Autodesk is adding to its growing menu of cloud-basedprojects with two new design tool offerings meant to bring supercomputer-likefunctionality to smaller firms, which can't necessarily afford it. Thecompany's latest cloud-based efforts are Project Photofly and Project Neon,both currently available for a free test drive at AutodeskLabs.

ProjectPhotofly is atechnology preview of a Web service that allows users in architectural, design,media & entertainment and manufacturing firms to easily create 3-D modelsfrom a series of photographs. Unlike most image-based modeling techniques,which require manual calibration of photographs and a high level of expertise,Project Photofly employs the "Camera Factory" automatic calibration engine tosimplify and automate the process. Using a Windows-based client called "PhotoScene Editor," customers connect to the Camera Factory Web service and thenenlist Autodesk 3-D modeling software (AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk 3ds Max,etc.) to consume the data in a DWG format while leveraging the Camera Factorytool to model on top of the images.

"Project Photoflybrings the possibility of reality capture to designers, creative artists andengineers who didn't have the resources or expertise for image-based modelingand expedites the process for those who are used to spending endless hoursmanually stitching together images to create a 3-D model," said Brian Mathews,vice president of Autodesk Labs, in a press release. "Reality capturegives designers and engineers the ability to better measure, analyze, documentand plan for projects."

Accompanying theProject Photofly announcement is the release of ProjectNeon, a technologypreview of a Web service that delivers high-quality rendering off of thedesktop using the cloud. With such a capability, engineering teams can createphoto-realistic renderings of their projects without the need for dedicatedrendering hardware. Given that rendering multiple files can take days and addtime and expense to projects, Project Neon's support of the cloud promises toallow firms to render multiple views of a project simultaneously in a fractionof the time.

In addition to these efforts,Autodesk has a number of cloud-based design tool projectsunderway, includingthe Project Butterfly collaboration service and Project Cumulus, a Web servicefor plastics simulation.

Autodesk Expands Design Tool Projects in The Cloud_A