California High Speed Rail: A Metaverse Vision

The use of machinima for project proposals is an interesting move into the more traditional CAD world. Machinima may lack the highly polished visuals that architects and designers have become used to but it adds in the ability to communicate on a human scale and allows a much stronger ability to 'tell a story'. The movie below details Avatrian's proposal for RailLA.org's call for design ideas to revitalize downtown Los Angeles:



The machinima showcases various concepts, real world implementations and original designs. Avatrian used a virtual world platform in order to implement thier ideas in a manner wherein it can be communicated effectively with 3D content designed and built as needed.

We like it, indeed we presented something similar to Cross Rail in London 5 or so years ago. We may of been a bit ahead of our time on that one as im not sure the guys in suits were ready for a mix of 'Trainz' and virtual worlds. Machinima is starting to knock on the doors of more traditional 3D visualisations.

Sketchlife: SketchUp to Second Life

We have never quite understood why Second Life is such a closed shop when it comes down to importing models - compared to systems such as Sketch Worlds, which we covered earlier this week, it has been a positively painful process to get any model in the environment. However, Sketchlife is a step in a right direction, allowing models to be built in SketchUp and import to Second Life.

The video below details a simple model of the words "Hello World" being built and uploaded using Sketchlife tools. It demonstrates the process: press "Export", copy and paste the model key, drop the textures into the box, and, finally, copy and paste the build key. The process is the same for all models:



Written by Evgeni Sergeev the plugin for SketchUp is available for free, take a look at http://vrshed.com/sketchlife/ for details and download.

GIS in Second Life: SIMGIS

Embedded below is an intriguing demo of GIS in Second Life, termed 'SIMGIS' the technology demo has been prepared for International GIS Day 2008:



Three levels of detail are represented in the movie:

Level 1 is a 1:42-scale bare earth terrain model with an orthoimage "satellite" photo draped over it, just like Google Earth.

Level 2 is a reflective LiDAR (airborne laser scanner) surface 1:16-scale build with the same orthoimage. Since the surface is much more complex and represents all large buildings and trees, the orthophoto looks a bit surrealistic. For Level 2 this is a bug, not a feature.

Level 3 is a classic Second Life type immersive 3D build, but at 1:3-scale with real world textures.

See http://blog.simgis.com/ for more details, thanks go to Mal's SL-Edu Blog

Building by Numbers: Automated Architecture

Building By Numbers from Kisa Naumova on Vimeo.

The movie above illustrates Kisa Naumova's work to recreate 27 floors of the Leeds School of Contemporary Art and Graphic Design.

Kisa used a series of architects' drawings, traced out in Illustrator, and subsequently run through custom made scripts to automatically build the prims in exactly the right places, at the right sizes and rotations. Once in place tweaks were made by hand allowing the building to be completed in 2 days.

The process of importing site plans to automate the building process is intriguing, it points to the future whereby blue prints will be automatically imported and constructed in virtual space.

Geography in Second Life

Geography in Second Life: Neogeography from digitalurban on Vimeo.

The movie above is a 3 minute clip of our work to date in Second Life. We have been working on Second Nature Island on land kindly donated by the Nature Publishing Group to explore how 'classic geography and cities' can be imported into Second Life. A high definition version can be viewed via Vimeo by clicking on the HD link in the movie player.

Music is by the Tartan Rascals

See Nature.com for more information on our work and other 'scientists' working in Second Life.

As ever any thoughts, comments or questions are welcome...

Import Any Model into Second Life: AC3D

Importing models into Second Life is still for various reasons a difficult task - the people from http://www.inivis.com/ however have just made it a whole lot easier with their plugin for AC3D.

There are three ways to import from AC3D into Second Life:

1) Sculpted prim maker AC3D's Sculpted Prim exporter is one of the best ways to create smooth sculpties for Second Life. Using AC3D's popular and easy to use interface, you can create objects for Second Life quickly and without many of the restrictions that other 3D modelers enforce.

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2) Box builder Planning a new vehicle, building or piece of furniture? Simply create your model in AC3D then watch your creation assemble inside Second Life. Second Life Box Builder

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3) Upload ANY polygon model in Second Life Want to show someone what you made in AC3D, or discuss a CAD design inside Second Life? Our Second Life Triangle Builder lets you upload virtually ANY 3D model inside Second Life.

The movie below details the Second Life Triangle Builder:



Sure using Triangles is object intensive but it works and it works well (our previous maps in Second Life were created using our own triangle builder).

If you have the space and it fits into the maximum object limit then this really does open up object import into Second Life.

You can helpfully try AC3D free for 14 days so grab a trail, install the plugins and start importing those models into Second Life...