Geez, didn’t realize it’s been so long since posting here. Guess I should at least post something before the year’s out. Not much progress lately on Jax3D, but Viktor Veličko did release a new update to LWCAD which is pretty awesome. Still haven’t sat down to learn all the tools, but I’m working on it.

I’ve been taking survey photos this week, so I haven’t been concentrating on modeling much lately. While surveying for reference images, I took my first crack at creating an HDR photo today during sunset. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

For those not familiar with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, creating an HDR image requires taking several exposures of the same photo, then using specialized software to combine the photos into one image. The resulting image has a tonal range of light information that a standard 8-bit digital photo cannot produce. This allows you to control the tonal range of the image, more or less brightening the shadows, and darkening the highlights all at once, so that you have more information in both of those areas than you normally would.

To create the HDR image I used Photomatix Basic v1.2 by HDRsoft. The Basic version of Photomatix is freeware and offers a limited set of options compared to the Pro version.

In the foreground you can see the recently completed exterior of the Penninsula, along with The Strand directly behind it. In the distance is the Main Street Bridge and the Northbank Riverwalk. It rained yesterday and looked like it was going to again today, which made for great clouds in the sky for the photo. I was standing on the Southbank Riverwalk to take this photo.

The goal will be to get 3D renderings to look this good. Back to work…

I just picked up the latest version of Swift 3D LW3. This software is pretty great. I’ve only had a chance to render out a few test scenes but it does a nice job at rendering my LW scenes to a vector Flash file.

This software will be used to create an interactive downtown tour once the modeling is completed. At that point the blog will become more of a side point and the focus of the site will be on the interface and the renderings.