Andrew Hudson-Smith' Digital Urban

 Below is a virtual tour of the City District in Moscow with a focus on the  Mirax Federation Tower:



The Federation Tower is a skyscraper currently under construction as part of the Moscow International Business Center. Construction of the towers began in 2003 and is ongoing - see the Wiki page for full details.

An update movie on our data collection via Twitter in association with urbantick. The data covers a weekend period from Friday evening to Monday morning containing 380,000 individual tweets. Within these 60,000 were geo-referenced, tweeted by 5,500 individual users.


The movie clip uses Google Earth to visualise the data:



Music - Becoming Visible by Xanthe on MP3 Unsigned.

Note the 'tweets' at Heathrow and how you can almost pick out London's shape via the twitter cloud alone. The original movie can be found here.

The video below was produced for an exhibition featuring the proposed Museum Plaza building for Louisville, Kentucky.

Museum Plaza from Brooklyn Digital Foundry on Vimeo.

We like the integration of the digital into the model footage, especially with the traffic. That said, the pixelated faces of the workers in the background is perhaps slightly concerning, especially for a clip to be used in an exhibition.

Building design by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture; video direction and production by Brooklyn Digital. Music by Mouse on Mars (via O.M.A.).

Hopefully we are about to dive back into the Unity game engine for a truly exciting project, as such the glimpse of Unity 3 opens up a number of possibilities:

Dark Unity from Unity3D on Vimeo.

As soon as we are back using Unity we will of course post the usual update movies and tutorials. Keep an eye on http://unity3d.com/ for full details.

Thanks go to Chester of http://associated-architects.com/ for the link.

Regular readers will know we have been logging data in 12 cities via our Tweet-o-Meter, its still early days but the results for a weekend in London are intriguing.


The data covers a weekend period from Friday evening to Monday morning containing 380,000 individual tweets. Within these 60,000 were geo-referenced, tweeted by 5,500 individual users.

In terms of density the focus is on central London with local hotspots as the weekend progresses, around Kings Cross and Old Street. There is also a noticable trace along the main transport routes into and out of town, noting that we seem to be tweeting while on the move. The clip below details the visualisation in Google Earth:




Music - 'Social Awkwardness' by Xanthe  over on unsigned bands.

The clip reveals a message cloud rising and hovering above London as a time-space aquarium where the time is plotted as the height information. Interestingly Google Earth is becoming the visualiser of choice for such data sets, the combination of location, imagery with the ability to view by time makes it a formidable engine for data visualisation.

Thanks go to urbantick who converted the data via a custom VB script.

Using our recent tutorial on image stacking it is possible to stack images from both day and night to create a single image of the city skyline over time. The photograph below consists of 8400 images taken using a Go Pro HD with one image every 5 seconds. The streak of light to the left is the moon during the night time sequence, while the right hand light is the daytime sun. The small lights are aircraft during the evening:


You can view a higher resolution version on our Flickr Stream, we will have more on the Go Pro HD next week, including a tutorial to create 24 hour+ timelapses.

Last week we covered creating 'day trails' in Photoshop using the technique in Astrophotography known as 'star trails'. Today we take the same technique and use it to create a view of city activity at night.



You will need:

1 x Timelapse System, you can use a simple webcam as per our previous Tutorial: Torch + Webcam = HD Timelapse System a DSLR such as the Canon G9 with CHDK , a iPhone with the free Gorrilacam app or any camera that can take photos at regular intervals. We used a Go Pro HD camera in timelapse mode, taking a picture every 5 seconds.

1 x Copy of Photoshop, you can download a 30 day trial.

1 x Photoshop Stacking Action (thanks to Deep Space Astrophotography)

Time Taken, 4 to 12 hours to capture, 2 to 6 hours to process.

Setting Up

The concept is simple, set up your camera, webcam or iphone at a suitable location, and capture an image at regular intervals, for our example we captured an image every 5 seconds pointing at the skyline of London. Capturing an image at least every 5 seconds is vital for star/aircraft trails as it allows for closer spacing between the lights in the final image.



We left the camera running for approximately 12 hours capturing 8000+ images, saved into a folder on our computer. Ours captured covered both day and night time, resulting in the following timelapse:





The next step is to open up photoshop, chose the images you want to use, and start stacking.

Image Stacking in Photoshop

The images will be stacked onto of an intially blank image via a simple automated action:

1) Create a new blank black image the same size are your captured photographs.

2) Load the action into the action windows in Photoshop and load the action Startrails.atn.


3) In Photoshop click 'File', 'Automate' and 'Batch'. Select the action you have just loaded and choose your directory with the images as source and make sure you select 'None' for the output directory.

Click 'Ok' and leave it running, our Mac laptop took around an 2 hours to stack the images - resulting in the Start/Aircraft Trail' below:


The line across the centre is a star and the bright line on the left is the moon coming into shot. The rest of the lights are aircraft in the sky above London.

You can view higher resolution versions via our Flickr Photostream.

The Tweet-o-Meter developed here at CASA is now live for the Cup Final Weekend, making it, in the words of Carling, the First Digital Cup final.

The Tweet-O-Meter measures the volume of tweets about the Carling Cup Final and shows who's tweeting hardest; fans in Birmingham, Manchester or London! As Carling states - it's a great way to see where the buzz is in the build-up to, and during, the final.


For your tweets to be measured use #CCF10 and if you're following a particular team add #villa or #manutd. Also, you'll need to geolocation turned on in Twitter to do this...

To enable us to locate your Tweets, login to your Twitter account at www.twitter.com and select "Settings" at the top of the page. In the location setting, check the box next to "Enable geotagging". That’s it! Any message from now on sent via Twitter with the "#ccf10" tag will be caught by our Tweet Meters.


The Tweet-o-Meter system was developed here at CASA, University College London and measures the amount of tweets (measured in Tweets per Minute or TPM) received from various locations around the world. The gauges are updated every second giving you a live view of the TPM's in each location.


There is some serious science behind the Tweet-o-Meter, it is designed to mine data for later analysis relating to furthering our understanding of social and temporal dynamics for e-Social Science within the Twitter demographic. The system is as part of a wider survey tool as part of the NeISS project in association with us here at Digital Urban, with research by Urban Tick and coded by Steven Gray.

View the Carling Tweet-o-Meter.

Darren is a freelance designer/artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, his cityscape composite of New York below has been created as part of a showreel in his bid to gain some freelance visual effects work in the world of fantasy/sci-fi television:



Its nice to feature such projects sometimes rather than the high-end visualisations from established studios.

See Darren's site http://planetmirth.weebly.com/ for full details...

A slightly bizarre post today, but quite interesting in an odd way, in fact we like it  - Urban Cat:


Urban Cat from Elcio Horiuchi on Vimeo.
The movie was by Elcio Horiuchi, created while learning After Effects.

We can't quite remember our search terms on game engines this morning but we stumbled upon a game entitled 'German Truck Simulator'.

The game allows you to drive across a realistic depiction of Germany, visit its cities, choose from over sixty kinds of cargo, and deliver them. The game progresses by growing your truck fleet and hire the most experienced drivers to build up a business:



The game has been developed by the makers of simulations in the 18 Wheels of Steel series and authors of Euro Truck Simulator. There is quite a niche market for this type of game although the web page states that 'we are happy to confirm that the game has been released in Poland - a country where we know our games have lots of fans'.

Here is the official Polish game website: germantrucksimulator.pl.

It would be easy to put in a few jokes here and there, but in terms of simulation and visualisation this has got potential and we note there is now a UK version:




The UK version was relased last week, ever had a craving to drive the motorways of the UK and chose between over sixty kinds of cargo to deliver? Head over to http://www.uktrucksimulator.com/ for full details.

The the 1-hour trail demo version of the UK game is not available until April 19th, 2010 but you can download the German version now.

Do let us know how you get on if you do, happy trucking.

Part of our remit for e-Science here at CASA and du is to use our research in new and innovative ways to get it out into the field. Indeed thats what the blog is all about, sharing our work and the science/techniques behind it. As such this weekend Carling Carling is positioning this weekend's Carling Cup Final as the "first digital cup final" and is asking fans to take part in the biggest-ever live Twitter commentary during the game using our Tweet-o-Meter.

The Molson Coors lager brand is aiming to get fans talking about the game, which sees Aston Villa take on Manchester United, on the social networking site by using the hash tag #CCF10 and submitting their comments to @thecarlingcup.

The sponsor will track the levels of activity across the social media platform as well as the topics supporters are discussing around the game via a new Tweet-o-Meter, which the brewer has created in partnership with us here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, part of the University College London.

Carling brand director, Martin Coyle, says: “Our ambition is always to give fans a bigger voice and get them involved with the competition every step of the way - the great thing about digital activity is that it gives everyone the opportunity to have their say in what should be a superb occasion.

“With all the activity we’ve got lined up on Sunday we genuinely believe that this is the first ever digital cup final. It should be a cracking game and if our activity can add a little more to the overall experience then it’ll be a great way to celebrate 50 years of the competition.”

Your be able to view the results via our customised Tweet-o-Meter over the weekend on Sky Sports and online, we will put a link up as soon as its ready.

In the meantime our city Tweet-o-Meter continues to 'mine' the cities for social trends...

Creating star trails is a well known technique in Astrophotography and the same technique can be used to create trails of activity during the day. The results are both unique and potentially useful to identify heavily used routes or flows in urban areas.

You will need:

1 x Timelapse System, you can use a simple webcam as per our previous Tutorial: Torch + Webcam = HD Timelapse System a DSLR such as the Canon G9 with CHDK , a iPhone with the free  Gorrilacam app or any camera that can take photos at regular intervals.

1 x Copy of Photoshop, you can download a 30 day trial.

1 x Photoshop Stacking Action (thanks to Deep Space Astrophotography)

Time Taken, 2 Hours (including capture and processing).

Setting Up

The concept is simple, set up your camera, webcam or iphone at a suitable location, and capture an image at regular intervals, for our example we captured an image every 2 seconds pointing down at a London street:


We left the camera running for an hour capturing 1800 images, saved into a folder on our computer.

The next step is to open photoshop and start stacking the images.

Image Stacking in Photoshop

The images will be stacked onto of an intially blank image via a simple automated action:

1) Create a new blank black image the same size are your captured photographs.

2) Load the action into the action windows in Photoshop and load the action Startrails.atn.


3)  In Photoshop click 'File', 'Automate' and 'Batch'. Select the action you have just loaded and choose your directory with the images as source and make sure you select 'None' for the output directory.

Click 'Ok' and leave it running, our Mac laptop took around an hour to stack the images - resulting in the 'Day Trail' below:


You can clearly see the path of the traffic and the most utilised sections of the walkways over the hour, we simply like the effect.

We have created a Day Trail pool on Flickr if you create a stacked image feel free to add it to the pool...

The movie below is featured in a forthcoming exhibition about urban visions in Stuttgart at the Kunstbezirk:

Bonsai City / Typology A,B,C from Michael Fragstein on Vimeo.
The ideology and animation was carried out by Michael Fragstein, produced by Büro Achter April, music and sound by Marc Fragstein. The exhibition runs from 12th of March http://www.kunstbezirk-stuttgart.de/

Relief is an actuated tabletop display, which is able to render and animate three-dimensional shapes with a malleable surface. It allows users to experience and form digital models like geographical terrain in an intuitive manner.


The tabletop surface is actuated by an array of 120 motorized pins, which are controlled with a platform built upon open-source hardware and software tools. Each pin can be addressed individually and senses user input like pulling and pushing as the clip below illustrates:


TEI 2010 / Relief: a responsive 3D surface from benny on Vimeo.
The system is termed a "scalable actuated shape display", created by Daniel Leithinger, Adam Kumpf, and Hiroshi Ishii of MIT's Tangible Media Group. In the chat about this around the office it was suggested was that it reminds us of the maps used in the X-Men films, now that would be a neat way to display data.

Picked up via Make.

Yesterday we featured the majestic clip of the Rooftops of Paris, today's clip is focused on Pittsburgh and has a whole different feel, almost isolating:


HD Pittsburgh Clips from Brian Lippert on Vimeo.
Uploaded to Vimeo by Brian Lippert, the mix of timelapse and close ups of alleys and walkways captures a more intimate insight into the city.

Made originally for a longer move entitled Omar Hot Pursuit S.E.A.R.C.H. the producers have now made the Google Maps satellite car chase section into its own clip and its great:


Satellite Car Chase from Honest Directors on Vimeo.
The movie was made and directed by http://stayhonest.com/

We have been working on something behind the scenes recently that brings up all sort of issues of privacy, our worries pale into insignificance however compared to the twisted genius that is http://pleaserobme.com/




The site uses terms such as 'left home', compared to your profile to work out your not around, it then links to a map showing where your now empty home is (assuming you live on your own). Genius, as is the sites discaimer 'Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.'

See http://pleaserobme.com/ for full details and a list of opportunities for those so inclined...

Joby, the people behind the Gorillapods, have released a free camera app for the
iPhone entitled 'Gorillacam'. Of note the application features a timelapse mode allowing multiple photos spaced at various intervals, ranging from 1 second apart, up to 2 minutes. We have run a few tests and with a first generation iPhone 10 seconds is the most reliable time frame to chose due to the time taken to save an image, second and third generation seem to cope with faster times. That said, 10 seconds is nigh-on-perfect for timelapses and the application does a sterling job.

We set the application running on an overcast winters day and the output of 1600x1200 jpgs is more than enough to output a 720p (HD) movie to YouTube with room for some post processing pan movement:



Music is courtesy of the rather good unsigned band - Lemonade Joe.

The movie was made simply by opening QuickTime Pro 7 and selecting 'image sequence' with the pan added via After Effects. The iPhone camera is never going to win awards but for a quick timelapse then Gorillacam is a must have for any iphone user, especially at the price, ie free.

Get Gorillacam Free through iTunes

The movie below entitled 'Rooftops' was created as a tribute to Georges Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891), who was behind the beautiful architecture of Paris. Taken by Mister K Cartoon with a Canon ixus 200is/Canon sd 980 using Colorista, Magic Bullet Looks, After Effects & Movie Maker for post production it portays the style and architecture of the city wondrously:

Rooftops from Mister K Cartoon on Vimeo.

The video was captured without tripods, all the sequences were been stabilised under After Effects.