Radiohead anaglyph

Rock band Radiohead’s latest music video, House of Cards, features a LIDAR visualisation of singer Thom Yorke. This is a quite cool thing to see, but the really cool thing is that they open sourced all of the raw LIDAR data, it’s available for download at code.google.com.

The software that’s provided there lets you play with the data and create your own animation, but I thought I’d do something different. So I downloaded the raw data, played with it for a bit and came up with this:

This is an anaglyph, so you’re going to need some red/blue glasses to see it in its full 3D glory.

So how did I produce this?

1. I downloaded the data and picked a random frame.
2. Every frame is supplied as a CSV file with X, Y, Z coordinates. I used FME to create a 3D shapefile out of this.
3. I loaded that 3D shapefile into a new VNS project as control points and gridded a DEM from it. Added some background terrain (otherwise it’d just be a floating head) and positioned a camera right above it.
4. Rendered with the stereo option in VNS. This actually renders a stereopair of the scene.
5. With the help of an easy tutorial for Photoshop I composited both images into a single image.

So there you have it. Amazing to see all that high-end graphics and GIS software being put to this use… I have to admit this was all a lot easier than I imagined it to be, so I’m certainly going to try out the anaglyph technique some more.

FME Anwendertreffen

On December 1st and 2nd, German FME reseller con terra will be hosting the FME Anwendertreffen (FME User Meeting) in Münster, Germany.

In the past this has always been a German event, but this year they will have a track in English as well, with the aim of turning it into a more European happening. I will be there (and hopefully will be presenting too) and I would like to urge any European FME user to attend this, as it is a very interesting event. Safe Software will of course be present as well.

Cartography Design Annual

Just received my copy of the first Cartography Design Annual. Very pleased with it, the quality of the print is quite good (this is a print-on-demand job through Lulu.com) and it’s an honor to have 2 of my maps in there, along with maps by many other well-respected cartographers.

If you’re not sure about getting a copy of this, take my word for it, it’s worth it. There’s some excellent maps in there that I’m sure will inspire you.

Creating custom Google Map tilesets

Based on a few questions coming in through Cartotalk over the past few months, I’ve decided to look into offering some services around the creation of custom Google Map tilesets. This is in effect and extra layer with any georeferenced data you like, appearing inside Google Maps, running on your own website.

Global Mapper, which I’ve raved about before, offers a nifty way to export any georeferenced raster image to a Google Maps tileset, it will even generate the html and javascript for you. Unfortunately, in the case of maps it’s generally not a matter of pressing a button and it will magically work. There’s a few things to keep in mind and those are the things I hope to add value to my customers with.

• Resolution
• Projection
• Design for screen, rather than print

Basically it boils down to making sure the image that is read by Global Mapper is as close to the correct projection and resolution as possible, to avoid resampling. I’ve put a few samples online on the Red Geographics website.  As always, feel free to contact me if there’s questions.

In addition to the design, another important thing to keep in mind is the optimization of the images. I’m partnering with Derek Tonn of GraphicsOptimization for this. It’s amazing how much smaller he can squeeze the images and still have them look the same (at least to the naked eye). A 20% reduction in the case of b/w aerial photography for example (not bad if you consider the 2 sets together weighed in at 120 Mb before optimization). This saves time, energy and ultimately, money.

Cartography Design Annual

Nick Springer, owner/admin of the cartography forum Cartotalk (of which I’m also an admin) has put together the Cartography Design Annual. This is a publication along the lines of the ESRI Map Book that highlights some of the most impressive maps that were produced in 2007.

I have 2 maps in there, the 2008 Apeldoorn City Map and the Oolaalaa globe chair map. I haven’t seen any of the content yet but judging by what’s on the cover, there’s going to be a lot of really great maps in there.

Hopefully this will be number one of a long series…

GISLook - preview GIS data in Mac Finder

As I wrote before, I’ve recently gotten myself a MacBook Pro and am using this as a testbed to see if I can move my entire workflow to Mac hardware (and as much Mac software as possible). Well, the deal just got a little bit sweeter as Bernhard Jenny of ETH Zürich released GISLook, a Finder plugin that allows for the preview of GIS data.

Currently only a few vector formats (Shape, E00 and Arc Coverage) are supported, but the list of  elevation formats is more extensive and I’m sure both lists will be expanded soon.

Straying a bit away from the title of this post, I’m please to announce that the MacBook is certainly turning out to be a very nice machine and, thanks to 4 Gb of RAM and a faster processor, it outperforms my Windows machine by a fair bit. The extra memory comes in very useful when rasterizing large maps in Photoshop, or opening them in Illustrator.

Google Map Maker

Slightly confusing title perhaps, but it seems Google is going the OpenStreetMap route with their new Google Map Maker service. This lets users add and/or edit features (points, lines and areas) for Google Maps.

Currently, the only areas supported are the ones that are sparsely covered by Google Maps in the first place, a number of Caribbean islands, Iceland, Pakistan, Cyprus, Vietnam. Edits and additions are moderated and of course you’re signing away all your rights to the edits you made to Google

It reminds me a bit of Wikimapia, or the “community” layer in Google Earth. You’d be amazed at what you can find in there!

Opinions on GIS maps

James Fee wrote an interesting post a few days ago: “That looks like a GIS map“, which sparked some good comments there and on a related Cartotalk thread.

I think in the long run, it doesn’t matter so much in which application a map is produced. True, some offer more tools and tricks than others, and I would pick the Illustrator/MAPublisher combo over anything else every time, but ultimately, it’s how much time you spend on perfecting the map that makes the difference between ‘good enough’ and ‘great’. The human factor is still the one defining the final look and feel of the map.

Whenever I label a map, I often end up going back time and again to tweak it just a little bit more. We’re talking minute changes here… “move this text half a mm to the left and it’ll look a little bit better”, that sort of thing. And yes, that takes a lot of time and sometimes the budget and/or deadline don’t allow for that level of sophistication. In a way, a complex map is never finished… it doesn’t get published, it escapes!

Part of the problem that James identifies lies with education. Most GIS classes don’t focus on (cartographic) design that much. I think that’s a major problem. Looking at the local job market here in The Netherlands, it seems there’s more GIS/cartography job openings than people looking for them. Wouldn’t it be ironic that in a time of renewed interest in the geo-market (Google Earth, navigation systems), we run out of cartographers and GIS people?

Google’s done it again: Google Earth API

Well… they sure surprised me The Google Earth API was unleashed today. No time yet to give it a try (and apparently the plug-in doesn’t work all that well on Firefox 3.0), but if I can find the time, I may just have to tinker with this. I did quite some programming around the Google Maps API a few years ago, but moved on…

One thing I wonder about is how this will affect the mapping and GIS industry. The release of the Google Maps API saw a lot of interest being generated in this field, which is of course a good thing. I think we’ll see a similar, though less pronounced, effect from this new development.

One of my maps in National Geographic magazine

The latest issue of the Dutch edition of National Geographic Magazine has a short news item about an event the society put on last month, for Earth Day:

The guy in the foreground is Wubbo Ockels, first Dutch person in space and a bit of a techno-celebrity nowadays. But in the background is the special National Geographic globe, produced by Oolaalaa and using the maps I developed for them.

So I’m kinda cheating on this one, as it’s only a *photo* of one of my maps, but I’m pretty proud of it anyway