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 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…

The post Tutorial: Reactor – 3D Max, Bouncing Balls in a 3D City appeared first on Digital Urban.