Manchester’s population in 3-d

This is a 3-D flythrough animation showing population density in Manchester. Click on the image to see the video. ( Very low-res, I don’t have space for a high-res version.)

I made this on behalf of Martin Dodge, Geographer at the University of Manchester, who submitted it to the exhibition ‘ Mapping Manchester: Cartographic Stories of the City’. The Exhibition is on at Manchester’s John Rylands Library on Deansgate until January 17 2010.

I used ArcGIS 9.2, census data and a couple of days time to create the animation. ArcGIS does a decent job for the occasional simple flythrough. If you want to do professional 3D animation, like the guys from Arup did for Manchester, you need much better resources in terms of software, data and time. (Envy!)