This video series takes you through every step of building a building in SketchUp and is taken from chapter 4 of "Google SketchUp for Dummies" in case you want to follow along. PART 1 explains how to switch to a 2D view to get you ready to build the floor plan. It's a good ide ...more
Google SketchUp is a free 3-D drafting program that can be quite useful for film makers. Use Google SketchUp to create models of your sets so you can pick the absolute best angles when shooting the scenes for your next film.
If you're following the classic Halloween playbook closely, you've already got a costume or three picked out, you've binged-watched your favorite horror movies, and you've likely visited a haunted house. But it's 2017, so how about trying something new, like a haunted house th ...more
You don't have to have an authentic 2-dimensional CAD drawing to model a house or building in SketchUp, all you really need is a floor plan or good image. If you don't have a CAD drawing to use to create your SketchUp model, learn how you can take an image of any floor plan an ...more
This video series shows you all the steps involved in properly presenting your models inside SketchUp. The videos correspond to Chapter 10 of the book Google SketchUp for Dummies. PART 1 discusses standing in the right spot and how to use the position camera tool. PART 2 expla ...more
There are varied approaches to using SketchUp with CAD files. This video series presents one method we suggest as it is quick and creates a good clean SketchUp model. In the first video we import a CAD plan, group and lock it, delete extra layers and create a unique layer for ...more
Use a CAD plan as a reference for your Google SketchUp project. This tutorial shows you how to use the rectangle tool to create building walls and outline your building for SketchUp. Use the eraser tool afterwards so you can erase unneeded lines.
This video tutorial is in the Computers & Programming category which will show you how to build a simple house in SketchUp. Start with the floor plan, draw a rectangular main living space and attach a small extra room. Next you use the push pull tool and pull the house up to a ...more
What do you do when you desperately need to put a parking garage into the bottom floor of your Victorian apartment building, but the city's Department of Planning says "No". The simple and expensive answer: Create an elaborate secret garage door. If you own a pretty building, ...more
Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons ...more
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more
Voice-activated digital assistants from Amazon, Apple, and Google currently have the upper hand for home automation integrations, but a new augmented reality mobile app promises to give homeowners and renters visual control over their connected appliances. Smart AR Home, avai ...more
Apple announced today at WWDC that Apple Maps is about to get a lot more detailed with its inclusion of floor plans of shopping malls and airports. This will be a welcomed feature to Maps as users will be able to quickly see which stores the malls have and how to get to them e ...more
With the announcement of ARKit 2.0 at WWDC 2018, Apple is bringing some powerful new capabilities to mobile augmented reality apps this fall. Shared experiences, persistent content, and 3D object recognition will enable more social, transcendent, and immersive experiences for ...more
Walsh, a new community under construction on 7,200 acres of former ranch land near Fort Worth, Texas, will one day contain 15,000 homes. To sell prospective home buyers on the development before it is fully built, Republic Property Group is leaning on technology. A high-spee ...more
Visualization is one of the obvious commercial applications for technology such as Microsoft's HoloLens. The ability to see the assets of a project in different scales—from micro to larger-than-life—with a quick air tap will play a large part in the coming augmented reality re ...more
While Google has a water-resistant phone in the Pixel 2, its CES booth was anything but. According to Tech Crunch, Google had to shut down its two-level outdoor booth once it began to rain at the Las Vegas trade show. Even though Las Vegas is the driest city in the country, Mo ...more
Comic-Con International: San Diego, better known to you and I as "San Diego Comic-Con", is coming very soon; and if you're like me and live far, far away from San Diego (sigh), Twitter is now offering a helpful alternative to keep you in the loop at this year's event. Twitter ...more
If online retail is war (and who says it isn't), then CGTrader is prepared to arm its allies with augmented reality ammunition. On Wednesday, at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, the 3D content provider unveiled ARsenal, an e-commerce software tool th ...more
Computer vision company Blippar has already dabbled with outdoor AR navigation, but now it wants to make it easier for people to make their way through indoor spaces with augmented reality. On Thursday, the company introduced its Indoor Visual Positioning platform for AR navi ...more
Thanks to ARKit, homeowners and apartment dwellers can visualize just about every aspect of their abodes, from furniture and decor with the IKEA Place, Houzz, and Amazon apps to new countertops with Cambria's app and retractable awnings via Markilux. Now, that list of availab ...more
Sending fleets of ships into battle as an ancient Nordic god? Sign me up. Mixed reality development company Immersion VR announced in May of this year that they would be developing a game called "The Ancients" in both AR and VR with artist Jakub Rozalski. Since then, they hav ...more
Asobo Studios, one of the first companies to partner with Microsoft on HoloLens development, is applying their expertise towards building applications for various business verticals through their internal HoloForge Interactive team. Their latest proof of concept is a holograp ...more
Pottery Barn has teamed up with Google to create 3D Room View, a new mobile app to allow all wannabe interior designers (like me) to pick out the perfect couch, table, or whatever, and then overlay it onto a spot in his or her house. I used to obsess over the Pottery Barn Tee ...more
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more
While the tech industries giants and eager startups chase the dream of widespread consumer augmented reality, enterprise AR is living the dream today. Now, riding on the strength of present-day return on investment over future potential, enterprise AR platform maker Scope AR ...more
While some companies like IKEA and Lowe's zig towards ARKit to entice shoppers, Target has opted to zag to broader appeal with an augmented reality see-before-you-buy tool for its mobile website. With Target's new See In Your Space Tool, shoppers can visualize more than 200 f ...more
In off-record discussions with AR experts, the consensus on ARKit is that it takes a software approach to the depth-sensors available on Tango devices. As a result, the toolkit has shortcomings, such as detecting walls and vertical surfaces. TapMeasure, a new app from spatial ...more
Mimesys, whose core focus has always been about creating holographic representations of humans for virtual and augmented reality, has released a video showing off their holographic communication platform in action. This new communication tool uses a combination of virtual real ...more
Many operators use elevators to control access to particular floors, whether it be the penthouse at a hotel or a server room in an office building. However, the law requires them all to have a fire service mode, which gives emergency access to restricted floors, and a hacker c ...more
A potentially groundbreaking new app targeting retail financial services hopes to bring augmented reality to your local bank and credit union. Last week, Kony, an enterprise applications developer based in Austin, Texas, introduced its Digital Banking Platform. The software ...more
Sports gaming company ePlay Digital, Inc. is looking to capitalize on the fall launch of iOS 11 and ARKit with an augmented reality fantasy sports app. With ePlay GO, the company is borrowing a few pages out of Pokémon Go's playbook, with players finding virtual avatars of at ...more
While the world is only recently becoming aware of its existence, augmented reality has been around in some form or another since the '90s. In the last decade, with the advancement and miniaturization of computer technology — specifically smartphones and tablets — AR has becom ...more
According to Electrek, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in a covert conference call with a select few investors, commented in detail about his plan to have Tesla's Model 3 driving on the road earlier than we all expected. We've known that the Model 3 "beta prototypes" were already as bei ...more
Trimble is integrating its mixed reality applications into the DAQRI Smart Helmet to enable outdoor and on-site support for design, construction, and heavy industry as part of a collaboration the companies announced today. A provider of advanced solutions for industrial compa ...more
Every year, tech companies use April 1st as a means to prove that they have a sense of humor. Sometimes their jokes are good for a chuckle, other times the gags backfire disastrously. For the most part, however, we'd be better off without the bulk of these annual antics. But ...more
The year 2019 was filled with all the normal peaks and valleys of the tech business cycle, but this year was particularly important in a space as relatively young as the augmented reality industry. What once seemed like a vast fertile bed of mobile AR apps, powered by Apple's ...more
LOOOK, a Seattle-based mixed reality and development studio, can now peer into the future with their new geotechnical engineering visualization application for Microsoft HoloLens. Developed in partnership with BCG Engineering, a geotechnical consulting firm based in Vancouver ...more
Contrary to popular belief, augmented reality apps have been available for a while now. I remember using the Layar app (still available for iOS and Android) to explore nearby businesses and landmarks with varying success via an early-generation Android handset. It would be ha ...more
Silence spreads over these mountains like nothing I've ever felt. If I didn't have Moby blasting in my earphones, there'd probably be no other sounds around. Well, except for someone, Phil probably, murmuring in a nearby tent just low enough to make his words indiscernible. W ...more
Considering Rovio Entertainment quite literally owes its existence to Apple and the App Store, it may ruffle a few feathers that the company has opted to aim the augmented reality debut of its blockbuster Angry Birds franchise at Magic Leap instead. Developed in partnership w ...more
Welcome to the first annual Next Reality 30, our list of people who've made the biggest impact on the augmented reality space in the last 12 months — and what a 12-month roller-coaster ride it's been. Apple introduced ARKit-powered apps last fall, Google launched ARCore for An ...more
We've shown you the best augmented reality headsets, and now it's time to show you the rest. These are the AR headsets you've probably never heard of or even seen. The AR headsets that, in some cases, have a shot at the big time, and may one day reach widespread adoption, and ...more
Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) feature ...more
In the past, to see a pre-constructed state of the house that you would one day live in, you had to be able to read blueprints or hire an artist to sketch it out. Later came the ability to have a 3D rendering of that house on a screen, but you'd still have to work hard to envi ...more
It's a well-known fact (supported by myriad sources, including Fitness Magazine) that in order to lose a pound, you need to cut and/or burn 3,500 calories... which, divided by the number of days in the week, equals 500 calories a day. So, if you cut or burn 500 calories per d ...more
This year, like every year before it, Black Friday sales are starting earlier than ever. A lot of stores will be opening their doors as early as 5pm on Thanksgiving to get a head start on the madness (and it really is madness). As we've discussed in the past, one of the keys t ...more
The latest film addition in the American-produced Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider's Web, was just released on Blu-ray a few days ago. As you could expect, the movie has many hacking scenes throughout, just like the previous English and Swedish language movies centere ...more