Blog For Google 3D Warehouse Part 6 (December Pick)

At the beginning of every month 3Dwalkthroughs.com selects our favorite 3D model from Greg Rose’s blog which highlights new 3D building models as they are added to Google’s 3D Warehouse.

Our monthly selection is based on impressive: architecture, level of detail, level of realism etc.

For the month of December we have chosen the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing China.

Description
The CCTV Headquarters is a skyscraper that is currently under construction in Beijing, China. The building will be the new headquarters of China Central Television. Groundbreaking took place on September 22, 2004. It is planned to be completed in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren are the designers of the building. The building will stand at 234 meters or 755 feet tall and will have 54 floors.

I chose this particular model because of the interesting way the model was integrated into the site plan. The wikipedia entry below describes some of the unique aspects of this amibitious project.

The CCTV Headquarters is a skyscraper that is currently under construction in Beijing, China. The building will be the new headquarters of China Central Television. Groundbreaking took place on September 22, 2004. It is planned to be completed in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren are the designers of the building. The building will stand at 234 meters or 755 feet tall and will have 54 floors.

The main building is not a traditional tower, but a continuous loop of five horizontal and vertical sections covering 4,100,000 square feet of floor space, creating an irregular grid on the building’s facade with an open center. The construction of the building is considered to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone. A second building, the Television Cultural Centre , includes a hotel, a visitor’s centre, a large public theatre, and exhibition spaces. It is visible from the main intersection of the new Beijing Central Business District through the window of the main CCTV headquarters building. A media park forms a landscape of public entertainment, outdoor filming areas, and production studios as an extension of the central green axis of the CBD.[1]

The building is being built in two sections that will ultimately be joined to complete the loop. In order not to lock in structural differentials this connection has to be completed at the last minute and at the coldest time of night, 4am or 5am, when the steel in the two towers has cooled to the same temperature. This joining is widely anticipated by Beijing locals and has been a topic of much discussion.

Source: Wikipedia.com

3D Renderings and 3D Walkthroughs Used By Interior Design Professionals

3Dwalkthroughs.com has been working with a number of interior design professionals to create highly detailed 3D Walkthroughs and 3D Renderings for their clients.

Often times it is very hard for a client of an interior design professional to visualize a concept simply by looking at blueprints or rough wireframe mockups. In many cases the interior design professionals are asked to present their concepts even before being hired for the job. As many interior designers often receive a percentage of the total amount of money spent on the interior furnishings, it is certainly worthwhile for them to go the extra mile during their initial presentations.

Highly realistic 3D Walkthroughs and 3D Renderings are extremely effective ways for interior designers to blow away their clients by showing their concepts in vivid detail.

Using highly detailed 3D assets, interior designers are also able to ensure that they are completely on the same page as their clients before starting a project. We have heard stories from many of our interior design clients of instances where they had to rip out installations and start all over due to a miscommunication with their client.

Interior designers have used our services to showcase all types of interiors including: Kitchens, Living Rooms, Bedrooms, Home Theaters, Home Offices, Fitness Centers etc.

Along with interior designers we are also starting to get requests from Home Theater companies and cabinet makers to create detailed renderings of their concepts as a way to help them close big deals.

Qwaq - The Ultimate 3D Virtual Collaboration Tool?

3Dwalkthroughs.com believes we have found one of the most effective 3D virtual world applications to be launched to date. The application is designed by Palo Alto based Qwaq, which has just announced a $7 million first round of funding co-led by Alloy Ventures and Storm Ventures with participation from previous investor KPG Ventures.

Qwaq’s 3D virtual world application is unique as it allows for real time collaboration and sharing of most types of documents. Much like Second Life, Qwaq Forums uses animated avatars representing users to populate 3D office spaces, complete with rotating fans and potted plants. Qwak’s application has been described as a mash-up of WebEx and Second Life.

Here is some more information taken directly from Qwaq’s website:

Designed for Collaboration
Qwaq Forums is designed for collaboration. Whether you are working internally with other team members and groups, or need to collaborate with supply chain partners or customers, Qwaq Forums has powerful features that simplify setting up and working in highly collaborative environments.

Content. Content is easily made available to users; simply drag and drop content from your local folders or desktop into Qwaq Forums and it will be automatically uploaded and made available to other users. Using Qwaq Multi-Share™, multiple users can edit content together within a virtual space. Once a work item is completed, content can be saved to your local desktop or folders for further processing.

Presence. Unlike traditional 2-D collaboration environments, Qwaq Forums’ 3-D environment provides strong feedback on where users are focusing and what users are working on. Using avatars and a unique “laser pointer” makes it easy to see where people are, what they are looking at, what content they are editing and how they are using applications. In combination with Qwaq Forums’ built-in high fidelity VoIP and text chat, users have a highly immersive environment and important social cues that help them work more effectively.

Context. A Qwaq Forums workspace provides a simple ways to link and associate content. Whether using drag-and-drop to link virtual spaces or simply choosing the spatial relationship between content in an existing space, users can establish areas of focus for collaboration.

Persistence. The virtual spaces in Qwaq Forums are designed to be dynamic and evolving. Users can save the state of a Qwaq Forums virtual space at any time. The saved state includes any editing made by users to documents or content in the space; for example, if you had been working on a budgeting spreadsheet, any changes you and other users made to that spreadsheet would be saved along with the rest of the state of the virtual space. This capability provides a powerful way for users to work on projects that cannot be completed in one session and allows them to leave incremental work updates for each other when working asynchronously.

Powerful End User Features

- Simple virtual workspace creation. Create meeting rooms, offices, lab rooms or other indoor spaces from existing room templates. The templates provide ready-to-use rooms that can be used right away or further customized. Use the Qwaq Virtual Campus™ to create outdoor spaces. All spaces can be linked together using drag and drop commands.
- Drag and drop content import. Share Microsoft Office documents created with Word, PowerPoint and Excel; Adobe PDF files, images, and even 3-D content by dragging from local folders into a Qwaq Forums virtual workspace.
- Qwaq Multi-Share™. Qwaq’s unique fine-grained sharing control lets multiple users edit a document or use an application GUI in an intuitive manner at the same time. All users see edits in real-time.

Qwaq Forums Architecture Highlights
Scalable Peer-to-Peer architecture for user Interactions.
Built-in wide area VoIP and text chat.
Built-in data encryption: all traffic between peers is encrypted to ensure privacy.
Option to have Qwaq Host or to Self-Host behind your firewall.
Open standards based: uses Croquet for platform and Python for scripting. Supports numerous document types for user import and export.

We are looking forward to our formal demo to see if the application is as good as it sounds.

3DVO - Affordable 3D Object Modelling

3Dwalkthroughs.com continues to research new technologies that will promote the move to a more interactive and immersive 3D internet.

Today we came across an interesting company based in Salt Lake City,3DVO, an industry pioneer in 3D modeling services for online retailers. One of their new products, 3DVO Engage, provides both small and large e-retailers with very realistic 3D models of their products that can be animated, rotated and viewed from 360 degrees.

Retailers send their products to 3DVO, and the company rapidly returns 3D images that can be manipulated by the consumer during the online purchasing process. For the first time, mass e-retailers can put all of their products online in 3D as opposed to just their higher end products.

3Dwalkthroughs.com believes this new technology can add a new level of value to the virtual shopping malls that are starting to pop up all over the internet. Instead of just walking through a virtual store and looking at a still picture of a product, this new technology can further immerse the shopper in the experience by letting them interact with the object they might be interested in buying.

“Traditional retail sales are slowing, but online sales are expected to grow 20 percent to $39 billion this holiday season,” said Troy Sheen, CEO of 3DVO. “One way retailers are increasing online sales is by creating a realistic store experience. In the past they could only afford to create 3D models for their flagship products, but with our technology they can create 3D models for every single product - increasing online conversion rates.”

Source: TMC.net

We recommend checking out the 3DVO website as there are some cool examples of this new technology.

3D Walkthroughs, 3D Renderings and 3D Floor Plans - Perfect For New Home Sales

In the past, when trying to market a soon to be developed single family home, the amount of affordable pre-sales marketing tools was extremely limited. Certainly, photos could not be used as there was nothing yet to photograph, and watercolor renderings were just not capturing the attention of buyers.

Enter—3Dwalkthroughs.com. We have recently been working on adding a much more streamlined and affordable suite of Custom 3D Walkthroughs , 3D Renderings and 3D Floor Plans to our existing product mix. This new suite of 3D products will be specifically geared to the yet to be developed single family home.

The products within our new suite of 3D offerings are created with floor plans,
CAD files, elevations and specific information delivered by the interior designers. We decided to create this new suite of products based on our most recent research which highlighted the unbelievably poor quality of 3D renderings and 3D walkthroughs being used across the country.

We are also speaking with a few new mapping companies whose technologies will integrate very nicely with our new suite of products. The marriage of these 2 technologies is sure to attract a lot more interested buyers to a pre-developed single family home…and more qualified ones at that.

Attending College in a 3D Virtual World

3Dwalkthroughs.com has been finding many examples of universities building a virtual presence in Second Life. Similar to the virtual trade shows we have seen, 3D virtual classrooms are not trying to totally replace their real life counterparts, rather complement them.

Integrating 3D virtual classrooms into a universities curriculum allows the teacher to reach a larger audience in a more immersive way than just posting text and photos on a schools intranet.

Some 300 schools, with about 4,200 educators from around the world, are now taking part, said Claudia L’Amoreaux of Linden Lab (creators of Second Life). Stanford University recently developed a new Second Life site that includes a virtual library. Stanford’s School of Education and the humanities lab also have sites.

“The 3D Internet is this immersive place and it’s very different than any kind of Web-based learning,” L’Amoreaux said.

Schools such as the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are even creating virtual school pharmacies and planetariums or interactive library catalogs and book-loaning projects.

For San Jose State, building a virtual campus gave distance learners a sense of “being present,” said Linda Main, associate director of the School of Library and Information Science and a professor at San Jose State for 21 years.

Main said the school’s virtual campus has allowed its small library program to offer more courses to a wider range of students, who come from more than nine countries. Fifty percent live in Southern California.

The virtual campus “has changed the whole concept of place - there’s no need to move here to become a librarian,” Main said.

Next fall, Main said, the department is going to make it a requirement for students to include a Second Life component.

Source: Mercurynews.com

3Dwalkthroughs.com believes that just like virtual trade shows, many new applications will be launched specifically focused on 3D virtual universities. These new applications will address and overcome any limitations existing in Second Life, and provide an even more valuable and interactive 3D learning experience.

3D Rendering Used in Ocean’s 13

Last night my wife and I decided to stay in and watch Ocean’s 13. Without giving away too much of the movie, the plot involves a heist of sorts of the fictitious Bank Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

As a frequent visitor to Las Vegas we had to stop and think for a second if we ever remember seeing a Bank Hotel. After a few seconds we realized that it was a 3D Rendering interspersed into an actual view of the Las Vegas Strip.

Benedict, the owner of the Bellagio, made a comment about the tower of Bank’s Casino casting a shadow over his pool. The Bank hotel is an orangish glass structure consisting of three symmetrical towers winding around each other like a strand of DNA. The 3D Rendering is actually superimposed on the SE corner of Harmon & Las Vegas Blvd currently the home of the Harley Davidson Café - a single story building with no resemblance to the Bank Casino.

3Dwalkthroughs.com applauds the company that created the 3D rendering as it actually left us wondering if it was real for a second. This is the ultimate goal of any 3D Walkthrough, 3D Floor Plan or 3D Rendering we create.

3D Rendering Used in Ocean’s 13

Last night my wife and I decided to stay in and watch Ocean’s 13. Without giving away too much of the movie, the plot involves a heist of sorts of the fictitious Bank Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

As a frequent visitor to Las Vegas we had to stop and think for a second if we ever remember seeing a Bank Hotel. After a few seconds we realized that it was a 3D Rendering interspersed into an actual view of the Las Vegas Strip.

Benedict, the owner of the Bellagio, made a comment about the tower of Bank’s Casino casting a shadow over his pool. The Bank hotel is an orangish glass structure consisting of three symmetrical towers winding around each other like a strand of DNA. The 3D Rendering is actually superimposed on the SE corner of Harmon & Las Vegas Blvd currently the home of the Harley Davidson Café - a single story building with no resemblance to the Bank Casino.

3Dwalkthroughs.com applauds the company that created the 3D rendering as it actually left us wondering if it was real for a second. This is the ultimate goal of any 3D Walkthrough, 3D Floor Plan or 3D Rendering we create.

3D Rendering Used in Ocean’s 13

Last night my wife and I decided to stay in and watch Ocean’s 13. Without giving away too much of the movie, the plot involves a heist of sorts of the fictitious Bank Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

As a frequent visitor to Las Vegas we had to stop and think for a second if we ever remember seeing a Bank Hotel. After a few seconds we realized that it was a 3D Rendering interspersed into an actual view of the Las Vegas Strip.

Benedict, the owner of the Bellagio, made a comment about the tower of Bank’s Casino casting a shadow over his pool. The Bank hotel is an orangish glass structure consisting of three symmetrical towers winding around each other like a strand of DNA. The 3D Rendering is actually superimposed on the SE corner of Harmon & Las Vegas Blvd currently the home of the Harley Davidson Café - a single story building with no resemblance to the Bank Casino.

3Dwalkthroughs.com applauds the company that created the 3D rendering as it actually left us wondering if it was real for a second. This is the ultimate goal of any 3D Walkthrough, 3D Floor Plan or 3D Rendering we create.

3D Rendering Used in Ocean’s 13

Last night my wife and I decided to stay in and watch Ocean’s 13. Without giving away too much of the movie, the plot involves a heist of sorts of the fictitious Bank Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

As a frequent visitor to Las Vegas we had to stop and think for a second if we ever remember seeing a Bank Hotel. After a few seconds we realized that it was a 3D Rendering interspersed into an actual view of the Las Vegas Strip.

Benedict, the owner of the Bellagio, made a comment about the tower of Bank’s Casino casting a shadow over his pool. The Bank hotel is an orangish glass structure consisting of three symmetrical towers winding around each other like a strand of DNA. The 3D Rendering is actually superimposed on the SE corner of Harmon & Las Vegas Blvd currently the home of the Harley Davidson Café - a single story building with no resemblance to the Bank Casino.

3Dwalkthroughs.com applauds the company that created the 3D rendering as it actually left us wondering if it was real for a second. This is the ultimate goal of any 3D Walkthrough, 3D Floor Plan or 3D Rendering we create.