There is just something about having a music track that makes a presentation just a bit more special.  I’m sure that some of you would like a different song selection.  The song (credits in the video) makes it feel a bit like a sports video.  What do you think?

All of the uproar today about the events surrounding the unfortunate decision to fly a jumbo jet with fighter escort over New York City made us wonder.  Could there have been an easier way to get that “iconic shot” of Air Force One over New York City without causing any issues?

Here is a video we put together with Virtual Earth – 3DVIA for free using the Air Force One and model found on 3DVIA.com.  The whole exercise took about 15 minutes including posting this article.

To view the 3D interactive experience on Virtual Earth, click here.

Here is the Challenge for You

Where can you put Air Force One on Virtual Earth?  Try the free Virtual Earth – 3DVIA application and send us the link to your iconic shot of Air Force One.  Post the link to the model on Virtual Earth below and we’ll create a montage of the best in an upcoming post.

Enjoy!

Marc (back row, 1st on left) thinks that the Concord group bears a strong resemblance to the crew from NBC’s The Office.  Which one of us does that make Dwight?

Check out the rest of the pictures on the 3DVIA Flickr account.

Publish to 3DVIA from SolidWorks from SolidWorks: Heard!

Check out Lou Gallo’s SolidWorks: Heard! blog post covering the latest update to SolidWorks making it easy to publish content directly to 3DVIA.com.  I could be a tiny bit biased but I love how Lou opens the post (flattery will get you everywhere in this world).

“3dvia is a place where social media meets 3D modeling, allowing its users to upload, share and find 3d models. With over 6000 models and almost 75,000 users, 3dvia is the place to be when it comes to sharing 3d models.”

Lou also touches upon one of the keys to 3DVIA at the end of the post. “I hope this new addition will encourage SolidWorks users to share their models and help reduce the barrier of entry for the SolidWorks masses.”  Here at 3DVIA.com, it’s all about connecting different communities of 3D users together in the hope of expressing ideas in 3D easier.

In addition to SolidWorks: Heard!, you can follow Lou on Twitter and 3DVIA (maybe we can get Lou to publish a few more models!)

Documenting and Viewing via 3DVIA Composer from Desktop Engineering

We also had another great post from SolidSmack blogger and Desktop Engineering contributor, Josh Mings on his test drive of 3DVIA Composer.  Garth over at our 3DMOJO blog already has a post on the article but I wanted to republish a quote from Josh to continue our theme of making communication through 3D more accessible to everyone.

“It’s marketed as a tool enabling non-CAD people to take 3D CAD data and create rich deliverables — but in the hands of an engineer it becomes much more.”

You can follow Josh on his SolidSmack blog and Twitter.

Thank you Lou and Josh.

In short, Photoshop Extended allows graphic designers to incorporate 3D content directly into their 2D designs.  This gives you the ability to optimize the position and lighting of an element in your design on the fly.  Photoshop accepts .3ds, .obj and .dae files among other formats readily available for free right here on 3DVIA.com. 

If you do not have Photoshop, why not try a similar functionality in our own free 3Dcollage?  All you need is a Facebook account and the 3Dcollage app.  You can read all about it here.

View original post on Templamatic.

Even though it looks a bit like a hamster ball…I want one! Mehdi from the Paris office, also in the first part of the video, gets to work with the coolest part of the business. I’m trying to rationalize installing the system for our office but have not justified the cost yet. Mehdi – can you ship that over here to the states?

It’s amazing – click on the image to zoom into the improved 3D Las Vegas.

Also featured in the update…an improved Virtual Earth – 3DVIA.  Some of the new enhancements include lighting for contributed models, creation of preview thumbnails when you save a model, and much faster publishing when using high resolution textures.  To try it out while in Live Maps, switch into 3D view, right click where you would like to add a building and choose ‘Add 3D model’.

Other key updates for Live Maps include:

• Export Your Collection to Your Navigation/GPS Device
• The Ability to Add Labels for Birds Eye Imagery
• 1-Click Directions (They call it Party Maps!)
• MapCruncher Integration!…MapCruncher is a tool for registering your raster maps to create map tiles for mashups. You can now add your MapCrunched layers to Collections
• “GeoWeb Exploration”…”one of the largest stores of local content on the web”
• Neighborhood Subscribe via GeoRSS….very cool feature allowing to subscribe to local updates of a given geographic area!
• Tour Enhancements Including Hi-Def Movies
• Directions and Traffic Enhancements
• Improved Display of KML Files Including Google MyMaps Links

There is already some buzz for the update from around the blogosphere including:

• Live Maps hits us with a big release
• New Live Search Maps is Live
• Microsoft Introduces Tool for Avoiding Traffic Jams
• New Live Search Maps is Live
• The New Maps Is Live
• The New Release of Live Maps and Virtual Earth 3D is now Live!

Congratulations to the Live Maps team!

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Under the category of cool things that you can accomplish with our very own Virtual Earth – 3DVIA 3D modeling application and Microsoft Virtual Earth, the above fly through was built for a presentation of the proposed Eos Generali building in the heart of the Paris business district.  We worked closely with several groups to produce the video including our old friends from Earthware (a.k.a. siege103 on 3DVIA.com) who produced many of the buildings that you see in the presentation.

Although you may not have the 3D modeling talent of Chris (Earthware) or Marc (3DVIA), you can produce the same concept on Virtual Earth today.  Everything you see above was produced through applications that are freely available right now.  The buildings were modeled with the Virtual Earth – 3DVIA version of our free Shape 3D modeling application and the “fly through” capability comes standard with Virtual Earth.  Marc has already promised a tutorial on how to produce your own that will be posted here soon.

The video was posted earlier on several sites including the Virtual Earth / Live Maps and Earthware blogs.  I like Michael’s second comment on the VE / Live Map blog…”It almost looks just like 2nd Life! I couldn’t help but notice that. It would be interesting to have a sort of 2nd Life in Virtual Earth. Where it takes place in more realistic setting and realistic people, don’t you? That would be neat.” 

Interesting, don’t you think?