CTM Image Gallery

Thursday, September 30. 2010

Fun With LiDAR

I stumbled upon this image I created a couple of years ago from some LiDAR data. I was generating a DEM from the LiDAR points - and I guess I was bored. Instead of generating a "point cloud" image, I made a "sphere cloud" image where each (xyz) triple was a sphere center (I don't remember what I used as a radius.) Click on the image below to get the high res version.

It looks like I also did some elevation-based color scheme: blue hues down low with red increasing with altitude. Gives it a cold feeling in the foreground valley and an alpenglow feel in the back. I think the weird color pattern is due to point density.

Posted by

Ed Russell

at 15:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, September 29. 2010

Geo-Animation

We're submitting a proposal for a "pitch" at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Symposium coming up October 26-28. Our pitch is for fimmakers to enhance their offerings with the geo-animation service, quickly orienting viewers to places and concepts.

Here's a 3-minute video "Geo-Animation: Animating Places and Processes"

Hope you enjoy..and hope to see you there!

Also submitted at Spike Productions Video Gallery

Posted by

Ed Russell

at 15:18 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Thursday, September 23. 2010

Galisteo Basin Preserve

We've been working for a number of years with the great folks at Commonweal Conservancy on a conservation development project at the 13,500-acre Galisteo Basin Preserve south of Sante Fe, NM. Commonweal's goal is to focus the development in a small portion of the property and preserve approximately 13,000 acres as open space. They've spent a lot of time, money and effort determining the best locations for development and they've made sustainability the driving consideration.

Here's an overview showing the property with a viewshed map overlaid.

From a technical standpoint this has an interesting feature. We've defined a primitive in our 3d program for a "draped image-filled polygon." So rather than trying to build the transparent viewshed map into all the image tiles prior to rendering, it's a simple matter of specifying the image and clipping polygon - something really quick and easy.

Posted by

Ed Russell

at 12:29 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, September 20. 2010

Blue Sky Trail

We've recently started a mapping project for Larimer County Natural Areas. Although the end result will be a hard copy open space / trail map, we also did a "trail trace" animation of the popular 13-mile Blue Sky Trail. This trail runs from Highway 34 west of Loveland to the west side of Horsetooth Reservoir.

Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins have done an outstanding job of conserving a variety of natural areas while providing recreational access to residents and visitors.

Posted by

Ed Russell

at 11:06 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, September 3. 2010

Defining Ridgelines with Attenuation

We often use 3d visualization to highlight specific landforms like ridgelines. When you view along the ridge axis, you can use lighting that's roughly perpendicular to the ridge axis to highlight. In this way, one side of the ridge is illuminated while the other is shaded.

It's more difficult to bring out a ridge when you're viewing a face straight on (perpendicular to the ridge axis). The whole face is usually either illuminated or shaded and it's hard to distinguish it from background landscape elements.

In the image above, I'd like to highlight the ridge in the center. Right now it blends in with the background terrain and is difficult to see.

Here's where attenuation comes in. I'll model clear air in front of the ridge and haze behind. Here's the result: