CASA: MRes Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation

Below we provide full details 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 innovative and exciting opputunity to study at UCL with a MRes acting as a pathway to a PhD or further career in ASAV.

Learn the science of cities and the art of visualisation at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis from September 2012   Cities have never been more important. More than a half of the world's population is now urban, presenting new social and environmental questions unique to the 21st Century.  As a student at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, you will learn to lead the way in collecting, analyzing and visualizing the datasets required to answer the big questions of the next century. At CASA, we have access to data relating to anything from the locations of London's buses in near real time through to passenger flows on the London Underground network and people's tweets about urban issues. In addition to our work with this so-called "Big Data", CASA is also renowned for communicating complex information and ideas to a wide audience of researchers, policy makers and non-specialists alike. The centre comprises a rich mix of researchers ranging from computer scientists, physicists and mathematicians through to geographers, architects and planners. This creates a vibrant and truly interdisciplinary research and teaching environment. The CASA MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation trains students in key techniques in Geographical Information Science, programming visualisations, 3D modeling and mathematical methods of spatial analysis, and with core modules on research methods and academic communication, builds towards a student-led dissertation, incorporating skills from the taught modules. The degree includes a group project which acts as a portfolio for the student's developing visualisation expertise within a piece of a collaborative coursework. The course contains technical and mathematical content, but there is no prerequisite for students to have programming experience - students can take an optional course introducing them to programming methods in term one if they choose, or learn these skills independently and at their own pace. More important is the desire to challenge yourself - we are looking for applicants from geographical, planning and related social science and humanities backgrounds as well as graduates of more mathematical or computational subjects who are keen to develop their existing skills in a new substantive field. To discover more about the course content and how to apply, click here: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa/programmes/postgraduate/mres-advanced-spatial-analysis-visualisation Or download our course leaflet here: http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/downloads/MResASAV-2013.pdf Full-time study applications close 3rd August 2012. Modular flexible (part-time) study applications close 7thSeptember 2012. Term begins 24th September 2012.

Mattepainting Toolkit: Creating Photoreal Environments in Maya via Multiple Camera Projections

The clip below was shot was modeled, textured, and rendered with the help of the Glyph Software Mattepainting Toolkit. The Mattepainting Toolkit is a newly released plugin suite for Autodesk Maya that allows artists to efficiently manage multiple camera projections for the creation of photoreal environments.

gs_mptk city demo from Glyph on Vimeo.

The toolkit has been developed by Michael Breymann who identified a need to more efficiently model and render scenes that rely heavily on reprojected matte paintings.

For more information take a look at glyphfx.com/mptk.html, Michael provides series of videos looking at how the toolkit can facilitate the creation of a full-CG environment for a feature film - from a first look it certainly looks impressive and we like the way it has developed out of a specific identified need.

Free 'City Roads Package' Download for 3D Max

Our Greeble City Tutorial provides a walk through on how to quickly and easily create a cityscape, complete with custom skyscrapers. Creating a city is all well and good but it is the fine details that brings a 3D city to life, the first of these is the road network.

Creating a road network in 3D Max is to be honest a tedious process but once they are in place complete with pavements (sidewalks) a basic render can begin to look more city like.


The renders here are from our 'City Roads Package' which is now available as a free download for 3ds MAX, courtesy of us here at digital urban. Complete with 38 high resolution textures the pack includes a series of objects that will snap together to create a grid or path layout.

Note as a temporary measure the file has been removed due to issues with the textures, we are working hard to resolve this and a new updated file will go online as soon as possible. For the time being a non texture mapped version is available here (.zip file) - it should still be of use as the roads can be snapped togehter to quickly make a city layout for use in our Greeble City tutorial.



If you do use the package we would love to include a render on the blog so do let us know.