Featured Archives - Digital Urban

CASA Cubes in the City

Andy — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:07:50 +0000

As part of a future ‘Easter’ themed promotion we have produced a short teaser clip around ‘cubes in the city’.

The movie was produced using ESRI City Engine, 3D Max and Lumion – it is also being used as part of our Masters course on Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation to demonstrate how simulation (MassFX) can be combined with procedural city creation and rapid visualisation…

Lumion has a few issues with lighting – there are some errors in the movie above – however for work created and rendered in under 3 hours its worth living with…

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Datascape – New 3D Dataviz tool from Daden

Andy — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:24:59 +0000

This is intriguing, a new 3D package to map and explore data – Datascape, by Daden Ltd, known perviously for their work in Second Life, provides an immersive environment in which users can explore and interact with data from almost any source.
David Burden, Daden’s Managing Director said “Datascape is ground-breaking and we’re expecting visualisations that tell a story and show how the additional power of immersion can lead to better understanding and communication”
The movie below provides an insight into the possibilities:

DATASCAPE – A VIRTUAL WORLD FOR YOUR DATA from DadenMedia on Vimeo.
Key Features
Datascape can be delivered as a standalone desktop application, or as a networked or internet delivered multi-user system. Using Datascape you can:

Import data from a wide variety of data sources, with native support for Excel, CVS and SQL and access to XML, JSON and other through ETL tools such as Kettle
Import data from web services such as RSS, Twitter and other feeds and real-time data
Visualise up to 65,000 entities at a time
Dynamically map and re-map data parameters onto plot features – with up to 10 features being available per plot point
Plot multiple datasets in the same subjective space
Filter, group, and highlight data
Use force-graph algorithms to plot network graphs
Plot geospatial and temporal data with time-on-a-stick
Save spaces for later analysis, or share them with other users, with over a dozen users being able to collaborate in the same space, each visible to each other
Animate data in time or space
“Scrub” data through a dynamic filter window

There is a free version available (limited to 2000 data points) linked to Dadens’ recently announced data visualisation competition. The competition is open to individuals, academics and commercial users with the winning entries being featured on Daden’s website and in a supporting press release. All submissions must be received by 17:00 GMT on 12 November 2012, via the Daden Website . Winners will be announced on 1 Dec 2012. Competition rules and entry details can be found on the website.

Read more about Datascape over at the Daden site

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Pigeon Sim: Fly Round London as a Pigeon

Andy — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:21:30 +0000

Researchers here in CASA, University College London, from the TALISMAN node of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) are working on urban simulations and procedural modelling. As part of the public outreach side of the work, they have created a Pigeon Simulator where you can fly like a pigeon exploring different parts of London.

The simulator uses Microsoft Kinect sensor which tracks body movement and gestures and converts them into movements through Google Earth 3D web plugin – see the movie below for how to fly the PigeonSim:

The aim of the work is to use innovative new methods to communicate the city as a data feed, with live feeds powered by CASA’s CityDashboard visualised in Google Earth.
A nod and a flap goes to http://mackerron.com/home/ who is an honorary RA in CASA…

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Getting Started with Simulations in 3D Max – Greeble and MassFX

Andy — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:36:17 +0000

The latest in the digital urban tutorial series is available as a downloadable .PDF, it looks at exploring applications for physics engines in urban modelling, the first step of which is a series of techniques to introduce gravity and mass to urban models.
We produced a tutorial back in 2009 using ‘Reactor’, Autodesk no longer use this engine and have now moved onto MassFX. MassFX adds a number of new options and tweaks to the simulation which took some time to work out. The concept however is the same, create a city using ‘Greeble’ and drop 200+ balls into the urban realm, using Lumion is it possible to view the simulation in realtime:

Music by Portoponte

The tutorial covers a number of steps in 3D Max to allow export into Lumion, creating the movie above.
Download the tutorial as a .PDF: Greeble and MassFX Tutorial (7.8Mb)
View all tutorials

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We have a new look

Andy — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 13:43:48 +0000

We have a new look at digitalurban, at the moment its very much in its beta phase with the move away from blogger and into wordpress. The move allows us to set up a range of new features and portfolio type pages, for example if you click on ‘tutorials’ or any of the scrolling images on the front page you will be taken to a new gallery style layout for themed posts. With over 1800 posts over the years this will allow us to group them in sections and upload featured themes over the coming months.
As ever with the redesigns over the years we value your comments – let us know what you think and if you have any requests for other features, for example would an online forum be useful?
Its been great over at blogger but its time to move on and grow, so we hope you like the new look and the move to wordpress.
The move is now almost complete, we are live at digitalurban.org

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ESRI CityEngine, Lumion, and SketchUp – The Ultimate City Toolkit?

Andy — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:17:00 +0000

Over the last few weeks we have been looking at ESRI’s CityEngine and how it can be used to create rapid urban scenes. As we noted it moves GIS visualisation a step forward while at the same time bringing procedural city modelling into the mainstream game engine world. Of course th
e heart of the CityEngine is the ability to import real world data but to get to grips with the interface it is sometimes easier to look at creating urban scenes from simple procedural rules.

As part of the MRes in Advanced in Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA we have been looking at various techniques to visualise urban data. One such technique is the creation of a 3D exhibition space, allowing agent based models and urban data to be visualised within an architectural space.

Music by
Portoponte

The movie above combines the use of CityEngine in Lumion with SketchUp and 3DMax to insert an exhibition space into a city while burning the CASA logo into the street network. CityEngine is a notable step forward for ESRI, both in terms of visualisation and analysis, linking it with Lumion and SketchUp allows it to be taken even further, towards the ultimate city creation toolkit…

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A Minecraft Town in 30 Minutes

Andy — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:16:31 +0000

Minecraft is a sandbox construction game involving players creating and destroying various types of blocks in a three dimensional environment. The player takes an avatar that can destroy or create blocks, forming fantastic structures, creations and artwork across the various multiplayer servers in multiple game modes.
As such it is a hotbed of virtual cities and towns which when stepped back from has notable potential for data visualisation, community planning and even public GIS. The movie below is a neat time-lapse detailing how to build a town in 30 minutes:

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