GIS Filter: 3-d animated models?

July 29, 2004 11:41 PM

Does anyone here work with GIS technology, specifically making three-dimensional animated models? My wife is a GIS analyst for the local planning agency and is interested in talking to someone about this subject.
posted by luriete to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I do work with GIS, but have little experience with 3-D animation. I do know that there are add-ins to the ESRI line of GIS desktop products that approach this need; ArcGIS 3D Analyst includes the ability to "record or perform three-dimensional navigation" which is about the same thing. For a planning application, she may want to look into Scenario 360, part of the Orton Family Foundation's CommunityViz™ system, which includes "fly-through" and "walk-through" of proposed land use changes and community designs. I should add that the Orton applications are based on the ESRI software and that I am a user of ESRI software and so aware of their extenmsions and those built for their software by others. It is probably the case that there are other worthy applications out there; I just don't know about them!
posted by mmahaffie at 4:06 AM on July 30, 2004

My extent of knowledge for this was preparing GIS data for the Forestry Service in to a format from ancient databases and reports(in 10k directories) and parsing them in to a format to be read by GIS modelling software. Just to add a piece to the puzzle.
posted by mnology at 8:31 AM on July 30, 2004

If you can export to 3ds, dwg or dxf, you can import it into 3ds max and animate to your heart's content.
Or you could import it to any number of other CAD products.
What does she specifically need to do?
I work with and teach AutoCAD and 3D Studio. Drop me a line if you need info.
posted by signal at 3:04 PM on July 30, 2004

ERDAS IMAGINE will let you do heavy duty animated 3D GIS visualizations. It's expensive but extremely powerful.
posted by badstone at 4:00 PM on July 30, 2004