Lumion 3D

I've just stumbled upon Lumion 3D visualization software, courtesy of the Digital Urban blog.  The free version of Lumion produces stunning output and can import greyscale heightmaps (from ArcGIS) and building and object models in collada format, exported from SketchUp. Output is in the form of high quality still images or rendered movies, the free version of the software adds a watermark in the top left corner.  

Above is a great example of the results achievable with the free version, this movie won the 2011 Lumion competition gaining a prize of $I0000 and a free copy of the software.  I have yet to see an easier to use piece of visualization software and I recommend immediate download and playing in time for the 2012 competition!

Learning ArcGIS 10

Year 1 distance learning students begin part two of the Introduction to GIS module this week with an intensive look at ESRI's ArcGIS 10.  Content will appear on webCT over the next two weeks, and there will be opportunity to take courses from ESRI's Virtual Campus.

Data for the non-assessed exercises for this module are now available as a single download from dropbox, here.

Note that the majority of the lectures for this part of the module are delivered as Microsoft PowerPoint shows, if you don't possess PowerPoint a free viewer can be downloaded from here.