New app brings 3D models to life

Using Augmented Reality, a new app allows designers and would be designers to see what their creations would look like on actual ground with real sky above. SightSpace 3D provides a fast way of visualizing a design without computer rendering programs. The app enables mobile viewing of designs made in SketchUp, a 3D modeling program available for free from Google, on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 using a live camera or photo function.

Augmented Reality is technology that pulls digital graphics into real world environments by placing them in a user's field of vision. Instead of just pasting a view of a computer model in front of photo-realistic scenery, SightSpace 3D places the model into a user's real time camera view. By positioning their iPad or iPhone cameras, users can feel like they are walking around and through their creations as they move through the actual space of the chosen site. So even people who have a hard time picturing how flat drawings translate into three dimensional objects can understand what a design will look like.

Limitless Computing, makers of the app, encourage mobile users and their clients to use the product in order to visualize projects prior to construction. The program can incorporate more than just landscape and vegetation, so any existing object such as furniture and art can be brought into the view, in real time, to create an immersive experience.

Watch a video of the app below:

via: Dexigner
Images: Limitless Computing

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com