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From Photos to 3D: Creating Custom Models with AI for Creative Street Scenes

· 5 min read
Kieran Farr
Creator of 3DStreet

A split image showing a physical toy car on the left and its 3D model counterpart in a street scene on the right

Have you ever found yourself designing a street scene and wishing you had that perfect 3D model to bring your vision to life? Whether it's a unique piece of street furniture, a local landmark, or even a toy car, traditional 3D modeling can be time-consuming and requires specialized skills. But what if you could turn any object into a 3D model with just a couple of photos and some AI magic? Let's explore how to do exactly that!

Visualizing Sustainable Transportation: Dodoma's Urban Evolution

· 4 min read
Eric Mulinge
2024 Transport Analyst Intern, World Bank
Agatha Haule
Agatha Haule
2024 Transport Analyst Intern, World Bank

In Tanzania's rapidly growing capital city of Dodoma, our team used 3DStreet to create digital twins of proposed street safety improvements along critical corridors, helping stakeholders visualize and evaluate sustainable transportation alternatives for this evolving urban center.

Announcing Open Street Map for 3DStreet Integration

· 3 min read
Kieran Farr
Creator of 3DStreet

High resolution 3D map tiles have become a popular choice for adding immersive local context to 3DStreet scenes. However, sometimes the most interesting places on Earth have the least availability of detailed 3D map tiles -- such as large parts of Africa and South America. Even for locations with detailed 3D tiles coverage, we've heard from users that sometimes the realism of the 3D tiles can distract from the focus of presenting proposed street projects.

In these cases, our new integration with Open Street Map (OSM) offers new dimensions to our mapping capabilities.

Open Street Map Integration Screenshot of San Francisco City Hall A screenshot of the new 3DStreet OSM integration showing San Francisco City Hall.

3DStreet Intersections Early Access

· 3 min read
Sam Rothstein
3DStreet Contributor

My name is Sam Rothstein and I’m happy to share my work on a new street intersection component for 3DStreet. This is a first version of a highly requested feature and I'm looking forward to seeing what the 3DStreet community can create.

In this post I'll share how I got involved in 3DStreet, the features of the Intersection component, and what's coming next!

Open-sourcing 3D traffic safety objects with University of Oregon I3 Program

· 4 min read
Luke Walker
AR Designer & Researcher

I'm Luke Walker, a recent graduate of the Immersive Media Communications Master's program from the University of Oregon and I'm proud to share the open-source release of 3D traffic safety device models as a result of a collaboration with the University of Oregon’s Incubating Interdisciplinary Initiatives (I3) 2023 award program for "Developing Augmented Reality (AR) Visualization Tools to Increase Sustainable Transportation."

The I3 program fosters new research projects across disciplines, in this case communications & planning -- advised by Dr. Danny Pimentel in UO's School of Journalism and Communication, Dr. Marc Schlossberg in UO's School of Planning, Public Policy and Management with 3DStreet serving as an outside technical partner.