Someone’s been very busy…

Autodesk has frequently pushed the frontier of it’s own software limits and it seems as of late they have out done even themselves with the recent release of three separate software packages on Autodesk Labs, their site for emerging software.  What ties these three packages together is their use in design visualization in the AEC field.

The point cloud tool (http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/3dsmax_pointcloud/) allows the user to take point clouds from laser scans of an existing site and turn them into surfaces within 3ds Max.  This allows you to scan in an existing building and then begin building geometry off of it.  While this tool is still in its infancy, hence it is on the Labs site, it shows great power and applicability in the AEC field.

Project Photofly (http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/photo_scene_editor/) introduces the use of cloud computing for converting flat photographs of a scene into a 3 dimensional model format.  This is similar to Autodesk ImageModeler and even results in an ImageModeler file (RZI extension) but promises the speed of multiple computers that you don’t need to own or maintain.  This is an excellent way to build an urban landscape to house your latest building or public space in.

Neon (http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/neon/) is another cloud computing technology, it distributes the rendering of files across mulitple computers across a large network to reduce the rendering times.  Currently, it is only available to render AutoCAD scenes, probably because the 3ds Max users would bombard it with so many job requests they’d crash the cloud.  When complete, this may minimize the need to own a server farm, a very large expense in doing in-house rendering, while also bringing distributed rendering to AutoCAD users for the first time.

Individually, these software packages will likely be good productivity enhancers for anyone doing design visualization in the AEC envrionment.  When used together, they have the potential to dramatically reduce the time to obtain quality renderings as well as decrease the level of effort to get high quality renderings.

Stephen Gabriel