Greenspace voxel models

These models are presented in the reverse order in which they were made. The older models give an idea of the processes and materials tried, and the mistakes made along the way.

1. White plastic 3D prints, 180 x 180mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Luton. The model on the left includes all buildings and greenspace. The model on the right shows the same area with only the greenspace. The lack of connectivity between green areas is very evident in this model - lack of connectivity between suitable habitat areas is problematic for wildlife.

2. Full colour sandstone 3D print 170 x 180mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Luton. Colours are representative of the classifications in the voxel data - brown buildings, grey roads, pale green grass, mid-green shrubs, dark green trees. Each voxel is a block with a 1.5m x 1.5m base and 0.5m high – in Minecraft, the only blocks available are cubes. Directly translating the voxel data into Minecraft results in a height distortion, where the model is stretched along the y axis, making trees and buildings taller. To remedy the height distortion in the Minecraft Walkthroughs, we used nine minecraft blocks in a 3x3 square to represent each voxel. [file luton2020_0.2_res.obj]

3. Blue extruded polystyrene foam CNC milled topography 400 x 400mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Milton Keynes. This model contains all buildings and greenspace, shown from overhead and in close-up.

4. Taupe rigid polyurethane high-density foam milled topography 100 x 100mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Milton Keynes. This material is the most robust tried, with the highest level of detail, though it is brittle if dropped. Additionally a beautiful texture is produced on the flat areas from the drill. Voxel duplication and mirroring were fixed - at this point we could see that the threshold was set too high meaning that most of the greenspace is absent. [file MK.9.24.obj]

5. Orange extruded polyurethane high-density foam milled topography 180 x 180mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Luton. This material is more robust than the blue foam, and provides slightly more detail. Each voxel is doubled in size horizontally, the visualisation is mirrored, and the threshold was set too high meaning that most of the greenspace is absent. [file luton2020_0.2_res.obj]

6. Blue extruded polystyrene foam CNC milled topography 400 x 400mm, from Minecraft .obj file, Luton. This model contains buildings, and a small amount of greenspace. Each voxel is doubled in size horizontally, the visualisation is mirrored (see overlay on map), and the threshold was set too high meaning that most of the greenspace is absent. It is also evident from the overlay that the co-ordinate in the geotiff files are shifted slightly (see white transparent box over the map), likely due to differences in projections. [file luton2020_0.2_res.obj]