Brian Huculak Landscape Architect

Click here to download the movie (2.3 MB)

This is a multi-scene movie I prepared as a quick and dirty 'digital sketch' for our client to illustrate the design constraints of the project and have a bit of fun (okay, I was also fishing for some extra work, too). Click-and-drag in the main window to see the transparency illusion. Double-click on a hot spot to open a closer view (You'll have to find them, I'm not telling). Click-and-drag in the closer view to see two view states. Use QTVR's built in navigation tools to zoom in/out, move around and navigate back to the main view.

How'd He Do That? Remember, the key is... Thinking Outside the Box... "Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible..." While the written process may sound long, it's really fairly easy to do. Here's a quick overview of the step by step process. Essentially, think of it has having to create a "BEFORE" image and an "AFTER" image. You see two things, one image "BEFORE" you click and drag the mouse, one image "AFTER" (two view states). 1. Prepare the original rendering in PowerCADD. Work directly over the digital air photo to prepare the design and color rendering using basic PowerCADD techniques and Color Portfolio library parts. 2. Turn off the air photo and text layers and save the rendered data as a PICT file (File-A). Then turn off all the rendering data layers and text layers and save the photo only out of PowerCADD as a PICT file (File-B). Now, save the entire "Finished drawing", text, photo, rendering, etc, as a PICT file (File-C). The BEFORE image in our slight-of-hand trick will be File-C. 3. Open the File-A and File-B in Photoshop. Copy File-A and paste into File-B and adjust the opacity of the Photoshop layer to achieve the desire effect. Save this composite image (File-D) which will be our "AFTER" image. 4. Using QuickTime VR Authoring Studio, I created a QuickTime OBJECT movie by importing File-C and File-D into two separate frames (view states in QTVR lingo). Save the composed QTVR object movie and you're done. You now have the main view state (BEFORE) which, when you drag the mouse over the image, appears to become transparent (AFTER) and let you see through the rendering to the underlying existing conditions / air photo. A picture really is worth a thousand words. To create the multi-scene version, I followed the same basic steps, I used the PowerCADD rendering as the "BEFORE" image, then created an "AFTER" image for each close up area. I didn't spend a whole lot of time preparing detailed AFTER images, just enough to whet our client's appetite. Remember, no one wrote QTVR authoring programs for this type of 'architectural visualization'... but if you read between the lines it's really pretty simple. Brian Huculak

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