Landscape Visualization

The following call for papers may be particularly interesting for our readers in China, especially in Beijing: The first international geodesign conference in Beijing will be held on October 28,29 2013. See the call for papers at www.geodesignpku.org

"This conference will be joint effort of the Peking University and ESRI. This International Geodesign Conference builds upon recent advances in the US and elsewhere, in bringing together a combination of experts – planners, designers, scientists, public policy experts and decision makers – to present and discuss current projects, emerging models of Geodesign practice, and to speculate on directions and improvements for the future."

Please note that 30 April, 2013 is the deadline for submission of abstracts.

Philip Paar has been recognized as a geo design, Grassroots GIS, and landscape visualization enthusiast. In 2010, he started an ongoing affair with the digital content creation industry. Autodesk 3ds Max^® users of this Blog are invited to check out the Laubwerk Plants Kits Freebie for free trial at laubwerk.com.

Today, the University of Nuertingen hosts another session in its series of online lectures on landscape architecture and climate change. I invite you to join an interesting session scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, 8th of January, from 18 – 19 30 pm CET. You can join the seminar simply by clicking on this link and adding a guest name:

https://webconf.vc.dfn.de/onlineseminar/

Invited are three experts who have also published two books on the theme during the last year. The programme will be as follows:
 

• Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and the Landscape Architect: Exploring Alternative Energy Landscapes, Dr. Sven Stremke|WUR Wageningen, NL
• The social acceptability of energy landscapes, Dr Olaf Schroth
• Engaging Communities on Climate Change with Visual Learning Tools, Stephen Sheppard, UBC Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions

We will end the session with an interactive discussion.

In the coming weeks there will be two further sessions – the last of this series –  that might be of interest for you. They are accessible the same way as this one, always from 18 – 19 30 CET:

• Tuesday, 15th of January: Adapting open space planning to climate change Lecture by Dr. Sanda Lenzholzer|WUR Wageningen, NL
• Tuesday, 22nd of January: Adapting Urban Planting design to climate change Lecture by Dr. MaryCarol Hunter|University of Michigan, USA

Please note that the presentations are further provided online under the following URL where you can watch them even if you miss the live discussion:

http://fluswikien.hfwu.de/index.php/Course_Schedule_Seminar_Climate_Change_2012

Already a few weeks ago, a colleague drew my attention to a couple of new papers on interactive self-adapting botanical tree models, published by the computer visualization group in Konstanz, who had also presented at Siggraph 2011 (see my previous post about Siggraph). This new development in procedural modeling techniques makes tree models possible that will interact with their environment! For example, if you insert a building, the surrounding trees will change their shape and branches will give way to the new object in a most realistic way.

How are these astonishing results achieved? Input is a skeleton-based tree geometry. In contrast to traditional tree growing models, the new technique approximates biologically motivated transformations. Main factor is the light distribution and the amount of resources a tree receives. On that basis, the growth rate for the entire tree and individual branches as well as branch ages are calculated. A complex illumination model makes sure that light conditions are updated for different stages of tree growth. Additional factors are phototropism and gravitropism and I was surprised how realistic the outcomes look.

Because the approach does not require the tree model to be reconstructed from the beginning, it performs much better than previous approaches and is even suitable for real-time applications. That means, you could insert an object such as a building but also other trees and experiment in real-time how the surrounding trees might change their growth in response to each other and inanimate objects.

For more information and the original research paper, please see

SIGGRAPH 2012:
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/2012/plastic_trees/website/

SIGGRAPH Asia 2012:
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/publikationen/2012/tree_growth/website/

Plastic Trees: Interactive Modeling of Self-Adapting Botanical Trees from Soeren Pirk on Vimeo.

Get ready to be a part of the 3D map wars. While Google and Apple battle it out in creating complete 3D fully-textured models with their arsenal of impressive technological gadgetry, we could take part in our own personal skirmishes in generating 3D models of our own cities. Using sequential feature matching of images from street-view, generate 3D models through open-source image-based visualisation techniques. 

Michal Jancosek and his team from CMPMVS, a multi-view reconstruction software, experiments with large scale multi-view 3D reconstruction from Google Street-View Images. Fully automatic 3D reconstruction from 2424 600×800 images. Click here to view the video and go to http://ptak.felk.cvut.cz/sfmservice/ for more information.

The Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University mailed me the following call for applications as Master students. The program sounds very interesting to me and I would like to share it here with you:

"We are seeking qualified applicants for our well-regarded thesis-based Master of Science and our unique technology infused Master of Fine Arts programs in Visualization.

An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps by Alexis C. Madrigal, enior editor at The Atlantic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/

(Thank you Maning Sambale for sharing)

Today, I would like to present the new book "Visualizing Climate Change: A Guide to Visual Communication of Climate Change and Developing Local Solutions", published by Earthscan from Routledge. In four book sections, Stephen Sheppard, Professor in Landscape Architecture and Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, continues the topic of his recent journal papers on using landscape visualizations for the communication of climate change related topics. In "I. Setting the scene on climate change", he provides an overview of the challenges that perception and visualization of climate change imposes. Then, he addresses in more depth the issues around perception and recognition of carbon and climate change in everyday landscapes at the local scale ("II. Knowing, seeing and acting on community carbon and climate change"). In the third chapter, "III. Switching lenses: Changing minds with visual learning tools", he focuses on the techniques and relative merits/constraints of visual media and landscape visualization in particular.  Lastly, in Section IV, he presents a range of hypothetical local future scenarios of climate change mitigation and adaptation through landscape visualizations and narratives ("With new eyes to see: What the future looks like with climate change").

A broad range of target audiences is addressed with this book and the author presents various stories and visual examples which make it very illustrative. Many of the discussed challenges and concepts also apply to other topics of environmental communication and make this book an important resource for anybody interested in environmental communication and climate change, from local community groups to planners, landscape architects, graphic designers, educators, and scientists.

For further information and details on how to order a copy of the book at discount price or its Kindle version, please refer to the following flyer.