Reality Computing

Reality Computing, Gaming, and BIM

Cadalyst recently published an interesting article about how gaming technology combined with virtual reality and Building Information Modeling (BIM) is starting to be used by AEC professionals to visual their building designs.

The introduction of gaming engines and the advancements of virtual reality (VR) software and hardware are enabling users to import digital models from BIM workflows into VR environments. This allows clients and other project stakeholders to use gaming technology to walk through or around a building site to visualize what the building looks like from inside and outside.  

This is the classic ‘create’ part of Reality Computing—but with even more realism than digital model-based project renderings or animations. And if the design model also includes reality-captured data of the existing cityscape to inform the building design, one can imaging donning an Oculus Rift headset and virtually walking down the street and into to a new building development.

Capture, compute, and create for building design…

The article goes on to describe a company using this immersive, real-time rendering as a design tool—moving design models created with Autodesk Revit software into a game engine to experience the design in a more realistic way. Finally, the article envisions a not-so-distant future where motion-sensing devices (the kind you use to play Wii golf, for example) will be integrated into an immersive design environment. Imagine being virtually embedded in your building design, pushing walls around or moving the location of windows with the wave of your hand!

Click here to read the article.

Reality Computing and Better-Fitting Shoes

Contrary to popular belief, most women (and almost all men) do not enjoy shoe shopping. You see a pair of shoes you like on the display rack, but the store is out of your size. Or you do find the shoes in your size and buy them without trying them on—only to find out they don’t really fit. How about all those people who have two different-sized feet or high arches or flat feet? And most brands don’t even bother to manufacture shoes for people with unusually narrow or extremely wide feet.

This is where Reality Computing and Feetz come to the rescue.

Feetz is a technology company developing a proprietary ‘SizeMe’ platform for the mass customization of shoes. The company uses patent-protected algorithms and customized software to create 3D printable shoes based on virtual models of your feet. The process is straight from the Reality Computing playbook: capture, compute, and create.

Feetz technology uses just a few digital photographs of your feet combined with photogrammetry software to produce accurate models of your two feet. This is the ‘capture’ part.

The ‘compute’ part involves custom modeling to integrate these digital models of your feet to a digital model of a shoe style. The software automatically adjusts the parameters of the virtual shoe to fit your foot, and matches your needs for flexibility and support, as well as your choices for color and pattern options.

To ‘create’ the shoe, Feetz uses 3D printing processes, along with some manual final assembly tasks.

Studying Our Past with Reality Computing

Artec recently posted an interview with Louise Leakey, the famous paleontologist, about how she has been able to incorporate 3d scanning into her work. Leakey talks about the creation of AfricanFossils.org and the critical importance of scanning these delicate remains.

Reality Computing: Using technology of the future to study the past!

You can read the full interview here: http://www.artec3d.com/news/Using+3D+scanning+technology+to+study+our+past+–+an+interview+with+a+paleontologist_29453

Remembering the Missing

Autodesk ReCap used to 3D model crashed WWII fighter planes near Palau

   

 

“The only thing worse than participating in a war, is participating in a war and not getting to come home.” (Casey Doyle, BentProp)

Off the clear tropical waters and tangled in the mangrove forests of the South Pacific island chain of Palau lie the nearly-forgotten wreckage of several dozen U.S. and Japanese aircraft and the remains of perhaps as many as 80 American airmen.

Project Recover, a public-private partnership between the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - University of California San Diego, the University of Delaware, The BentProp Project, and the Coral Research Foundation (CRRF), is dedicated to locating and identifying Americans missing in action during WWII within the Palau islands.

Earlier this year, the team logged a major success during a month-long expedition that resulted in finding wreckage of two U.S. aircraft that were associated with airmen who have been listed as missing- in-action since WWII.

The technology behind the project is similar to that employed by Autodesk and partners during the scanning and modeling of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Volunteers search the ocean floor for downed fighter planes by deploying sensors to measure temperatures, waves, currents, and sea level to better understand the influence of the complex terrain on circulation.  Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with high-frequency sonar allow rapid surveys of large areas and provide a means to map the distinctive seafloor’s contours that challenge modern forecast models. The reality data collected through these sensors is then processed using Autodesk ReCap.

 

“By finding (the missing airmen), we can both honor their sacrifice and (provide answers) that their families have never been able to get.” (Dr. Pat Scannon, BentProp)

Corporate partners GoPro, Autodesk and 3dRobotics also helped to make Project Recover a successful search and recovery mission to find American airmen lost in WWII.

Project Memento - Next Gen Reality Computing Tool

In this webinar, Tatjana Dzambazova (Product Manager, Reality Solutions) introduces Project Memento and presents various use cases and new opportunities based on the accessibility of sensors and tabbing methods. She also illustrates the software’s capabilities through a live demonstration.

What is Project Memento?

Project Memento is Autodesk’s new all-in-one, end-to-end solution that converts reality capture input (photos, scans) into high-resolution 3D digital mesh replicas. Memento’s smart toolkit generates 3D meshes from reality capture input, helps clean up meshes, detects and fixes mesh errors. The toolkit prepares & optimizes the generated 3D models for Web publishing, virtual and augmented reality, further digital use or 3D printing.

Easy to use

Memento’s engine is uniquely built from the ground-up to handle large models that result from converting reality capture data to 3D meshes and optimize them for further use. Even without prior experience with 3D CAD, Memento is very easy to learn requiring just a few minutes. This makes Reality Computing accessible to a wide range of users who don’t always have high technological expertise, but who require high-quality, professional 3D digital replicas of real objects.

Democratizing 3D design

Memento applies to a wide variety of users including artists, scientists, heritage experts, archeologists, fashion designers, film makers, game developers, and designers.  They are digitizing artifacts for archiving, restoration, education, digital story-telling, creating digital doubles and replicas, decorative design add-ons, inspiration for new designs, testing new design fit of existing products, and personalizing products. Memento’s optimized digitized reality models are used in workflows with Autodesk Fusion360, Maya, Mudbox, 3dsMax, many other modeling applications. Its integrated toolset offers high resolution 3D printing preparation, connecting with over twenty 3D printer drivers, and optimizes the models accordingly.

Currently, Memento is in the Alpha stage and can be downloaded here. There is much more Memento news in the pipeline!

Check out the webinar and share your comments!

Curbs, Gutters, and Reality Computing

We see street curbs and gutters every day but never give them a thought (except when we trip over one and land in the other). So most people have no idea how they’re made, much less how Reality Computing is improving how they’re made.

As evidenced by articles in this blog, Reality Computing is being used for very exciting and newsworthy endeavors…from virtual reality and the digital resurrection of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, to saving Hawaiian coral reefs and mapping Finland's forests. Curbs and gutters aren’t quite as glamorous.

But picture this. Imagine concrete curbs and gutters that are automatically extruded by a giant souped-up Play-doh Fun Factory on wheels being guided by laser beams bounced off satellites in orbit around the Earth! More interesting, right?

Increasingly, that’s exactly how curbs and gutters are being built. For highway, road, and even parking lot construction, many contractors are starting to replace conventional survey and control methods with stringless grading and paving equipment controlled directly by Reality Computing technologies in the form of model-based design, GPS-guided machinery, and laser control systems.

Credit: Summers-Taylor