I’m figuring that, with all of the press that this project is getting, Autodesk and Steelblue are going to have to start selling this incredible 3D rendering of San Francisco. I first saw this amazing masterpiece of 3D art of The Verge (who have some additional mind-blowing images) and it blew my mind. The level of detail is crazy. Check out the video below.
3D printed model of San Francisco – making of from steelblue on Vimeo.
According to the Autodesk blog, the model was created to aid real-estate developer Tishman Speyer in telling the story of urban development in the rapidly changing SOMA neighborhood. The future use and application of this kind of detailed 3D rendering is endless. As O’Brien Chalmers, president of Steelblue states:
“For developers, architects, urban planners, city officials and the public at large, there is nothing quite like a scale model of your city to gain new insights into your surrounds. With 3D printing, we add in a rapid-prototyping capability. We can swap in buildings or entire city blocks to explore design options and to keep the model up to date in rapidly evolving neighborhoods. Adding layers of data visualizations gives us even more power to understand and visualize the way new buildings and infrastructure will impact the urban landscape and the people who live and work there.”
It will be interesting to see if the Autodesk/Steelblue team reproduce the rest of hilly San Francisco. If they do, you know it’s going to be cool to see.
