The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
Creating a sandbox style traffic system in Unity is a challenge. As our previous posts have shown agents can use NavMesh and calculate shortest paths but the hit is high on processing which in turn limits the number of agents in a scene. Sander van der Vegte is a multidisciplinary game developer who…
Continue reading »The natural conclusion of our recent posts on Unity and CityEngine is of course a physics/navmesh police chase with the agent target being a drag and drop ball. We will release a version next week on the win/mac platforms for those interested – the aim was to explore shortest path…
Continue reading »CityEngine combined with Unity and a tablet – iOS requires a developers account, Android simple needs the 30 days Unity trial – allows city wide models to run with a touch based interface. We have used our recent work on Unity and Agent Based modelling to create a simple app…
Continue reading »The Vuforia AR Extension for Unity allows developers to build AR apps using the cross-platform game engine – Unity. Working with both the free and pro versions of Unity, Vuforia is not only free it is also one of the best out there in terms of tracking and image based tagging. Running…
Continue reading »Combining simple agent based models with physics objects and rendering techniques in a game engine has potential for city wide 3D urban modelling. Traditional techniques often use JAVA based solutions or custom written toolkits with researchers developing their own models. With recent advances in procedural modelling and game engine technology,…
Continue reading »Shortest path network analysis, pedestrian modelling and moving agents around complex city scenes has always been a specialised domain. As regular readers will know we have always taken the view that game engines are arguably better suited to agent based modelling – especially in terms of pedestrian and transport than…
Continue reading »One of the questions in modelling a ‘living city’ is how to combine aspects of agent based modelling for crowds, traffic simulation and 3D cities without a work flow that takes weeks and a high end graphics house. Using the intriguing P5 to Max script it is possible to control…
Continue reading »Flying Cities is a concept animation by Stefan Haberkorn – it is one of the best uses of Lumion we have seen so far. It goes beyond the normal architectural visualisation and makes good use of landscaping and volumetric clouds. The full movie below sets the standard: Head over to http://www.vi-3d.de/ to see more examples of Stefans…
Continue reading »Lumion is one of the best rapid visualisation systems out there for architectural style rendering. Its ease of use and ability to create scenes complete with advanced sky and lighting effects make it perfect for urban visualisation. With the release of version 3 we thought we would take the free version for…
Continue reading »With our recent post on Populate in 3D Max 2014 we thought we would take a quick look at Crowd FX in Softimage. CrowdFX is part of the Interactive Creative Environment (ICE) of Softimage allowing rapid pedestrian and stadium style simulations. Below is a sample movie created using two crowd emitters…
Continue reading »Regular readers will know that we are big fans of 3D Max here at digital urban. The up and coming 2014 version has a notable feature for anyone interested in urban visualisation – the ability to add crowds to scenes. One of our uses of 3D Max is for agent based…
Continue reading »AR-Media is one of the quickest ways to get started in Augmented Reality. The system is free for non commercial use and offers plugins for 3D Max, SketchUp and others with players running on iOS/Android and desktop devices via a webcam. The plugin used to be £100 + but the…
Continue reading »Timelapsing/warping is a series of techniques that when combined can create unique view of the urban scene. Daniele Quatrini of http://www.lowbudgetmiracle.it/ (seems to be under construction) have used a variety of timelapse/warps clips set to ‘An Open Letter to New York’ by The Beastie Boys to create the movie below: Timelapsing/warping in…
Continue reading »Visualising Spatial and Social Media – Working Paper 190 from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis University College London is now available to download. Authors – Michael Batty, Steven Gray, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Richard Milton, Oliver O’Brien and Flora Roumpani , Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Abstract In this working paper we…
Continue reading »Greeble is a quick and easy way to create large scale sci-fi cityscapes – using our previous tutorials on Building a Greeble Skyscraper and Creating a Greeble City it is possible to create a scene in under an hour. Martin Miroľa has used a mix of the Greeble plugin in 3D…
Continue reading »Part of becoming a student at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis here at University College London – either on our Masters or PhD programme is free access to the complete range of Autodesk software. We have always been fans of the autodesk suite of software, 3DMax for example…
Continue reading »The Video Copilot site is arguably one of the best sites out there for learning Adobe After Effects – with their new Metropolitan and Skyscraper 3D pack (along with demo) it is also a must stop off for 3D urban modelling. Their new Metropolitan pack features: • Over 100 High Definition 3D Models •…
Continue reading »We are providing open access to our live weather data – here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. The station is located on the roof of 1-19 Torrington Place, off Tottenham Court Road in Central London (map link). The data is provided via a Davis Vantage…
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Tom Walks over at devintART has created a sci-fi city animation using Blend 3D. Produced on a Dell xps 8100, i7, 6Go, radeon HD 5700 setup, each frame took 36 seconds to render with 1080p artwork: The movie below fades into a clip of the whole creation process: / Its well worth taking…
Continue reading »We have updated our live weather page with a number of new features. The page updates every 3 seconds with a live feed from a Davis Vantage Pro 2 on the roof of 1-19 Torrington Place, just off Tottenham Court Road in London. The weather dials now include: Visual Wind…
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Ollie here in CASA has just posted a new temporary panel on the London CityDashboard which shows Twitter activity at the London 2012 venues. The panel is using data from new Twitter collector tools in the Big Data Toolkit, developed by Steven James Gray, again CASA, as part of his PhD. As Ollie…
Continue reading »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 […]
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The deadline is near for 2012 entry on the new MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation (ASAV). The course reflects the current state of play in geographic, urban and architectural information systems with an emphasis on visualisation, analysis and modelling. Taught at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, home of digital urban, it is an […]
Continue reading »We are pleased to announce 2 fully funded PhD studentships at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. Full details below, its a unique opportunity to carry out new cutting edge research in the field of smart cities: PhD 1 – CASA and The Greater London Authority Funding Type: Impact Award Project Title: PhD Studentship: […]
Continue reading »Nearly 7,000 photos make up this 3 minute video of a flight from MDT-ATL (Harrisburg to Atlanta) flying in a CRJ-200:
540 Miles in 3 Minutes from Mitchell Blackburn on Vimeo.
Lovely, created by Mitchell Blackburn on vimeo.
Continue reading »Captured from the 21st floor of an apartment overlooking Vancouver – we esp like the zoom in on the skytrain:
The movie was captured by tmac over on Vimeo.
Continue reading »Robin Edwards, a student on our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, has used Processing to create a visualisation using data from OpenFlights.org. The clip below visualises approx 50,000 active flight-paths,interpolating motion along great circle paths for dynamic effect: Robin notes that it […]
Continue reading »We are pleased to announce the publication of the following issue: Future Internet, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 2012), Pages Pages 362-617 http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/2/ Table of Contents: Line Lundvoll NilsenArticle: Collaboration between Professionals: The Use of Videoconferencing for Delivering E-HealthFuture Internet 2012, 4(2), 362-371; doi:10.3390/fi4020362http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/2/362/Sean Kennedy, Owen Molloy, Robert Stewart, Paul Jacob, Maria Maleshkova and Frank […]
Continue reading »The 37 minute film below by D-Fuse and Illustrious Company has been commissioned to make a new immersive visual and sound installation, to be presented as part of the opening of the revitalised and refurbished National Film Theatre, BFI Southbank. Designed as a large scale piece of public art, the work will be projected onto […]
Continue reading »The movie below by Sean Dooley showcases the city of Philadelphia via a series of timelapses captured over a 10 week period. It details some of the most iconic places in the city:
Philadelphia: a city in motion from Sean Dooley on Vimeo.
Shot w…
Continue reading »‘City in the sky’ is a concept about an imaginary tranquil oasis above the mega-developed and polluted city, where one can escape from the everyday noise and stress. It was developed as part of the ‘Megatropolis’ project, which started in London with few companies and artists, invited to create their own visions for the future mega-developed city. The […]
Continue reading »QRator, the Museum focused ‘Internet of Things/Smart Places’ project developed jointly with us here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Digital Humanities and UCL Museums, with funding from the UCL Public Engagement Unit , has won The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation. Known as ‘The Oscars’ of the…
Introducing Citydashboard.org: A Live View of City Data – here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, we have just made live our latest in a series of services examining live data feeds – CityDashBoard. The system pulls in data from a variety feeds, developing our view that the next trend in…
QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections…
Number 161 in the every growing CASA Working Paper Series is Building 3D Agent-Based Models for Urban Systems by A.T. Crooks, A. Hudson-Smith and A Patel in a collaboration between George Mason University, United States of America and here at…
Continue reading »UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology is reopening on 15 March, allowing some of the rarest extinct animal specimens in the world to be displayed for the first time, but in contrast to the more traditional museum outlook, the new Grant has integrated iPads, QRCodes and twitter into the mix via…
Here at University College London, the Grant Museum of Zoology, which contains some of the rarest extinct animal specimens in the world, is to re-open on 15 March, 2011 after an eight-month renovation and moving period. Over the past few months we have been working here in CASA with the…
Our work on Unity stalled for a while due to another projects and deadlines, but we are back on the case from next week with the aim of providing a quick and easy route to visualise agent based models with an urban theme . The movie below details where we…
The movie below is a visualisation of office and retail space in London. Using data kindly supplied by the Economics Unit at the Greater London Authority, Duncan Smith a PhD student here at CASA has calculated the amount of retail and office in London per 500 metre grid square: Duncan…
Duncan Smith, an up and coming PhD student at CASA, has been putting Land eXplorer through its paces these last few weeks. In the spirit of the centre he kindly produced a blog post and a movie of his thoughts: The aim of digital cities is to combine photorealistic urban…