SU Animate 3.0 for Google SketchUp released fom Cadalog, Inc. 7/30/2009

Cadalog, Inc. has released SU Animate 3.0 for Google SketchUp 6 and 7. This is a Ruby based plug-in that automatically creates SketchUp scenes from camera and object paths. SU Animate simplifies the process of creating SketchUp animations.

New to SU Animate 3.0 is a polyline edit tool which allows the user to create animation paths using a unique polyline tool instead of joining several lines and arcs together. 3.0 also allows the user to preview an animation before committing to scene creation. In version 3.0, the UI has been updated allowing the user to apply any number of frames to a path, uniformly.

Upgrade to SU Animate 3.0 for existing SU Animate customers is free. SU Animate works in Google SketchUp, Free or Pro, Windows or Mac. Cost is $79.00 (USD). For more detailed information including download of a free evaluation version, please go to http://www.ohyeahcad.com/suanimate/

Via sketchup plugin

Creating Panoramas in SketchUp and Pano2VR

Tutorial on how to create panoramas in Sketchup can be found HERE

Building Rome in a Day: A 3D City via Flickr

With the recent rise in popularity of Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr and Google Images, community photo collections (CPCs) have emerged as a powerful new type of image dataset for computer vision and computer graphics research. With billions of such photos now online, these collections should enable huge opportunities in 3D, visualization, image-based rendering, recognition, and other research areas. The Graphics and Imaging Laboratory of the University of Washington's Department of Computer Science and Engineering are at the cutting edge of research based around crowd sourced imagery and 3D modelling.

In their project 'Bulding Rome in a Day' the group considered the problem of reconstructing entire cities from images harvested from the web. The aim is to build a parallel distributed system that downloads all the images associated with a city from Flickr.com. After downloading, it matches these images to find common points and uses this information to compute the three dimensional structure of the city and the pose of the cameras that captured these images. All this to be done in a day.

The movie below details thier sample work using 58,000 images of Dubrovnik sourced from Flickr:

If you do anything today check out their Building Rome in a Day page for further movies and details.

Via Digital Urban

3D Architectural Renderings

Great article on The purpose of architectural renderings and what's involved in the process:

While architectural renderings have been around for many centuries, computer-generated 3d architectural renderings is a relatively new field still in its infancy. If you do an Internet search for 'architectural renderings', you could easily pull up a hundred thousand results on the topic. The sheer number of results can be overwhelming. In this article, I will try to answer some of the most common questions regarding this field as well help people's understanding of this process and art form.

Contents

• My Background
• Who Does This Work?
• Who Purchases Architectural Renderings?
• How Do You Learn 3D Architectural Renderings?
• What Programs are Involved?
• Differences in 3D Programs and Overall Image Quality
• Operating Costs for Artists and Rendering Company Owners
• Architectural Rendering Costs
• A LunarStudio 3d Animation
• Outsourcing Graphics and Architectural Rendering Work
• The Future of 3D Architectural Rendering

Read the full article HERE

Sketch Worlds: 3D Max and SketchUp Virtual Worlds for Architectural Visualization

SketchWorlds, based on RealXtend, is unique - a virtual world with architectural and property based visualisation at the heart of the system.

Of note is the ability to import direct from 3DMax and SketchUp allowing for quick and easy modelling within a virtual environment, something that is almost impossible with any degree of detail in other systems such as Second Life.

The movie below details the in-world editor, note the dynamic lighting:

As regular readers will know we have a bit of thing with HDR, SketchWorlds allows real time HDR rendering:

Take a look at http://sketchworlds.com/ for full details, from a first look it seems promising.

Via Digital Urban

LET ME LIVE: architecture final project by Nir levie and Tomer dikerman

Tel Aviv University

Kiefer Technic Showroom: Architecture

In earlier times, façades were characterised by window arrangements and axes. They often featured surface relief with architectural elements from the relevant period or style. The structure of the façade also determined the ground plan; the greater the number of window axes in a room, the more important the function of the user.

Not long ago office buildings had a clear structure and the number of axes was predetermined - e.g. how many for a director or high-ranking counsellor and how many for a mere civil servant.
With the introduction of window strips, these hierarchies were abandoned. Today it is possible that the complete exterior façade is transparent, and this very transparency indicates a modern character. At the same time, individual requirements escalate and need to be reconciled with the desire for comfort.



For this reason dynamic façades has been developed which can be adapted individually to changing conditions and needs. Of course they can also be controlled by optimising programs if users are not present in the rooms behind. Thus it is possible to realise these new transparent façades and yet still maintain a cosy atmosphere in the rooms.

These façades change continuously; each day, each hour shows a new “face” - the façade is turning into a dynamic sculpture.

Below is a video demonstrating the facade transformations:
  

Kiefer Technic Showroom,Bad Gleichenberg,Austria by Giselbrecht + Partners

Via e-architect

Ron Arad: No Discipline Preview

Israeli-born British designer and architect Ron Arad has made a name for himself pushing the boundaries of forms and materials, so it comes at no surprise that the installation devised for Arad’s upcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is a shape-shifting work of its own.

Named the Cage sans Frontières (Cage without Borders), Arad’s creation for the exhibition, titled Ron Arad: No Discipline, is a 126-foot-long, 16-feet-tall corten-and-stainless-steel structure that holds the majority of the 140 works to be exhibited in its 240 square cutouts. The stainless steel-lined cubes that hold the works reflect and ricochet the objects' shapes along the inside of one side of the Cage, which spans the entire length of the museum’s International Council gallery, while the other side is covered in a gray gauze fabric and only reveals silhouettes of the displayed pieces.

The first major retrospective in the United States of Arad’s work, the exhibition spans Arad’s career from his early Rover Chair and Concrete Stereo of the 1980s through his more recent works, like the text message-displaying Lolita chandelier and Southern Hemisphere chair. The exhibition opens August 2 for a brief two and a half months. To view an in-depth slideshow of renderings of Cage sans Frontières, sketches of Arad's iconic pieces, and objects that will be on display, click the yellow "Slideshow" button at the top right-hand corner of this post.

Via Dwell

3D projection on German building created by UrbanScreen

This is probably the most elaborate 3D projection on architecture that I have ever seen. You don’t have to believe me, watch the video called“How it would be, if a house was dreaming” and say your opinion. The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself. This was produced by Urbanscreen – Art Direction : Danier Rossa

Via freshome

HDR workflows (overview of options)

Nice Video showing the different ways bracketed shots can be used to create HDR images and the importance of saving a .HDR file as a digital negative.

Via hdriblog.com

Pachube: Realtime Sensor Data Linked to SketchUp

Pachube is a web service available at http://www.pachube.com that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world.

The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual. If you have not heard of Pachube before it is well worth taking a look at their site and the exploring the concept which is a little bit like YouTube, except that, rather than sharing videos, Pachube enables people to monitor and share real time environmental data from sensors that are connected to the internet.

The linkages can now be visualised via SketchUp, the incoming data can be used to generate or modulate a 3D model of a building or environment, and enables sophisticated design-decisions that are based on actual (and not simulated) sensor and environment data. Possible uses include designing interactive façades, undertaking post-occupancy evaluation (which is where you evaluate how well the design performs) and sensor-based form generation.

Video below shows a demonstration of the plugin for sketchup. It shows real-time water, gas and energy usage from a building management system being graphed on top of a model of the building. Although in this demo the data is merely driving simple scalar transformations to visualize energy usage, the real potential of the plug-in is to serve Pachube data to real-world design tools to directly inform design decisions in a much more sophisticated way.

Download the plug-in and see the tutorial here: http://community.pachube.com/sketchup

Via Digital Urban

Samsung reveals the world’s thinnest watchphone

Samsung has unveiled a watch phone of its own which is not only one of the 'only' watch-phones that we have seen but also the thinnest one of all.

Its only 11.98mm thick and has a 1.76-inch scratchless touchscreen display, which makes it considerably useful on a day-to-day basis.

As for the other usual features, it boasts of a 40Mb of memory, a speakerphone, music player, Bluetooth, voice recognition and Email with Outlook sync support making it one of the most tiny and useful accessories of today's age.

It will be hitting the market in France this month at a price of 450 Euros.

Via Sizlopedia

STEMcloud v2.0 / ecoLogicStudio

Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, founders of ecoLogicStudio at the Beyond Media Festival in Florence, talked about one of their latest projects, the STEMcloud v2.0:

As is a really new and avant-garde vision about parametric and genetic architecture and the way that human interaction can bring new life to architecture projects:

The STEMcloud v2.0 project proposes the development and testing of an architectural prototype operating as an oxygen making machine. The project has been presented and designed for the SEVILLE ART and ARCHITECTURAL BIENNALE 2008.

STEMcloud v2.0 technological matrix will operate as a breeding ground for micro-ecologies found in the local river of Seville, the Guadalquivir, and will involve the public in the breeding process. The transparency and porosity of the architectural system allows the process to be visually and materially exposed and interfere with the microclimate of the gallery; the public will feed the colonies present in the river water with nutrients, light and CO2 and as a result oxygenate the gallery space; the growth process will be triggered by patterns of interaction with the public and in turn will affects these patterns with its visual effects. Multiple feedback cycles are provoked within the components of the system, with the gallery environment and within the city itself.

This extended model of systemic architecture can be framed and understood in cybernetic terms as a multilayer crossing of feedback loops; cybernetics provides an operational framework to deal with change and transformation, the two main defining qualities of our new ecologic understanding of architecture; the starting point of the experiment is artificially defined by us and provides what scientist call a primed condition necessary to promote interaction.

Read more

Via archdaily

Video on how to shoot an HDR photo by Stuck in Customs

Below is a video which shows how Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs takes an HDR photo of a scene in Yellowstone:


This video does not talk about the software process. For more on that, you can visit the HDR Tutorial.

New YouTube Channel on Ecotect

Ideate, a leading Autodesk reseller in the Pacific Northwest has started an Ecotect Channel on YouTube. So far there are these two tutorials on weather files and artificial lighting. Stay tuned for more … If you are new to Ecotect I recomend seeing the Ecotect overview presentation done by Ideate or check out Practical Sustainable Design Workflows with Ecotect and Revit at the Autodesk University Classes (sign up required)

In-Revit Solar Simulation Tool available

This is an exciting though expected development that the technology behind Ecotect will eventually be integrated right into Autdesk’s core BIM application Revit. Let’s hope this is the first of many integrated building performance tools.

Use this Solar Radiation Technology Preview to analyze the effects of solar radiation on various surfaces of your conceptual building model. The add-in uses conceptual massing elements from Revit models and the Autodesk Ecotect insolation analysis engine to calculate the amount of solar radiation hitting the surfaces of the massing shapes. This add-in works with Revit Architecture 2010 Update Release 1 and Revit MEP 2010 Update Release 1.
Go to Autodesk Labs to download the add-in. The archive includes a PDF “getting started” guide.

See this video for an overview.

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SketchUp goes to the Moon!

With the launch of Moon in Google Earth today, you can now explore our nearest celestial neighbor from within Google Earth. Beginning in 1959, we began to send probes and landers to the lunar surface, and most of them remain there to this day.

Many of these objects have been modeled in Google SketchUp, and are based on drawings, photographs, and dimensions. One model that has a prolific presence on the Moon comes from Google 3D Warehouse model contributor, Pagan. This user modeled the Apollo Lunar Module and it is featured at each of the Apollo mission landing sites, as well as in the guided tours.

To view these models in Google Earth, first switch to Moon via the planetary drop-down menu at the top of the screen.


Next, expand the "Moon Gallery" in the left Layers panel.

From here you can virtually visit a variety of artifacts, spacecrafts, and mission landing sites by double-clicking on any of the models listed. Here are some examples of what you can find:

Apollo 11 Landing Site

Lunokhod 1 and Luna 17

Lunar Rover

You can also view these models in SketchUp by downloading them from our Moon Objects collection in the Google 3D Warehouse. Happy exploring!

Via Google

Smart Render Graphics, the real interactive image file format.

With Smart Render Graphic plug-in for 3ds Max you can generate interactive SRG files. Unlike other raster file formats available in the market such as JPG, BMP, PNG and GIF formats, SRG images allows you to have the following features:

Hot spots, multi-materials, hyperlinks, data fields, and much more.

Click HERE to Read More

To download the plugin click HERE or visit the site

Creative Clothing made from Condoms

We’ve heard of protective gear, but this is ridiculous! Or is it? With creative clothing made from condoms popping up all over the internet in such versatile and surprisingly beautiful styles, we have to wonder - could condom garments be an innovative new eco-fashion trend? And would you actually be willing to wear prophylactic couture?






Read More at Inhabitat

ResoNet

Designed by Mark Francis Tynan & William Hailiang Chen, ResoNet visualises the resonant frequencies inherent in the natural environment, via the interaction of the public and surrounding elements detected by a LED net. By using Low-Fi techniques ResoNet creates a cascade of light triggered by the vibrations detected across the structure.

ResoNet’s tensile web structure is stretched across a space, like a spider web. A series of vibration sensors & LED circuit components are fixed at key intersections on the tensile network, to detect minute vibrations as a result of human and natural activity.

Be it a brush of a hand, or a passing breeze, the energy is converted into light that resonates across the structure, immersing the public in a cascading visual of flashing LED’s

Via Interactive Architecture

Genuine Fractals Review

Genuine Fractals is a great product that allows you to dramatically increase the size of your image. This comes in handy for all sorts of situations, including detail enhancement, printing big prints, post-processing, and advanced cropping.

Click HERE for the Review



Via Stuck in Customs