Hope everyone had a good holiday and New Years break, we are just settling back in here at the lab so for a quick morning post take a look below at the tilt-shift movie of Barcelona by joja:


Tilt-Shift Barcelona from joja on Vimeo.

The clip covers 9 minutes consisting of 1884 photographs - that's 198 images a minute.

We do like these tilt-shift city images, soon as time allows we will feature some of London along with the obligatory 'How-To'.

Its good to be back....

Its that time of year again and we going to be taking a few days off from blogging. Its been a busy 12 months with the blog reaching over 1000 posts and heading towards 3000 subscribers. As such we would like to take this chance to wish all of our readers a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Over the holiday period we will be blogging on and off but for at least the next few days its time to kick back, pour a glass or two of wine and enjoy a bit of time out of the city.

Happy Christmas from digital urban....

Visualising geographic information above and beyond the normal export from your favorite GIS package is often left as a mere after thought. We are just starting to look into using Adobe After Effects to liven up a slightly dry dataset - UK Population represented as a point per 200 people.

Its early days and we were unsure to publish this one or not but that's what a blog is all about so below is our first go at After Effects using lights to get across a picture of Britain's population:


Visualising Data: UK Population One Light per 200 People from digitalurban on Vimeo.

Add in some camera tracking, smooth out the moment, provide some labels beyond the standard iMovie fare and we might be onto something... (?) - The movie is best viewed fullscreen.

The slightly misjudged music is by a rather good unsigned band - Lemonade Joe.

We have always been big fans of augmented reality here at digital urban, simply because it is so easy to set up yet a very impressive and powerful visualisation technique. As such the ability to export direct from Google SketchUp via the new plugin ARplug-in from the Development Lab of Inglobe Technologies, into a physical space has huge potential - see the movie below:



All you need to make ARplug-in work is a personal computer, a webcam and a printed code attached to the software.

For optimal functionality, a Dual-core PC with a standard graphic card for 3D videogames are recommended, see AR-media for full details and download.

A free demo version is available with the full version coming in at 99 euros.

We have been oddly quiet on the blog about the CityEngine, mainly due to a slight melt down in the lab of our windows machines. As such we are overjoyed by the release of the CityEngine for the Mac by Procedural Inc.

Featured below is a city based on the Apple Logo:



The CityEngine is one of the most powerful tools currently available for the creation of urban environments. Of note is its ability to import OpenStreet map data allowing a 3D road network to be quickly and easily developed.

The movie below illustrates the construction of a fantasy city:



Finally below illustrates the rebuilding of Rome:



We hope to set aside a few days in the new year to take a close look at the CityEngine - you can download a 30 day demo direct from Procedual.

GPS tracks can show the 'life' of a city, which parts of the city are working, areas that are no go zones and sections dedicated to shopping, work, entertainment etc. The possibilities for using GPS data to examine our cities 'health' are intriguing which turns us to the work by Fabian over at http://urbantick.blogspot.com/

The movie below illustrates Fabian's paths around the city of Plymouth over 365 days, compressed and visualised in Google Earth:


plymouth365_24H_duration from urbanTick on Vimeo.

Google Earth is an excellent tool for displaying GPS data, especially over time, we are just starting to look into other options, perhaps After Effects - any thoughts or ideas for visualising GPS tracks over time would be great...

See http://urbantick.blogspot.com/ for more movies and examples on visualising GPS tracks in the city.

As regular readers will know we have a bit of a 'thing' with timelapses, they provide an excellent way to capture the life of the cityscape over time. As such the movie below is of particular interest.

Entitled 'Spacelapse' the movie takes a 24hour timelapse sequence of a group of shops and splits up the scene by adjusting the time for each shop. By speeding up and slowing down each shops speed of timelapse the viewer has an opportunity to see the street as a series of components each with its own time according to its use.



The movie has been shown internationally and on British terrestrial networks, take a look at Dr Chris Speed's site for more on the timelapse and some other really neat projects...

See our previous tutorial on how to make your own outdoor timelapse rig.

Designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, 56 Leonard Street is a 796ft (243m) tall skyscraper currently under construction in New York. Described by the architects as 'houses stacked in the sky' the visualisation below ticks all the boxes - nice soundtrack, use of raytraced panoramic globes (a must...) and fly in sections combining into the final structure:


56 Leonard Street from yuta.iguchi on Vimeo.

The visualisation was produced by Tronic and the video was uploaded to Vimeo by yuta.iguchi.

The Blizzards - The Reason from Wyld Stallyons on Vimeo.

In a return to looking at 3D renderings of cities above is the video for Irish indie outfit, The Blizzards' new single - The Reason.

Commissioned by Universal Music commissioned and produced by the 'Wyld Stallyons' in their own worlds the development process is laid out below:

Taking the lyrics as our inspiration, we took the germ of an idea from the singer of the band and combined it with some thoughts of our own about unrequited love and giant monsters destroying a city. We blended 3D and 2D animation to create a strange, monochromatic world for our characters to inhabit; and thanks to the power of Relentless energy drinks and our ability to go without sleep for days, the video was turned around in record time.

See Wyld Stallyons on Vimeo for more and http://www.theblizzards.ie/ for more info on The Blizzards.

Nice Clean White from DaBrainkilla on Vimeo.

Sometimes its nice to take a break from the 3D renderings that we usually feature here on digital urban. The music video above entitled 'Nice Clean White' is an abstract journey in our everyday surroundings, illustrating moments of life in a continuous way.

The clip contains 4500 still photographs where urban landscapes meet pastoral scenes to create a whirlpool around the theme of the video: the subjective point of view and urban life.

Created with a stop motion technique, it was conceived with a very simple Nikon Coolpix E4600. The clip is video free, created entirely from still photos taken in the streets of Nancy and Epinal in France.

See the main video page on Vimeo by DaBrainkilla for more info.

Ultimately designers aim is to achieve an integrated environment where - during the design process, including the early stages – the designer can generate a three-dimensional geometrical design, set up inter-related analysis and optimisation routines and receive meaningful feedback in realtime.

The movie below by ARUP is slightly 'dry' but it is worth a look as the concept is actually quite innovative:


3D Urbanism: multidisciplinary Realtime quantitative simulation from alvise on Vimeo.

3D Urbanism is a research project from ARUP aiming at bringing discreet quantitative analytical solutions (urban design, moving vehicles, moving people, acoustics, lighting and climate) into a unified Realtime interactive environment to demonstrate performance based design to designer, client and city planner....

We don't have much information on this one, apart from we like the pace and the animation of the urban visualisation. The movie depicts 174 hectares of urban planning at north Ha Dong City, Vietnam:


Duong Noi Newurban from Tuan Dinh on Vimeo.

See http://www.vimeo.com/vnimation for more movies on the development.

Softmirage 3D Animation Demo Reel v4.0 from softmirage on Vimeo.

The movie above comes from Softmirage a visual communications company located in Orange County, California. The company focuses on the architectural, construction, real estate, and urban planning community visualisation.

See http://www.softmirage.com/ for more examples...

Connected Home from MIT Mobile Experience Lab on Vimeo.

The visualisation above comes out of MIT's Mobile Experience Lab in collaboration with Cisco Systems - Internet Business Solutions Group.

The Connected Home of the future, according to the lab, will incorporate an integrated approach to buildings and their interaction with occupants, the local community, and beyond. The demonstration above of the Connected Home of the future incorporates smart energy solutions, automated services and efficiency measures to aid citizens lead more sustainable lives.

Technologies such as a Personal Travel Assistant, energy monitoring tools, TelePresence and social networking interactions, and energy grids for micro generation of energy across the urban community illustrate how citizens can play a positive and sustainable role in their urban landscape.

For more information see mobile.mit.edu/connected-urban-development/ and
connectedurbandevelopment.org

Urban Engine - live demo of 3D real-time in action from Urban Circus on Vimeo.

Embedded above is a real-time look at the Urban Engine presented by Dr Ben Guy, Director of Urban Circus.

The engine seems impressive, especially in terms of transport visualisation, below is an example of using the engine to visualise a proposed transit station in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast of Australia:


Bus Rapid Transport - Broadbeach from Urban Circus on Vimeo.

The ability to fly real-time through a scene is without question one of the most important aspects of city models for urban planning / architectural visualisation when aiming to communicate 'non fixed' design decisions. Highly rendered fly through movies can often alienate the public at large as it seems as if planning decisions have already been taken, leaving the renderings to come across as sometimes little more than marketing movies.

Take a look at http://www.circus3d.com/ for more info.

Crysis LEGO map from Robert Tieber on Vimeo.
The Crysis engine has an inbuilt physics system that supports vehicles, rigid bodies, liquid, rag doll, cloth and soft body effects. The movies in this post provide a glimpse of the physics engine in action, the first clip above demonstrates the 'Lego' modification running in real-time.

The following movies illustrate the use of the physics engine of Crysis in maximum effect. Note each one was rendered frame by frame using the 'linked method', take a look at this thread for full details.


Crysis Mass Physics HD By ÂLÐÒ•Ó from Ald0o0 on Vimeo.

Continuing the theme:


Crysis Mass Physics HD VOL II By ÂLÐÒ•Ó from Ald0o0 on Vimeo.


Crysis Mass Physics HD VOL III By ÂLÐÒ•Ó from Ald0o0 on Vimeo.

Finally applying the technique to buildings:


Readers may recall our work earlier work in Crysis, a change of deadlines stalled the earlier work somewhat but we will be returning to Crysis in terms of physics, agents and urban modelling in the coming months...

Over the past few weeks we have been writing about Tilt Shift photography used to create fake 'model like' images of the city. As such we were delighted by the book and blog 'Little People In The City'.

Produced by the photographer Slinkachu the book depicts scenes of model people going about their everyday lives in the real city. Ranging from fending for themselves on the mean streets to simply using the cash machine the work is both innovative and charming.

The book is available via Amazon, normally priced at £10 it is currently online at £6.00 and as such is a must buy.

Take a look at http://www.slinkachu.com/ for more info and also the blog http://little-people.blogspot.com/

Thanks go to Fabian from http://urbantick.blogspot.com/ (the latest blog out of CASA, home of digital urban) for putting the book on my desk...

Its a brilliant idea, now if you could merge fake tilt shift with actual little people......

Amsterdam SMS messages on New Years Eve from Aaron on Vimeo.

The video above captures the number of SMS messages sent from Amsterdam in the run up to New Years Eve. With data supplied by KPN Telcom you can see the city almost breath over time with a huge peak at the cross over to New Years Day.

See the inspirational http://senseable.mit.edu/ for more info.

Trondheim 3D demo in HD from Morten Jacobsen on Vimeo.

The movie above illustrates a preview of 3D Trondhiem in Norway, produced by C3.

The modelling process is automated, with the textures and mesh produced purely from imagery and not from the more traditional LiDAR approach. C3 are defiantly a company to watch out for in terms of 3D city models.

See http://kart.sesam.no/3d/ for a 3D flythough (Windows only at the moment) and http://www.c3technologies.com for more info.

CASA (home of digital urban) is hosting a two day workshop on the 8th and 9th January 2009 in London: the first day of the event is designed to showcase CASA's use of new technologies for mapping and visualizing information about cities. The second day entails technical workshops, designed primarily for members of the S4 European Spatial Analysis network, but all are welcome, the focus of the second day is agent based modelling. We will be talking through the latest 3D techniques as recently featured on the blog...

Click here to see the full program and details about registration .