Agenda - Planning Commission - 04/05/2012

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to control the location of the sun by date and time of day. Pictometry In 2005 Bing Maps (formerly known as Virtual Earth and Windows Live Local) started offering oblique- angle, bird's -eye imagery of cities and towns. These photo- graphs are provided by the Rochester -based company Pictometry, which crisscrosses the skies in low- flying airplanes to capture images of Earth at different angles. While the usefulness of Pictometry photos on Bing Maps is mostly limited to seeing unique per- spectives of Earth, software developed and provided by Pictometry significantly extends the functionality and usefulness of these images. As Pictometry captures its photo graphs, each pixel of the images is georefer- enced in three dimensions — latitude, longi- tude, and altitude. With Pictometry Online, Pictometry Field Study, or its plug -ins for ArcGIS and AutoCAD, end users are able to measure area, bearing, distance, height, elevation, and slope /pitch of anything vis- ible in the image. Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster image editing program that has been around for more than 20 years. Although there is little com- petition for Photoshop, Adobe continues to make improvements and add enhance- ments, releasing a new version about every 18 months. Adobe Photoshop CS5 was released in 2010 and added several new features that assist in creating and alter- ing images and graphics that support the needs of our profession. As it relates to codes, ordinances, design and develop- ment guidelines, and development visual- ization, Photoshop provides a powerful tool to quickly generate alternative outcomes and desired ends. Existing conditions can be "altered" by deleting or removing un- desirable elements or adding missing and desired features and details. Photoshop can also be used to manipulate 3 -D images generated in SketchUp and aerial imagery from Google Earth and Pictometry. Internet Imagery As we enrich our documents with images of desired and undesired elements, we are sometimes without the image we want or need to use. While using your own photographs is always the recommended first option, the Internet can be a valuable resource for finding images we cannot capture ourselves. Whip usingyourown photographs is always the recommended first option, the Internet can be a valuable resource forfinding images we cannot capture ourselves, a potential development's true essence. However, other companies have developed plug -ins or add -ons that expand SketchUp's functionality. For example, plug -ins like Maxwell Render or V -Ray allow users to assign ma- terials to their models, add light sources and atmospheric conditions, and place cameras to render and capture photore- alistic scenes. Although higher -end dedi- cated 3 -D programs like Autodesk's 3ds Max and Maya are capable of the same output, SketchUp - integrated plug -ins have a smaller learning curve for those already familiar with the software. The photo management and sharing website Flickr (www.flickr.com) allows users to easily upload full - resolution images and to tag those photos with keywords and places. Many photographers on Flickr have made their images available through Creative Commons licensing (http: / /creativecommons.org). Other websites, such as iStockphoto.com and shut - terstock.com, provide large libraries of stock photos tagged with keywords that can be pur- chased fora small price. SketchUp Plug -Ins SketchUp's default output can be best de- scribed as line drawings that simulate pen and ink or pencil and paper. While this may be acceptable for supporting illustrations of codes and ordinances, its inability to render photorealistic images for visualiza- tion projects can sometimes fail to capture APPLICATION OFTHETOOLS Next we turn to an exploration of how these new tools can be used independently or together to enrich and improve development regulations and visualization processes. SketchUp SketchUp is the perfect tool for creating simple illustrations to support a zoning or- dinance. Using its dimensioning tool, a user can create a basic illustration of minimum and maximum setbacks and height and de- fine the "building envelope" for any lot. The Village of Prairie Grove, Illinois, is a small, growing community located about 3o miles northwest of Chicago. In 2005 a 1,500 acre annexation and development proposal prompted the village to adopt design and development guidelines covering architec- ture, materials, building placement and ori- ZONINGPRACTICE 3.12 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION (page 4