Virtual earth 3d models software#

While Blender has been a popular open-source software among animators and visual effects artists, in recent years it has also become a tool for visualizing astrophysical datasets. Here, I present AstroBlend, an open-source Python library for use within the three dimensional modeling software, Blender. The rapid growth in scale and complexity of both computational and observational astrophysics over the past decade necessitates efficient and intuitive methods for examining and visualizing large datasets. The new software environment is targeted at remote scientific teams, and will provide access to existing spatial distributed information for which we suggest implementation of a user interface as an advanced front-end, e.g., for virtual globe system. Based on this approach it will be possible to organize the research and representation of results on a new technology level, which provides more possibilities for immediate and direct reuse of research materials, including data, algorithms, methodology, and components. The new system will provide spatial data processing, analysis and 3D-visualization and will be tested based on freely available Earth remote sensing data as well as Solar system planetary images from various missions. Using an innovative software environment the recently developed planetary information system () will be updated. It is based upon the 'single window' principle, which combines data access via geoportal functionality, processing possibilities and communication between researchers. The main idea is to create a flexible working environment for research groups, which may be scaled according to required data volume and computing power, while keeping infrastructure costs at minimum. Soon we can imagine being able to create our own 3D views of our town just by taking the photos and sharing them via Photosynth’s geocommunity (like we can expect from Everyscape and similat to Google’s 3D Warehouse).We are developing a unified distributed communication environment for processing of spatial data which integrates web-, desktop- and mobile platforms and combines volunteer computing model and public cloud possibilities. VE recently released Photosynth-esque navigation though their 3D views ( Radar post). This technology will be a great compliment to Virtual Earth. Its still under development - as you can see in the photo there are defects in the model. It’s uncertain when this will be released. The 3D models were generated from the photos themselves. The photos of Seattle’s Smith Tower were taken with a consumer-grade camera from a helicopter. The image above shows their experiments with projecting photos on 3D models. They are just flat images projected at an angle that give that perception (most of the time). (via Slashdot)īlaise also revealed a secret about Photosynth. Separately UW professor Steve Seitz is using a precursor of Photosynth to also build 3D models from online photos. You’ll be able to link the collections together and flow from one to the next.īlaise demoed a model of Banteay Srei that he had constructed that morning in 5 minutes from a couple hundred photos. Upon release you’ll be able to model your home, your room, or yourself. This spring Photosynth will be released with the ability to make your own collections and a community site for sharing them. There has been hope that someday people would be able to make their own collections with their own photos or that Photosynth could turn Flickr’s photos into a collection of the world.

Since Photosynth was first released Live Labs has been putting out collections that they have created. The features hints at future Virtual Earth integration. Today at the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin Blaise, architect of Live Labs, showed off future functionality of Photosynth, their amazing 3d model-generator.

Virtual earth 3d models