Recreating History

Jim Boddie is new to trueSpace, and to 3D in general. One of his first projects is an amazing recreation of the Alamo, built in trueSpace and presented on Virtual Earth. With the anniversary of the battle on March 6th, we interviewed Jim to find out more about the project.

The Alamo rendered in Virtual Earth (background made lighter in post-process to highlight the model).

Tom: How long have you been using trueSpace for? What first attracted you to the software?

Jim: I am really new to trueSpace. I started using it in October. The attraction to me was its ease of use and completeness in scope. It is a great platform to learn CG. The real-time renderer allows you to make really good looking models quickly without having to deal with some of the more arcane technology of the off-line renderers.

Tom: What previous 3D work have you done before tackling the Alamo?

Jim: Nothing really, except as a manager at Bell Labs in the '80s, I helped launch a new venture called AT&T Pixel Machines which was an array processor for fast CGI rendering.

Tom: So what got you interested in the Alamo itself, to do this 3D reconstruction?

Jim: I am interested in American history and the story of the Alamo is compelling in that even today, there is some mystery about how the events unfolded in 1836 So many accounts are incomplete or contradictory. Like many people of my generation, I grew up with the lore of the Alamo as imprinted by John Wayne and Walt Disney. You can't help but wonder what you would have done in that situation. What was it like to be there? What did it even look like?

Virtual Earth birds eye view, shows the area is built-up today.

I visited the real thing for the first time only about 5 years ago. As has been said by others, the first thing people say when they get to San Antonio is 'Where is the Alamo'? Then the second thing they say when they get there is 'Is that all there is?'

Sadly, it is. The church is there of course, and the first floor of the Long Barack but the rest has all been overtaken by development.

After playing with WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), I became interested in learning about 3D and started to look for a good platform, and that's when I ran across a magazine that told about the free trueSpace7.6 from Caligari and Microsoft.

I am a big fan of the other free .Net Express development tools and thought that this might be just what I was looking for. After a period of evaluation and learning, I decided to tackle a real project with trueSpace, and I saw there was an opportunity to win a valuable prize by competing in the relatively new Virtual Earth category so I started to think about a suitable subject.

I thought that in order to win, I would need to develop something that demonstrated trueSpace's capabilities over other tools and that would be an interesting place to 'visit' in the virtual sense. The historical Alamo compound was a good fit because it would require significant modeling and texturing, and it was something that not everyone already knows about. Also, because its historical significance, I was pretty sure I could get enough information to make a reasonable model.

This led to my discovery of the Alamo Studies Forum and Mark Lemon's book, The Illustrated Alamo 1836, A Photographic Journey, which provided me with detailed information about the Alamo that was derived from extensive historical research and analysis.

Modeling in trueSpace on a floor plan.

Tom: What were the main benefits of using trueSpace for this project?

Jim: Easy to use. Very easy to apply and adjust textures. One-click export to Virtual Earth 3D

A photograph from today, compared to Jim's 3D reconstruction on the right.

Tom: How do you think these new 3D technologies, such as trueSpace and Virtual Earth, could change the fields of history and archaeology?

Jim: trueSpace VE3D can help students and researchers visualize places and structures that no longer exist. In the case of the Alamo, for example, a forum that I belong to have discussed some of the tactics of the attacking army and some of the obstacles they may have faced. With the 3D model, it would be possible to more easily see the tactical situation as it would have looked like on the ground.

Jim modeled details like the cannons.

Tom: What recent developments in 3D do you find most exciting, and what developments do you hope to see in the future?

Jim: To me, improvements in real-time rendering are the most interesting. I would hope to see real-time rivaling the quality of off-line renders in the not too-distant future!

Tom: What are your future plans for the Alamo reconstruction?

Jim: Some of the participants in the Alamo discussion group cannot see the VE3D model because of hardware limitations, so I am working on a more detailed model with ground textures so that

I can produce a short animated 'flythrough' video. Then, maybe I will work on an ultra detailed view for still images using an off-line renderer.

Links

View Jim's recreation in Virtual Earth

Visit the Alamo Studies Forum

Read about Mark Lemon's The Illustrated Alamo 1836, A Photographic Journey

Read more about Caligari's Virtual Earth contest