Half-a-mile tall building

[Karlos]

Presented with a problem like this, I'd get annoyed and then hit a C compiler ;-)

Assuming the scans are false colour, I'd assign a transparent colour.

I'd load each image in turn, pre-rotate it into a desired perspective (either using it as texture for an OpenGL quad, or perhaps some custom rendering routine) and stack them depth sorted (farthest away first) according to the current viewing direction.

It wouldn't give you a realtime view, of course (unless your machine has some real grunt) but it would give you a 3D reconstruction from the slices.

[X-ray]

I'm starting to hate you, Karlos  :-P

[Karlos]

@X-Ray

TBH, it wouldn't be ideal. It's conceptually not any different from printing your slices (with the black set transparent) on acetate and stacking them.

[X-ray]

@ Karlos

I have found a solution (but it only works for an outside skin):

You start in Photoshop, import all the images/CT bitmaps/whatever, make sure they are all the same size and orientation, then batch 'adjust levels' so that all the backgrounds are 0,0,0 (I found it doesn't matter if the edges aren't 255,255,255 as long as they are whitish). Then save all the images in sequential order filename (I used TIFF, uncompressed).

Then in Cinema: Objects/Spline Primitive/Vectorizer...
You then specify the texture for each spline in sequence as the image files you saved earlier. Then for each 'vectorized' spline you choose Objects/NURBS/Extrude NURBS and set the extrude amount. If it is a series of CAT scan images being stacked then the extrude amount can be the slice interval in millimetres (you can read that from the scan), or at least make the extrude amount proportional to the Photoshop bitmap/ actual bitmap (from the CT relative to the actual slice interval as seen on the scans).

It sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but I can't explain it better and it is actually very simple (well it must be if I can do it)

[Karlos]

@X-Ray

Alas 3D modelling and animation is to me what C++ is to you perhaps :-)

However I'm glad you found a way :-D

[X-ray]

Update: I have the proper solution, but you may not like it:

I found that you need a hell of a large bitmap to make the vectoriser accurate. The reason why I thought you could only have the outside skin was because my bitmap was too small (it was 512 x 512).

So I made a 6000 x 6000 bitmap with a white solid circle and inside that one I drew a black filled-in ellipse. Saved as TIFF, uncompressed.

Used the Vectoriser technique in Cinema, system almost puked with the strain, but after a while I had the spline, with the elliptical hole cut in it, fairly smooth. I must say I'm very impressed with this. I increased all the subdivisions upon extrude, and it is really nice.

Bad news: it is hogging 885mb of RAM during rendering :-o
And I only have 2gb, so at this rate I'll be down to half my RAM very soon  :-D

Edit:

"..Alas 3D modelling and animation is to me what C++ is to you perhaps.."

Trust me, the programming is more difficult, has to be. At least with raytracing you always get a result and you can tinker

[PMC]

Good to see you back Blob.  :pint:

800 meters, that's roughly 2,400 - 2,500 feet (beer addled estimate).

[Speelgoedmannetje]

aw man, I knew about this, yes, but I didn't knew that it's already in construction
half a mile - one should have volunteers to work on one of the top floors of that building, and I will NEVER be one of them (well, that is, I once stated the same about the tallest tower in paris -not the Eiffel tower, btw- but ten minutes later I was at there) :nervous:

how the heck can they make it hurricane/earthquake/excessive-temperature-changing proof?

[T_Bone]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

how the heck can they make it hurricane/earthquake/excessive-temperature-changing proof?

With a disclaimer.  :-P

[Speelgoedmannetje]

:roflmao:

[X-ray]

Imagine having a top floor suite there: the ultimate in penthouse views.

Imagine also getting out of the lift at the ground floor, feeling in your pockets for the car keys, and realising you left them upstairs  :lol:

Even better: "I'm sorry, sir the lifts are out of order, you'll need to use the stairs"

[Wilse]

@Eyso:

how the heck can they make it hurricane/earthquake/excessive-temperature-changing proof?

There is a huge steel ball, at the base of the tower, that somehow counters the effects of an earthquake.
I'm sure someone else here will give an explanation of how it works.

I think it's quite a cool looking building.

[Karlos]

Its probably a pendulum effect of some kind that absorbs the translational energy and keeps the building vertical when all the rest are shearing side to side and bouncing up and down...

Or something...

[X-ray]

There was a program about this on TV earlier this year, and they had a huge ball mounted on hydraulic limbs just like Wilse says, and sensors all around the surface of the building would feed into a computer that would drive the hydraulics so that the building's center of gravity could be changed slightly to directly counter the effect of wind.

Edit: they are called Tuned Mass Dampers:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/BSI/TMD/tmd.html

http://nisee.berkeley.edu/prosys/tuned.html

[blobrana]

Hum,
do you think they`ll use microsoft to provide the software?


--------------------------------------
A tree that does not bend in the wind,
 is in a green house.

[X-ray]

"..Hum,
do you think they`ll use microsoft to provide the software?.."

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They had better not, or there may be a crash

 ;-)