Prepress
Viz Curious Maps
Thursday 22. January 2009 - The time-effective solution to produce branded maps and geographical animations.
Viz Curious Maps is the broadcast industrys de facto standard for the creation of branded maps and geographic animations. By extending Viz Curious Maps to a server edition, it can provide real-time, branded map imagery to several clients embedded within Vizrts control applications. Templates created within Viz Curious Maps can be dynamically accessed through the Viz Trio character generator and Viz Content Pilot, as well as Viz Weather, Viz Traffic, and Viz Artist. Users can seamlessly create branded, animated maps and add them to graphic templates or insert them directly into a 3D scene.
A complete map-creation solution
Any of the following options can be added to Viz Curious Maps to expand its map-making capabilities:
Natural Earth Coloring
Based on satellite imagery from Planet Observer, the Natural Earth Coloring option can add detailed imagery to your maps, down to a 15m resolution.
3D Export
Fully textured genuine relief models can be created and exported at the touch of a button. The .obj files produced can be used in Viz Artist or third-party 3D modelling packages.
Paint and effects
Add professional quality and fully-featured raster paint retouch and rotoscoping functionality.
Imagery on Demand
Instantly browse, download and incorporate high-resolution satellite imagery from around the world.
Additional data
Viz Curious Maps includes a comprehensive database of political boundaries, coastlines, rivers, major roads, named places, and relief topography covering the entire world. In addition, there is a variety of optional additional data for you to choose from:
Street data
Local and highly detailed street data is available for cities and towns throughout the USA, Europe, and many other countries. All local street data is easy to use and has been designed to produce the best results when used in Viz Curious Maps and Viz Curious Maps Client. In Viz Curious Maps specific streets and roads can automatically be named, highlighted, and paths can be animated to show routes and directions.
High-resolution satellite imagery
Satellite imagery is available at a variety of resolutions, from 1km resolution for the whole world, up to an incredible 25 – 60cm for the largest cities in the USA and Europe. Viz Curious Maps automatically geo-references the satellite imagery into the correct position on the map layer, so combining it with the graphical map detail is simple. Color correction can be applied to the satellite imagery, helping the user to achieve the exact style needed.
Relief topography
The relief data included with all licenses of Viz Curious Maps is sourced from the USGS (US Geological Survey) and has a 1km resolution. Higher-resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data for large areas of the worlds surface is also available, including 90m data for most of the world, and 30m data for all of the USA and some European countries. This gives additional clarity and realism to the terrain, particularly if you are creating 3D maps.
The Viz Curious Maps Client – maps in the workflow
Viz Curious Maps can act as both a creation tool and a server platform. When it is upgraded to a server edition, it enables maps or map templates first prepared using Viz Curious Maps to be integrated within 3D graphic templates using Viz Artist. The graphic templates containing map references can later be accessed and personalized by any number of users throughout an organization. In practice, the Viz Curious Maps Client enables producers, journalists and operators to open map control objects within graphic templates, for example, from within Viz Content Pilot, Viz Trio or Viz Weather. By editing the map elements, users can change map locations, add animated 3D objects (such as car crashes, planes or fires), and animated labels; show street information, display on-demand satellite images of chosen locations, create geographical locators, and design fully animated 3D maps.