Jun 6, 2011 - Joseph Culbert - Picasa Web Albums

    Thought that I'd try embedding a slide show using Picasa of some of the final renders of the Marina proposal. These were rendered using Octane, which is a graphics card renderer, (GPU).  A relatively new concept, it uses the parallel processing power of the computers GPU which has many more cores that the Central Processing Unit, (CPU). This gives it nearly realtime display meaning that when you change a material, camera angle, or lighting parameters, you see an update on the screen almost immediately! It renders in sucessive passes and improves the solution each frame and you can render until you get the fidelity you require. The first few frames are enough to see the results of your changes so this is the closest you can get to 'what you see, is what you get'!

Jun 6, 2011 - Joseph Culbert - Picasa Web Albums

More animations

     Here is an earlier animation using the SU model of the marina. To get the size down to web ready output, I've converted the original AVI at 15MB to a Flash movie at about 3MB. Both have some dropped frames, not sure what to do with that, any suggestions?

   I will try YouTube as they have different options for resolution, and then there is always Vimeo which can do HD 720 or 1080 if you really want to shine!


http://vimeo.com/

Animated Render of Marina using iRender

   Here is an example of a preliminary render of the Marina concept model using a rendering plugin for SU called iRendernXt. I had used nXt in Rhino3d years ago and thought it was the best rendering engine to come along in years. Rhino3D had been using a version of Accurender called Flamingo3D. Accurender had been developed for AutoCAD ages ago by Robert McNeel and Assoc, and had fairly popular in Architecture. RMA had good success within the Acad market and then went on to develope Rhino3D. AutoDesk had licensed the programming kernel that Rhino was based on and when Rhino had matured into a stand alone app rather than a 3d plugin for AutoCad, AutoDesk wanted to buy them out. RMA didn't want to be on the growing list of small developers that were suffering this fate, so they wrote their own kernel and are now have Rhino V5 in Beta. Flamingo never got much attention and nXt was a new approach for a renderer and is now available for SU, AutoCad, and Rhino3D.


http://irendernxt.com/main
http://www.accurender.com/
http://nxt.flamingo3d.com/

     Enough of the history, here are the results; I'll post similar files done from Rhino3D later...  Its big, but the resolution is much better that the SU animation from the scene files.


   After posting and viewing, I realize that the video get resized and compressed for viewing here on the blog, this doesn't really show the improvements over the standard SU animation. I'll see if I can put a link to the full size video. 

I'm trying to get an embedded turntable of my 3d models into the web page, nut no joy!!!  Try this...

Mardi Gras World

Here is another model of a building on the Mississippi River adjacent to the proposed Marina. These gables were a bit more of a challenge to model in BuildingMaker, but it came out well enough to be accepted by GE and adds a lot to the overall Marina concept model. 

Mardi Gras World: "

3D model by Jody

Old Casino Boat Terminal Now the home of Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras Float Museum

Old Power Plant bldg New Orleans7

Here you can see a model I created in GE and SketchUp using the Building Maker feature.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/buildingmaker

I then added further detailing and uploaded it to the Google Warehouse where is was accepted into the Google Earth after review. Some of my Marina models were not accepted as they do not exist in reality and don't meet the criteria of GE. Click on the icon to see the buildings site in GE.

Marina location using embed map

     After watching some presentations from the Google 3D Basecamp on how to promote your design efforts, I learned this technique for embedding a Google Map into a web page or blog.


 http://sites.google.com/site/3dbasecamp2008/all-sessions-2008/promoting-your-work-using-google-resources


     This page shows the location of the proposed floating Marina on the Mississippi River as a facility that would attract large yachts to visit New Orleans and the French Quarter.



View Market Street Riverfront Marina Development in a larger map

Marina Model and Presentation

    So I'm pretty happy with my model for the proposed Riverfront Marina as it has been created in SketchUp with the help of Google Earth. Now it is time to output some presentations for review and promotion. I have sampled the 'Styles' options in SK and found them to be very appealing for creating a loose hand drawn effect that relieves the stark precision that CAD usually creates. I've found that clients are sometimes reluctant to really add input when looking at the harsh exactness of CAD and miss the informalness of the good old 'back of an envelope' or 'bar napkin design'! 

    From pencil sketch to pastels, or even use the back of that envelop by using the 'watermark' feature! A wealth of styles to choose from, and even more available on the internet. I was astounded at the resources to be found on the internet for SK.