Between the Lines

Smithsonian and a Whale of a Reality Capture

In this months June 2012 Smithsonian Magazine there is a great article involving Reality Capture by Smithsonian curator Nicholas D. Pyenson Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals where you capture an existing object in a digital form such as a 3D mesh or point cloud. The article is “Save the Whale Bones – Laser scans record fossils” on page 84 of this issue and online at How Two Laser Cowboys-Saved The Day “http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/How-Two-Laser-Cowboys-Saved-The-Day.html”. The article details a unique archeological dig in Chile that was a collection of ancient whales located in the desert where a highway was going to be constructed, so time was of the essence to preserve this scientific anomaly of a group of full whale fossils in a land location.

The “Laser Cowboys” Vince Rossi and Adam Metallo of the the Smithsonian 3-D digitization team were sent to the field location to work with Nick to determine a method to preserve the existing scene. The laser cowboys used a Faro Edge laser arm and a Faro Focus3D laser scanner to capture the scene in a detailed and accurate 3D point cloud to preserve the information long after the fossils have been relocated to make way for the impending highway project.

At the end of the project they took photos of the scene and used the free Autodesk 123D Catch to generate a 3D mesh model and then 3D printed a scaled miniature of the model . How great to have a miniature of a large project to show others, or place as an exhibit, or the coolest paperweight on your desk ever.

Having the digital models and 3D prints will allow the sharing of accurate data in digital and physical forma for scientist all over the world to determine what caused this and to preserve this unique scene forever.

Time lapse video of capture of the whales and more on their YouTube page:
http://www.youtube.com/user/3DSmithsonianDigi?feature=watch
Time_Lapse_05_G9_Arm_Scanning
Fossil_Whale_B31_short

Read more on the Laser Cowboys digitizing the massive Smithsonian collection by Cnet Smithsonian turns to 3D to bring collection to the world

They have a Facebook page Smithsonian 3D Digitization

Cheers & happy 3D scanning!
-Shaan

100k

WOW! almost 100,000 unique Between the Lines blog readers this month.
A Sincere Thank You to every single reader!

Autodesk Octo-Copter Video of Kenya

Last month myself and Gonzales Martinez spent a few weeks in Kenya with Dr, Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute and Yang Deming of the National Museum of Kenya. We were researching several aspects of aerial photography and from a remote controlled copter to not only capture video and photos by map and locate areas of interest for fossil artifacts. We were in the Northern most part of Kenya in the Lake Turkana basin where the earliest evidence of man has been discovered over the years including several skulls dating back millions of years. Gonzalo has taken some of our video from both my camera and the onboard Octo-Copter video as well as photos and posted the video for everyone to enjoy.

Autodesk Octo-copter aerial video of flying in Northern Turkana region of Kenya. http://youtu.be/KvhJu6b0gug?hd=1

Cheers,
Shaan

Fifty Plus Shades of Gray Scale

I don’t know what all the fuss about “Fifty Shades of Grey” is, but in AutoCAD alone we have at least 255 shades of gray scale, dithering, and then the powerful monochrome plots!

Shoulder Work Ahead

I am not sure how it really happened but perhaps one of my falls while rock and slot canyon climbing were the reason or one of the various travel mishaps on a plane with luggage, but in any case both of my shoulders are requiring surgery. It started last year when I noticed I could not raise my arms above my shoulders or throw thing (I love to throw things.) It got worse over time to the point the pain was really bad and I would almost pass out if I moved my arm wrong. My doctors said it was most likely inflation from all my hiking with overstuffed packs or lugging all my computers from airport to airport, and that it would go away taking 2400mg of ibuprofen a day.

It did not go away, but got worse (much worse) right before I had to go to Kenya with a lot of gear on my back. So 3 days before my trip they sent me down a loud tube otherwise known as a MRI for 2 hours and then determined that I have actually both shoulders with torn rotator cuffs. So I took prednisone to tie me over the Kenya trip but now I must get the surgery to repair the torn rotator cuffs and damaged bursa pads.

Being stubborn, I thought well it is a day surgery doing on one arm first then the second a few months later so I will just take the afternoon off and then get back online that night. I then learned that this is no simple surgery and that I will not be able to lift over 5 pounds for 6 months and that I will be down for a minimum of 2 days unable to do much other than moan.

Has anyone else had this surgery to repair a rotator cuff and bursa, any tips and advise?

So I will be offline Wednesday and Thursday with high hopes to be back online Friday.

-Shaan

Camtasia Studio 8 – Create Video Smooth as Butter

If you create and edit training videos, screen recordings, demonstrations and product launch videos or more then you have most likely used Camtasia like we do here at Autodesk. I had also converted so many people I know in blogging to this products once they seen how powerful it was. After 7 releases of Camtasia as a user myself my longtime friends at TechSmith decided it was time to re-write the entire architecture of the Camtasia product to provide even more features and a more modern software base to build much more cool and amazing features on top of.

Here is what you see when you first start to install the new Camtasia 8, and for a geek like me this gets me all excited seeing “info’tainment” and dialogs knowing that a new software will soon be on my desktop ready to be used and abused.

Here is the new and updated user interface. It is more fast, easier, and looks great.

Here are the new features and it also includes the features you loved about past Camtasia releases minus stability issues. It is now what I would call a full video editor and can be used for editing and producing almost any video from your promotional demo of a product or technical overview training session to your home videos.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia-whats-new.html

• Re-written from the ground up!
• Video as smooth as melted creamy butter! I am not kidding, no more stutter ridden web video from any editor use this Camtasia 8 to capture and produce the video and really impress people with the quality of video.
• New formats including HTML5 support!
• Visual Effects!
• Animate and index content!
• Multi layer and hierarchical track editor with many new enhancements for the Camtasia veterans and newbies.
• Post and host your videos at Screencast.com

Give their 30 day free trial a test and I bet you agree with me it is worth every penny. If you need something very basic and cheap like free also check out their Jing.

A picture can tell a thousand words, but a video tells the entire story!

Cheers,
Shaan

Design, Raised to the Power of the Cloud

During the course of today (and throughout the week) you’ll likely hear us at Autodesk talking about the latest deployment of Autodesk 360 and Autodesk BIM 360. If you’re familiar with the notion of cloud based services, then Autodesk 360 will be a natural way to extend your designs beyond your local desktop. The power of Autodesk 360 starts to compound when you consider that mobile access means that I could collaborate on this new tower concept design while I was making new friends in Kenya.

Lest we forget the cloud gives (virtually) limitless compute power aka infinite computing which makes it great for computationally intensive processes like rendering, visualization, and simulation. On your desktop workstation you do not have the ability to scale almost infinitely by adding more and more cores hosted on remote servers to complete the project fast. It makes that new 8-core workstation such a wimpy tool for design and engineering!

One way to get and stay connected with the Autodesk 360 team is to click over to the recently updated Facebook page. Don’t forget to head over to 360.autodesk.com, login, and try out this innovative cloud based technology and the advantages and benefits it provides.

Autodesk BIM 360 takes Infrastructure Modeling to the Cloud

This is how we used to handle infrastructure scale collaboration, conceptual design and feasibility evaluation.

Today, we introduce Autodesk BIM 360. Autodesk BIM 360 is the next generation of BIM, is for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Autodesk BIM 360 helps multidiscipline design and construction teams improve project outcomes by moving computational-intensive tasks to the cloud, enabling more rapid visualization and simulation and optimized collaboration with access to intelligent data-rich models.

Conceptual design and feasibility evaluation service, featuring the Autodesk 360 Infrastructure Modeler plug-in, enables users to publish, store, and manage large models in the cloud. Users can invite other authorized team members to access, download, and edit shared models and scenarios simultaneously, and review multiple project proposals using the same data more securely without sending files via email or external hard drives.

via bimontherocks.typepad.com

Never Sleep Near a Hyrax

Recently while in Kenya I found out what a Hyrax is, and why they are evil and not to be slept near. A Hyrax is a small rodent looking thing that is actually related to the elephant with little small tusks.

Now here is why I call these cute unique animals evil, they have a tendency to scream at about 160 decibels from 10pm to 5am sounding like someone is being murdered. I did not get any sleep the two nights I had one near where I was sleeping. These critters were more alarming than lions roaring, hyenas evil laughing or jackals barking in Kenya at night.

So I present for your listening displeasure my iPhone recording of the Hyrax at 2am. I wanted to make him into a nice spicy little stew.
Hyrax in Kenya at 2am.mp3

(photo credit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrax)

ScriptPro for AutoCAD 32bit and 64bit

ScriptPro for AutoCAD has been around for many years and for those that have tried it, it is a very valuable time saving free tool. ScriptPro is used to batch process files in AutoCAD using a script so perhaps a minor edit to DWG files such as adding company standard layers, a stamp, a title block, audit and repairs and much more.

ScriptPro for AutoCAD is free and now available in both Windows 32bit and 64bit for 2008 and up releases of AutoCAD based products. The tricky part which I answered in a blog post comment this week is that the 32bit and 64bit versions are located in two places as the 64bit version is actually on Autodesk Labs plugin of the month as it had to be re-written from scratch for the new platform while the 32bit version is in the standard AutoCAD Migration Tools downloads.

Download ScriptPro 32bit and 64 bit for AutoCAD 2008 and later.

ScriptPro 32bit download now

ScriptPro 64bit download now Just extract and then copy the bin folder and run ScriptPro. It also includes the source code.

AutoCAD Migration Tools

• Autodesk Customization Conversion Tools
  Convert your customized menus, files, command aliases, and layer states, and script with greater ease.
• DWG TrueView (Includes DWG Convert) – FREE
  View and convert any AutoCAD or AutoCAD-based drawing file for compatibility with any version of AutoCAD between AutoCAD Release 14 and the current version of AutoCAD, This free download no longer requires AutoCAD to be installed to run.

Autodesk 360 Error - Hotfix Now Available

I experienced this myself on my system most likely due to all the pre-release versions of products I had on my machine and various version of files and file name conflicts. The issue is the Autodesk 360 icon would error on my system tray frequently. I had been working with the QA & software development team on this to research it.

There is now a hotfix available for Autodesk 2013 products to solve this but make sure to read the ReadMe and sign-out of Autodesk 360 first from your app before installing the hotfix.

Hotfix - Persistent Autodesk Sync error in the system tray

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=19683742&linkID=9242539

Hope this resolves the issue you may be experiencing.
Shaan

Autodesk Smoke 2013 for Mac Pre Release Available Free

A free pre-release trial of the new Autodesk Smoke 2013 for Mac is now available for immediate download at the Product Trial page. This was the hot new product release announced for professional video editors and shown at NAB 2012.

 

NAB 2012: Introducing the Radically Redesigned Autodesk Smoke Video Editing Software
”Powerful Editing and Visual Effects Software Offers High-End Creative Tools at a New, Affordable Price “

See video demos of Smoke 2013′s new features

Autodesk unveils retooled Smoke 2013 for Mac | CG Channel

Read a more detailed preview of Smoke 2013 on Creative Planet Network

If you use a Mac to do high-end video editing, go grab a pre-release of Smoke 2013 for Mac now. http://usa.autodesk.com/smoke-for-mac/trial/

I Kissed a Giraffe, and I Think I Liked It...

I recently spent a couple weeks in Kenya mostly working from sunup to sundown with Dr. Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute, Deming Yang of the National Museums of Kenya and my colleague Gonzalo Martinez.of Autodesk. I thought I might share a fun photo with you from the Giraffe Centre located just outside Nairobi Kenya before our research work in Northern Kenya began.

So here is me taking a big wet kiss from a rare female Rothschild Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi.)

http://flic.kr/p/cd41a7

Trivia: Giraffes can have a 50cm (about 19-1/2”) long sandpaper textures tongue with a slimy grass flavored slime coating.

I am still awaiting the call from this Giraffe, but sadly she has not called me yet.

-Shaan

MakerBot and Met Museum Puts Historic Artwork In Your Hands

Our wildly creative 3D mad scientist friends at MakerBot recently gathered a group of artists and captured several objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in a Hackathon event using Autodesk’s own 123D Catch which is free and available to use on your PC, your iPad or on the web. They were then able to create 3D prints from their MakerBot 3D printers as well they posted many on the Thingiverse for everyone to mod or print.

• Met MakerBot Hackathon: Art To The People!

• Met 3-D: The Museum's First 3-D Scanning and Printing

• Met Heads Collection, Available On Thingiverse

• Met MakerBot Hackathon Art Now On Thingiverse!

• Pictures from the Met MakerBot Hackathon

Another pseudo related MakerBot & 123D Catch post from the MakerBot blog:
For Your Next Trip To The Wax Museum “Your Fired!”

Experimenting on what you can capture of the world around you using a standard digital camera or iPad is what all the fun and excitement is about. Give Autodesk 123D Catch a try along with the other great & free Autodesk 123D products like 123D, 123D Make, 123D Sculpt.

I wish I could have been at the event with Bre Pettis and the group but I was doing some research in the wilds of Kenya.

Cheers,
Shaan

(photo credit: MakerBot Flickr Photostream: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzLV8cq)

AutoCAD 2013 Help Online

If you need to look up something in the AutoCAD 2013 Help documentation and do not have access to AutoCAD, you can always visit the online documentation site. http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2013/ENU/index.html

You can send a direct link (long link) to specific topic to a coworker such as this direct link to the Hatch topic. 
http://docs.autodesk.com/ACD/2013/ENU/files/GUID-27C104F2-B687-4025-B50B-A58E37329832.htm

You can also download an offline version of Help if you need that.
Offline Help Download http://www.autodesk.com/acd-2013-helpdownload-enu

More Autodesk products online documentation are available:
http://usa.autodesk.com/support/documentation/

AutoCAD 2012 and AutoCAD LT 2012 Service Pack 2 Released for Download

In a continuing effort to improve customer experience and product quality we released a Service Pack 2 for AutoCAD 2012 and AutoCAD LT 2012.

AutoCAD 2012 Service Pack 2
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL19500680

AutoCAD LT 2012 Service Pack 2
http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=DL19501802

Please make sure to read the important details in the ReadMe document about what has been addressed and important installation notes.

Every time you experience an “unplanned exit” from AutoCAD please make sure to send in a CER report as this is where we get a great deal of clues on the problems details and possible methods to fix it in a hotfix or service pack.

Cheers,
Shaan

Back from Kenya

I arrived back home late Friday. To sum the trip up in one word “Amazing” would be appropriate. I will be posting more on what we did in Kenya and the experience including a couple crazy travel stories over the next couple of weeks. As I review and edit my 6000+ photos, I will be uploading some of them to my Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/btl/.

I did get to see wild lions, cobra, scorpions, rhino, crocodile, zebra, warthogs, mongoose, a giraffe (and kissed it) and so much more but we were not on safari or at club med. We worked every day sun up to sun down carrying heavy gear in some really hot weather and rough terrain and traveled some of the worst roads imaginable to do research on aerial imagery capture with the remote operated  Autodesk Octo-Copter.

Still battling some infections on my legs due to some thorn tree wounds and had two days of IV antibiotics to be safe that they did not get worse as well as dealing with the infamous jet-lag monster. So very glad to be home but I have so many stories to tell about amazing places and people.

Do I dare look in my email inbox…that’s more frightening than having a scorpion in your tent or a nile crocodile in the water you are swimming in.

Cheers,
Shaan