DDS Projects

The Digital Design Studio undertakes projects from basic, strategic and applied research through to consultancy and technology transfer.  Research and industrial contracts span arts, science and engineering disciplines and are integrated with academic activity to embrace imagination, multi-disciplinary thinking and the development and utilisation of new and emerging technologies. The DDS is a proactive leader in the development of new technologies, tools, techniques and methodologies that support new media and digital content creation markets. In particular, core research focuses on developing new techniques for interaction, user oriented interfaces, haptics, gesture, 3D sound and real-time photorealistic 3D visualisation.

The projects described on this page (see right), together with those on the Past Projects page, illustrate the range of research and commercial activities undertaken at the DDS.  These activities can be categorised into two main areas: visualisation and digital content creation, and real-time 3D interaction.

Visualisation and digital content creation

The DDS aims to advance the field of visualisation with a focus on creative, high quality digital animation, new media development, and interactive web applications.  It researches novel ways to exploit state of the art high-definition digital laser range scanning for urban and architectural visualisation as well as engineering applications.  3D visualisation methodology is applied to the field of product, process, historical and urban visualisation.

These technologies have been applied successfully to projects including the AHRC-funded 1938 British Empire Exhibition project and a wide range of industry sponsored ventures, including the Glasgow Urban Model.

The DDS has the capability to deliver all aspects of production through a well resourced facility.  This includes an Avid Media Composer video-editing suite, four seats of ProTools sound editing software, professional sound editing equipment, 2D and 3D content development tools, including Maya, 3D Studio, Multigen Creator, Adobe Creative Suite, Combustion, After Effects and Photoshop CS2, digital audio workstations, and a rendering cluster.

Automatic 3D data acquisition is provided by a Leica high-precision laser-range scanning system. Currently this is one of only two of its kind in the UK. It is capable of Full Dome scanning (the ability to scan over the top of buildings allowing full scan of building internals including their ceilings in one scan) to an accuracy of 5mm.  To accommodate the growing number of research projects concerned with simulation, design & planning and public interaction as well as commercial contracts in the visualisation field, the modelling team has grown from two modellers in 2003 to nine in 2007.

Real-time 3D interaction

The DDS researches novel ways to interact with digital data.  It puts a special focus on multi-modal interaction within real-time immersive 3D environments, using stereoscopic rendering, tactile feedback, gesture recognition, and spatialised audio rendering. It combines high-end projection technology and virtual reality with real-time machine vision to create the next generation of interactive systems.

Real-time 3D interaction has been at the core of many successful projects, including AutoEval sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, EPSRC-funded SCIFI and AHRC-funded Living Canvas.

The DDS has a range of state of the art 3D stereoscopic projection equipment, including a Fakespace Workbench, a large back-projected 3D display, an auto-stereoscopic LCD display, and a set of high-quality DLP projectors that can be configured for either a wide-screen cinematic high-resolution display or for passive stereoscopic projection. Teaching studios are equipped with digital projection systems.  The VR display environments are complemented with high-quality immersive audio rendering systems, including 12.1 speaker, 8 speaker, and 4.1 speaker surround setups.

The display systems are equipped with magnetic tracking systems and a range of 3D input devices, including data-gloves and force feedback devices (Phantom, CyberGrasp). The Virtual Reality (VR) hardware runs state of the art VR software, including the full suite of VEGA Prime, EON Reality Pro and SGI Performer development tools.