Urban and Regional Planning 3D Visual Simulation Video

Professor explaining simulation:

This is one of the models, built by students, in PD 571, 3D visualization and urban simulation, offered in the Spring of 2006. In this course, we use the GIS as a hub to connect user-friendly 3D modeling tools and planning support systems. Students are first trained to develop a three dimensional massive model in Art GIS. Using GIS data collected from the local governments and New York State GIS Clearing House, so that we can see the buildings as solid masses with spaces between them. The GIS files we used are: area photos, building footprints, parcels, and trees. Then students went out into the field armed with digital cameras to photograph facades of buildings that are of particular interest, and recorded their building heights. Students also went to Google Earth to get information about their sites. They learned how to use GIS data and data collected in the field and from other sources. As space maps in a computer program called Sketch Up to build a massive model and import those photos into Sketch Up, that pastes photos onto the building blocks in the massive model. Finally, using Sketch Up, we created a movie that simulates what a person would see, if he or she were flying over the site in a helicopter or simply walking down the street.