Put Letchworth on the 3D Map!

We are presenting the 3D models entered for the Competition in various ways for the Awards Finale and our web site/online publicity. Note that some of those include models that are not part of the Competition.

You can create your own tour around any part of Google Earth as shown and explained here.

For a particular 3D model, you can use ShetchUp to add Scenes (viewpoints) to the SKP file. To check the animation you can use View / Animation / Run. You then use File / Export / Animation to generate a video in AVI format. The default settings use a low frame rate and image size, which is quick and compact to generate but lacks quality; increase to say 24fps and 1024px x 768px or more. To add a sound track you’ll need to convert the AVI to an audiovisual format such as WMF.

The Walk tool in SketchUp works differently, though still for a single model. In Perspective mode, you define a route as a series of points at ground level, plus a viewing height.  SketchUp generates the walking tour through that sequence of viewing points.

The Look Around tool rotates your view around a fixed point. For it and the Walk tool, you could use video capture of the moving screen image to record a video (perhaps with audio).

Yes! If in doubt – ask us, but also let us know if you update any of the 3D model(s) you submitted for the Competition:

• You can make any improvements you wish to your model(s) in the 3D Warehouse, right up to the Finale and beyond. They are your models, under your control.
• We are providing the judges with snapshots of each model as captured 2D images and video of scenes along a ‘walking tour’.
• In some cases we’ll fix up particular models to best effect for screening, alongside the originals, while making that clear via the description of our version in the 3D Warehouse.

So within the rules, this is a community effort for sharing effort and expertise. The sponsors are using criteria to reflect what their organisations value – explicitly, as they’ll say why they are making each award.

“… Here Rory Cellan-Jones has his head scanned and printed to see how the process works. … watch Newsnight on Monday 29 October 2012 at 10.30pm on BBC Two, then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.” video & replay

When you have imported a set of 3D models to the My Places folder in Google Earth, you can then record a tour of them in various ways. You can view a short video about doing so here. (3 minutes) Enjoy!

Tip: One way of showing up all the 3D models in an area on Google Earth is to set the time slider to apply darkness. The models will stand out as if they were lit against a dark landscape. You can even cycle the apparent time through daylight – with the shadows rotating – and back into darkness while recording a tour.

If you are an entrant to the Competition with 3D model(s) in progress, please ignore this and upload  them to the 3D Warehouse by end Wednesday 31 October!

For a quick entry, you can pick any of the models marked “JW” here and improve it onm Google Warehouse or (when ready) Google Earth.

Here are a few suggestions of notable buildings and street scenes that no-one so far seems to have modelled. Those in areas of the town that so far show no 3D models in Google Earth are especially welcome, as are models of places outside of yet related to Letchworth:

• Places on the walking tours: as listed here.
  NOTE: You are invited to produce a ‘fly-through’ video tour from the models in Google Earth, for screening in the Finale. There is even a special prize for this, from the Letchworth Garden City Society.
• Community centres and public venues: these are listed here.
  
• Shopping streets: Leys Avenue, Eastcheap, Station Road and Garden Square. You can do these a section at a time. Apply plain brickwork to the sides (unless on a corner) and rear; omit any extensions.
• Schools, especially the older ones. Again, you may choose just to show what is visible in StreetView.
• The pubs: there are partial lists here and here.
• The Recycling Centre and the Sewage Treatment Works, since those sites provide essential services to this town and area.
• …

Further places are identified in previous posts here and here, but do check whether any you might pick have already been modelled.

P.S. This post was a bit early! – we had the last Wednesday session today. As is quite usual, no-one came so we were able to review the project tasks and come up with ideas.

With the last of the SketchUp drop-in sessions today, all training and practice sessions have now been delivered as advertised. In reality these two kinds of session overlapped since attendees at the training sessions tended to have some prior experience with 3D software and people came to the practice sessions to find out from scratch.

Our next priority is to gather every 3D model we can from the attendees at the sessions. So if you have started* a 3D model that is not already in our list here, please upload it from SketchUp (using File/3D Warehouse/Share…) to the 3D Warehouse. If you don’t have the SketchUp software installed, just send us the file (.SKP) and we’ll upload the model for you: email.

*We are able to finish selected entries to a professional standard, especially those that show a building or scene that is significant to a main sponsor.

For the Competition, you must submit an entry by the end of Wednesday 31 October. That’s when we’ll ask the judges to start choosing the prizewinning entries.

After the Competition you can carry on improving a 3D model or producing new ones for the 3D Warehouse and (if suitable) for display in Google Earth. If you want to meet regularly – perhaps once a month – to keep learning 3D modelling techniques using SketchUp, let us know and then subject to demand we’ll arrange such sessions.

We look forward to meeting up with you in November 16-18 for the Awards Finale.

It is now time to agree and confirm all arrangements for the Finale events.  Offers to help will be gratefully received. Here is a provisional outline of what has to be done: 3D_lgc project tasks

Please review it and send us your comments including contact details of extra persons who may wish to take part in any way. Thanks in advance for all assistance – you will enjoy taking part!

This project started with the idea of visualising a walking tour or fly-through animation of Letchworth Garden City modelled in three dimensions. The Competition has focussed on creating the 3D models of buildings that such a tour or animation would require. We have not lost sight of that early objective so you are welcome to have a go at sequencing the 3D models as they appear in the 3D Warehouse and some in Google Earth. Perhaps you could add a voice-over and/or subtitles. You could even apply a theme or narrative to link the scenes into a stoory about Letchworth.

How you go about this is up to you, so long as the result is in a digital file format that we can display in our Finale. It might for instance be a video (AVI) or a Google Earth Tour. Don’t worry if it is incomplete because the buildings/scenes to be visited are not available in 3D yet, so long you  illustrate your concept as far as you taken it by for Finale event.

Examples using earlier technologies:

1. There’s a short walking tour by the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation here.
2. There’s a version on Google Earth, with links to Street View here.
3. The Letchworth Garden City Society (LGCS) has a Town Trail consisting of linked web pages with text and historical photographs.
4. Another picture guide is at FirstGardenCity.co.uk. (To use its map index, enable Java plug-ins to run in your browser.)

The LGCS  has pledged a £50 prize to this Competition, so a 3D tour might well win that award!

Among other aims, this grassroots competition is designed to raise awareness of the built environment, help people to engage with town / country planning and perhaps to visualise how we would like things to be different!

The third of these aims has not come to pass through our competition but somewhere, sometime – perhaps near you – a similar crowd-sourcing exercise may be used to capture a vision of how a locality could be better for its residents, businesses and visitors. In the case of the Transition Network, the outcome would be a low-carbon economy. If public authorities could be involved from the outset (rather than consulting the public on proposals already drafted) such visions might even become reality!