any 3D package would do, its simply a case of moving the camera around inside of spheres.

There are of course others, we have over 150 movies produced covering
all aspects of our work. We hope a few of them have provided some inspiration over the years or via our tutorials we have managed to show some useful tips and techniques.

The post Digital Urban: Top Five Favourites appeared first on Digital Urban.

The post Best Of? appeared first on Digital Urban.

Hindsight is however a good thing as most of the worlds that showed potential in 1998 were lost when the web bubble burst, but if you think Second Life is new we think its just picking up the ideas from a decade ago.

Voice Chat

Second Life has just enabled voice chat within its virtual world browser, a system called Onlive integrated real-time voice-based communication in VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) environments. A screenshot of our use of Onlive is pictured below, note the Netscape icon in the toolbar to date the image:

To communicate the user was required to press the ctrl key on the keyboard and talk into a connected microphone. The user’s voice was then encoded and transmitted into the virtual environment using automatic voice synthesis and three-dimensional audio. The result was real-time conversation with lip synchronised avatars.

With the emphasis on lip synchronisation the avatars were represented as single floating heads which limited to some extent the level of perceived interaction with the environment. To be honest the three dimensional scenes were merely backdrops and the quality of the audio was often poor resulting in dropouts and confused conversations. Indeed, the most widely used phrase in Online was ‘pardon’, although at least in was in three-dimensional audio.

White Boards and Integrated Powerpoint

Integrating whiteboards and powerpoint presentations is a central part of Second Life, especially for its use by business and academic communities. Setting up a powerpoint presentation takes time and requires scripting, Holodesk however had it built in.

Holodesk was a VRML 2.0 based shared virtual environment from a Pittsburgh-based company called Telepresence. Voice chat was also built into the system but limited to two users at any one time compared to the multiple voice communication of Onlive. Notable additional features were the ability to communicate via shared whiteboards and views prepared graphic slide-based presentations within the virtual environment.

Pictured below is a section of our London work in Holodesk (we were experimenting with scale):

A key limitation of using VRML for multi-user worlds was the inability for any changes to the world to be saved. In essence a VRML world was a scene which although offering some level of interaction did not involve any level of collaboration.

Collaboration and Tool Box Building

If we had bet on any technology system becoming main stream it was the ActiveWorld’s browser, back in 1998 it did most of the things now possible in Second Life.

ActiveWorld’s was not by any means the first Virtual Worlds system but it, in our view, stands the test of time as one of the best. One needs to bare in mind that back in 1998 Internet technology was still developing and the ability to collaboratively build and share data in a three dimensional world where one is represented as an avatar was like viewing the future.

In addition to being able to build from a large subset of objects the ActiveWorlds server could import objects in .rwx or Renderware format. This opened up the world of architecture with a direct input path from AutoCad and 3DStudio Max.

If you take a look at The ARCH of note is the fact that one of the things architects and users in general are waiting for is the ability to import objects into Second Life from third party programs.

To discuss all things virtual the Avatars 98 Conference was held in ActiveWorlds, run by the Contact Consortium it provides a snapshot of the time:

We guess most of the users are now to be found somewhere in Second Life, of note though is how quick users can be to change to the next big system.

Internet hype arrives in waves of innovation, the current wave is Second Life, as for the next wave? Wasn’t there a rumour of a Google Virtual Environment last week?

The post Virtual Worlds Circa 1998: How Much Has Changed? appeared first on Digital Urban.

Hindsight is however a good thing as most of the worlds that showed potential in 1998 were lost when the web bubble burst, but if you think Second Life is new we think its just picking up the ideas from a decade ago.

Voice Chat

Second Life has just enabled voice chat within its virtual world browser, a system called Onlive integrated real-time voice-based communication in VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) environments. A screenshot of our use of Onlive is pictured below, note the Netscape icon in the toolbar to date the image:

To communicate the user was required to press the ctrl key on the keyboard and talk into a connected microphone. The user’s voice was then encoded and transmitted into the virtual environment using automatic voice synthesis and three-dimensional audio. The result was real-time conversation with lip synchronised avatars.

With the emphasis on lip synchronisation the avatars were represented as single floating heads which limited to some extent the level of perceived interaction with the environment. To be honest the three dimensional scenes were merely backdrops and the quality of the audio was often poor resulting in dropouts and confused conversations. Indeed, the most widely used phrase in Online was ‘pardon’, although at least in was in three-dimensional audio.

White Boards and Integrated Powerpoint

Integrating whiteboards and powerpoint presentations is a central part of Second Life, especially for its use by business and academic communities. Setting up a powerpoint presentation takes time and requires scripting, Holodesk however had it built in.

Holodesk was a VRML 2.0 based shared virtual environment from a Pittsburgh-based company called Telepresence. Voice chat was also built into the system but limited to two users at any one time compared to the multiple voice communication of Onlive. Notable additional features were the ability to communicate via shared whiteboards and views prepared graphic slide-based presentations within the virtual environment.

Pictured below is a section of our London work in Holodesk (we were experimenting with scale):

A key limitation of using VRML for multi-user worlds was the inability for any changes to the world to be saved. In essence a VRML world was a scene which although offering some level of interaction did not involve any level of collaboration.

Collaboration and Tool Box Building

If we had bet on any technology system becoming main stream it was the ActiveWorld’s browser, back in 1998 it did most of the things now possible in Second Life.

ActiveWorld’s was not by any means the first Virtual Worlds system but it, in our view, stands the test of time as one of the best. One needs to bare in mind that back in 1998 Internet technology was still developing and the ability to collaboratively build and share data in a three dimensional world where one is represented as an avatar was like viewing the future.

In addition to being able to build from a large subset of objects the ActiveWorlds server could import objects in .rwx or Renderware format. This opened up the world of architecture with a direct input path from AutoCad and 3DStudio Max.

If you take a look at The ARCH of note is the fact that one of the things architects and users in general are waiting for is the ability to import objects into Second Life from third party programs.

To discuss all things virtual the Avatars 98 Conference was held in ActiveWorlds, run by the Contact Consortium it provides a snapshot of the time:

We guess most of the users are now to be found somewhere in Second Life, of note though is how quick users can be to change to the next big system.

Internet hype arrives in waves of innovation, the current wave is Second Life, as for the next wave? Wasn’t there a rumour of a Google Virtual Environment last week?

The post Virtual Worlds Circa 1998: How Much Has Changed? appeared first on Digital Urban.

The main map is complete providing a top down view of the actual geographic location of the London Underground Network. At the moment we are working on ways to give it a alpha channel and overlay on Google Maps, a Google Earth version is also in the pipeline.

Embedded below is the iconic view of London rendered at 10000×5000 pixels and displayed via Google Maps using our Google Image Cutter Software:

Double click to zoom in or use the slider bar and drag to pan:

You can also view this full screen (recommended).

If people would be interested as using this as wallpaper then let us know and we’ll render out various resolutions..

The post Iconic London Image – Geographic London Underground and 3D Buildings Update appeared first on Digital Urban.

The main map is complete providing a top down view of the actual geographic location of the London Underground Network. At the moment we are working on ways to give it a alpha channel and overlay on Google Maps, a Google Earth version is also in the pipeline.

Embedded below is the iconic view of London rendered at 10000×5000 pixels and displayed via Google Maps using our Google Image Cutter Software:

Double click to zoom in or use the slider bar and drag to pan:

You can also view this full screen (recommended).

If people would be interested as using this as wallpaper then let us know and we’ll render out various resolutions..

The post Iconic London Image – Geographic London Underground and 3D Buildings Update appeared first on Digital Urban.

The post Tutorial – Quick and Easy Augmented Reality from SketchUp/3DMax etc appeared first on Digital Urban.

The post Tutorial – Quick and Easy Augmented Reality from SketchUp/3DMax etc appeared first on Digital Urban.

Peter Murphy (one of the leading lights in the panoramic world) sent us a email on Monday with the thought of creating panoramas from a Digital Earth. The concept is simple – grab a series of screen shots while rotating above the earth and then stitch the images as if they were normal photographs.

A day is a long time in Internet based tutorials and this is now an update of the original as a result of Gaby, a digital urban reader, writing a kmz tool to dramatically simplify the process of capturing screen shots. The whole process should take approximately 40 minutes.

The first step is to go to Gabys Kmz Panorama Capture Tool and type in the Lat/Long of the location you want to capture – in our case above the Millennium Dome in London.

To create panoramas it is important to rotate the camera around the nodal point of the lens in order to minimise any parallax error as the scene is captured. Previous to Gaby’s tool the best way was to use the ‘Flight Simulator Mode’ by clicking ‘Ctrl-G’. Combining this with a ‘left mouse click and drag’ action you can look around the scene and thus simulate a panoramic camera.

You can now simply load up the kmz file which is output from your Lat/Long co-ordinates and a series of placemarks are presented in the Google Earth, each representing camera locations. Select each placemark and wait for the streaming in Google Earth to reach 100%, now use File – ‘Save Image’ and call your image image1.jpg. Go through this for each placemark and you should end up with 28 images, each saved in sequence – ie image 1.jpg to image 29.jpg.

Once you have your numbered screengrabs you now need to stitch them, we used Stitcher from RealViz, you can download a trial version from the RealViz website. If you are a PTGui user we have created a Template to automatically stitch your images. Download the Template and follow these steps:

1) Open PTGui and click Select Source Images – Navigate to where you saved your screengrabs and select all of them.

2) A Camera Lens Dialoge will appear, simply click ‘Cancel’. Your images will then load into PTGui.

3) Click File ‘Apply Template’ and select the location of the GoogleEarthTemplate.pts saved from above.

Your images will now automatically align, you can now complete the process by selecting the ‘Advanced’ button in the top right hand side of PTGui and then ‘Create Panorama’. Save your panorama as a Tif, we normally output at 6000×3000 pixels. Advanced users of PTGui can add their own Control Points and stitch as normal, lens parameters should be 30mm Rectilinear.

To stitch the images you can also use the AutoStitch feature of RealViz to simply load in the images and automatically create a panorama. It should be noted that the curve of the earth will not stitch perfectly due to parallax error resulting from the Flight Simulator mode of Google Earth, the image left illustrates this (click for a larger version).

Fixing the parallax’s error is simply a case of slightly cropping off the top of the resulting panorama to give us the image as below, this applies to both PTGui and Realviz Stitcher outputs:

As Google Earth doesn’t include clouds we can now add them in as a new layer in photoshop. We used a panoramic image of clouds from TurboSquid, these used to be free but are now $5 each. If you don’t have a cloud panorama then you can always create your own using Terragen, there is a great tutorial on how to do this here.

Adding the clouds gives you the final panorama over London (click for a larger view) :

Changing the projection of the resulting image allows a number of views such a hyperbolic image of London from Google Earth:

Finally to create a Quicktime Virtual Reality scene from the image – so you can look around the panorama – download Pano2QTVR.

The resulting QTVR can be viewed here (2.8Mb).

Of note in the final scene is how the Google copyright crops up in various places in the image. This is due to each screengrab containing the Google overlay and depending on the overlaps some are automatically blended out in RealViz and some remain… *update – using PTGui all copyright seems to be removed, this opens up the question on the legality of creating panoramas? *

Peter has used NASA’s Worldwind to the same effect, see here for his panorama of the Southern Highlands (Quicktime format).

If you create any panoramas using Google Earth we would love to hear from you…

Panoramas submitted so far cover
London, New York, Moscow, Belgium, Paris and Sydney.

The post How to Create an Aerial Panorama from Google Earth appeared first on Digital Urban.