Southern Highlands Progress for Week of July 19, 2015

Building continues in the Southern Highlands!  Sorry, I've missed a few weeks worth of updates.  Here's a general overview: facades, facades, and more facades.  I have a few blog posts to catch up on as well, detailing new facade ideas for different types of buildings.

In the meantime, here's what I've been working on:

For the past several weeks I had been mostly concerned with filling in facades around the beachfront, but as of yesterday I've been moving back towards Cactus Jack's railroad station in an attempt to fill in all of that land.  I'd like to at least close off the river back there, I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish filling that whole area with facade work.

The row houses in the first few images are my current project.  I'd like to do a blog specifically about that facade work... I'm very happy with how it has turned out as a filler build.  It gives a lot of character to the area of town it is in, and it'll be easy for me to stylize it with posters and 'scenes' of avatars/vehicles to really give it a personality.

The curved brick building in the images above was a lot of fun.  I intended for it to just be a facade, but after playing with shear for a little bit decided to bring it's beam further out to act as an awning for the adjacent building.  I think it worked out really well... I'd like to put a theater or something there, but for now it is just hollow.

The final shot shows some buildings I haven't featured here yet -- they're not quite done!  Soon. :)

Facades - Designing Facades with a Minimal Number of Objects

I've been working to fill in some of the geometry placeholders for skyscrapers in Elkins Beach and would like to share a technique I've been using to quickly place believable facades.  I do it because I'm lazy and would like to get these buildings done ASAP, but it may also be useful for conserving cell space.

Designing facades with a minimal number of objects generally follows this pattern:

• Find an orthogonal object with some depth to it. If you want your facade to have windows, make sure it also has some empty space in the middle.  Door frames, windows frames, primitives, and some furniture sets are good candidates.  
• Scale this piece so that it is very wide and very tall, but also very thin.  
• Layer other pieces into or onto your largest piece to give the image of building forms: Beams, posts, frames, etc.

For an example, we can start with a building I completed yesterday in Elkins Beach.  I started by selecting some objects I would like to play with.

 
For my main building frame piece, I selected Unit04.rwx as it is a cube with some depth.  For some thinner detailing that could make a believable 'wall' and window ceil, I chose wframe01.rwx.  For further detailing, I chose p1rec0100g.rwx for some simple beams in my facade. 

With these objects selected, we can begin scaling them to be very wide, very tall, and very thin, and then attempt to assemble them into a believable facade.  I scaled the Unit04.rwx to match a 10x10 meter space and scaled the wframe01.rwx to fit within that space.  Once I had this scale set, we can begin to see the facade take form:

Done! With these final objects:

# Object         Purpose           Action

2 unit04.rwx     large frames      create scale 5 5 1

2 wframe01.rwx   detail frames     create scale 4.39 3.53 4

3 p1rec0100g.rwx horizontal beams  create scale 0.5 1.85 1

All it needs is some texturing and a window panel... and we can slap it onto a building! I chose a texture theme of topgrey for the panel and ctable2 for the window frames.  There is a building near SW City Town Square Park that features these textures and I really like the colors that come out of it.

Here's an example of it in action.  Not counting windows and other detailing, this is only 7 objects for a 20x10 meter frame! 

 And the completed tower:

Designing facades with a minimal number of objects is all about experimentation.  Some things may work well, others won't. I've found that as long as the object sets I'm attempting to use have some depth, I can usually exploit them by means of scale or shear to look like believable buildings.

For example, I'm not a huge fan of the tan-colored building next to this skyscraper. The tan building uses quite a few flat pieces, which robs it of depth in some critical areas and really makes it look unsatisfying.  In this project I'm going for completion, so I don't mind these imperfections in some filler buildings -- the more important thing is the process and the learning gained for some of the more prominent buildings in the area I would like to work on.

Sculpture, landscaping, and working around pre-existing content in Elkins Beach

Work in Elkins Beach continues with a lot of landscaping and detailing.  I left this project unfinished years ago, and that was very visible before I started again a few weeks ago.  For example, ground panels were incomplete and floating in the air at various points, there were empty fields alongside busy 4-lane highways, and artificial canals butted up against thin air.

I've spent much of this week 'capping off' the landcover by connecting varying planes, by filling in fields that I didn't intend to build on with trees and rocks, and by placing geometries for buildings that I do intend to complete.

There was one build that I did manage to at least complete initially: a sculpture that I've named "Monolith Rise".  It consists of a grouping of glossy monoliths that increase in height and alternate in texture. The base of the sculpture is lit with a flickering gold light to better distinguish the sculpture from the ambient lighting of the surrounding world. The entire sculpture is surrounded by sheared sidewalk in a park scene:

Note that Monolith Rise is immediately next to the sheared truss bridge that was featured in my last blog about Elkins Beach.  You can find it in-world at "aw" 2680.24S 4071.27E 0.22a 314.

The sculpture sits on a lot that formerly held plans for a cathedral.  I felt that this lot was too narrow so I've scrapped that idea.  Behind the lot was also originally a curved extension of a river that cuts out to the sea.  I've expanded this into a small harbor and removed the curved concrete panels to increase the surface area of the water:

The rest of the work I did was primarily detailing.  A lot of geometries for planned building and some landscaping.  You can see that below:

There was one final area of interest -- I did some detailing around an older build (circa 2005) that was in the area before I was -- a military base built by Jaguar Hahn.  Fun trivia fact: Jaguar Hahn was building a city with me in AWTeen around this time called New Arklay City, but I don't recall him ever sharing many builds in Alphaworld.  Not this one, at least.

I've tried to help integrate into this cityscape that was built up around it by making sure it kept good road access and by trying to respect the airspace near a very short airstrip on the property.  There's an unfortunate concrete fence that may be doing more harm than I am, though. 

 

Some points about detailing around pre-existing builds:

• Respect how this build fit into the existing area.  For example, this base connected to an existing road in the area.  When I took the road over, I made sure the base still connected to it well and made sense in the overall scene.

• Contextual additions make it feel like it fits in better.  One helpful addition I made was to add metal towers with reflectors leading into the airstrip. There are also no trees leading up to the airstrip.  I think this complements the build by demonstrating that it has effects on the surrounding content.

• Don't be afraid to hide parts of a build when necessary.  The backside of the base is closed off by a fence, so I can't add a road to it or really complement it in any way.  I think the best thing to do here was to add some flora and rocks to obstruct its view from a nearby road that doesn't access it.

I'll probably post another update about Elkins Beach again next week.

Southern Highlands - Photo Blog

Did some work in the Southern Highlands tonight with Cactus Jack... also toggled on my visibility to 500m, so I decided to take some screenshots.  Some areas are new, some are old... check it out. :D

Teleport: Teleport to Southern Highlands

Overview of our work tonight. A new bridge spans a valley
to allow access to Cactus Jack's train that runs all through SW City
and the surrounding towns.

A close-up of the bridge.

A rocky outcrop.

A waterfall into Highridge Fjord, which outlets into the Irenic Ocean.

Ferruccio's Mobius House overlooks much of Rising Glen Retreat

The same area from a different perspective, this time looking
up to the high cliffs overlooking Rising Glen Retreat.

The Emerald Strand -- the area nearest to the Irenic Ocean.

Further to the right.

Overlooking the peninsula north of Obsidian Cove.
  Very secluded, almost entirely woodland.

Commands in the Wild - Color

'Commands in the Wild' is an AWBuilder Tutorial series that features common usages of building commands.  This series assumes the builder is familiar with basic building and offers specific usages and techniques related to specific commands.

Quick Links:
ActiveWiki - Object Scripting
ActiveWiki - Color

----------

Use color to make seamless curves in low-lighting conditions

Example 1: Curved Surfaces
Location: Obsidian Drive-In Theater in Alphaworld
Anyone who has ever built in Activeworlds is aware of the struggle between textures when they are occupying the same space.  This is called zbuffer, and there are several ways to deal with it when doing precision building.  When building curved surfaces, object collision is often unavoidable without considerable effort.  One of the ways to overcome the visual mess of z-buffering is to not texture the surface, but to instead color it.

With no direct light applied by nearby objects in a scene, colliding objects with the color command applied will not appear to be zbuffering.  As a technical note... they still are, but the pure color is similar enough for the collision to not be a visual issue.  This is why objects designed in this way should not be near light sources, because they will effect the colors brightness and induce enough difference for the zbuffering effect to be noticable.

Use color to easily create painted lines on surfaces by sinking the object

Example 2: Painted Lines
Location: Obsidian Cove Athletic Park in Alphaworld
Perhaps the most common usage of the color command is to represent painted lines that commonly appear outdoors on roads and grass.  Color is ideal in this situation, because it is clean and the objects it is applied to are often thin and can be sunk into other objects to create a unique condition. 

In the case of creating roads, better-quality roads are often created by using rectangular objects as 'road paint', which are then sunk into flat surfaces and repeated over the distance of the road.  This solution is also versatile, because the builder can simply manipulate the road paint to change which sort of intersection or exchange they would like to create.

Use color to provide additional details in the scene

Example 3: Expanding upon existing objects
Location: Southern Highlands in Alphaworld
A very helpful usage of the color command is to add component pieces to existing objects for the purpose of making that particular instance the object unique.  In the screenshot, the t_awhedge01.rwx object has been made unique by the addition of numerous red berries.

Other common examples of this are to add colored buttons to rectangular panels, colored decal to vehicles, and colored windows to building frames.

Saturday Night Project

I did a bit of idle building tonight, and I'm working on a project now that I'd like to share my progress on.  I don't think that I can actually say too much about it yet, but I can show you what I've built. :)

For this project, I wanted to set up two buildings that oppose each other across a street.  My conceptual goal is to use the structural frame of the building to imply that the buildings are actually two halves of a whole, and that they've been pulled apart.

"The Right Building"

"The Left Building"

I don't think you can see the beginnings of that concept so well in this picture, but it's there.  There's also some work I'd like to do with the ground, but this is where I'm at for tonight.

The whole shebang

This is the overview shot from above.  I think the far walls do a better job conceptually than the forward walls, but I wanted to get a draft done for the project tonight because I'm not sure that I'd have time to continue working on it with everything else that I'm doing these days.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. :)  Catch you all later!

Building - Object Properties Box Tutorial

Hey everyone! Below is a flash tutorial I made this weekend for users interested in learning more about the object properties tutorial box. I might add more to it later, but for now... I like where it's at.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! All you have to do to use it is hover over the different parts of the box, and it'll highlight it and tell you how it all works! :)

Why do we pursue Realism in the Virtual World?

By request, I'll be delving into some theory tonight concerning my thoughts on the spacial architecture of our virtual world.  Depending on how I feel about this post by the end, this may become a series. ;)

As prevalent in our virtual experiences as it may be, Architecture is a topic that's not often discussed.  Even though Architecture as I know it is being experienced daily, only the most rigorous builders concern themselves intellectually with any sort of architectural theory behind their work.  These people are also (often, but not always) concerned with pushing themselves and finding new applications and new techniques for creation.  On the other hand, most everyone else -- everyone who is actively engaging Architecture -- gives it a passing glance... checking to make sure that they are adhering to arbitrary guidelines of realism or at the very least making sure that their walls aren't z-buffering.

I'd like to note that although I did not create this house, I went well out of
my way to landscape around it.  Why did I do  that? Why is there a door?  Is
there any point to the landscaping beyond my own aesthetic sensibilities?

I'd like to note that I'm not making this contrast because I'm some sort of architecture snob, but rather to begin a conversation on Architecture in our virtual world.  If you think about it from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it's a rather odd thing that we would engage in creating any sort of realistic architecture in a virtual environment.  For what use does a virtual avatar have for a doorway?  Why do buildings need to be on the ground!?  We can fly and shift through objects in our environment, yet the large majority of us have taken to conventional structures and only use our abilities to fly and shift when it is convenient.

This is something I find absolutely fascinating about our experience in Active Worlds -- especially in the public building worlds where this phenomenon is most prevalent -- because I don't think that is what most people had in mind before virtual reality existed.  Even environments Snow Crash, the inspiration for the Active Worlds technology, loosely followed laws of physics at best.  Check out this description of the popular Black Sun bar:

"The black sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side.  The decor consists of black, square tabletops hovering in the air (it would be pointless to draw in legs), evenly spaced across the floor in a grid.  Like pixels."

Did you catch that?  In this example, the interest isn't so much in realism (although it is played on later), but rather in what is pragmatic and beneficial for the computer.  The author later describes also that the club is matte black, because it is easier on the computer.  He didn't even touch on an exterior description.  In a world where you can teleport to locations and shift through objects... is an exterior even necessary?

SW City's Nimbus Land is actually a hybrid of two opposing lines of thought:
a cloud city (which is inherently unrealistic) using realistic visual cues such
as doorways and pathways for the benefit of the user.

Probably not.  The difference is in that we create in such a way because it is comfortable for us, and intuitive for other users.  When I create a doorway in the virtual environment, it isn't because people can't find another way in... but rather because I want a visual cue to direct visitors on how to enter the building.  In much the same way, I place (most of!) my buildings on the ground because if they were high up in the air, most people wouldn't find them because a building is expected to be on the ground.  These are conventions that most builders have identified without much thought, and follow for convenience. In fact, I think that -- for most, this goes beyond convention and is actually felt as necessary for user interaction.  We've touched on how the convention of the doorway exists for a visual cue.  The cue isn't unnecessary, and in fact does serve a very practical purpose by directing users on where to go... and what would its alternative be, exactly?

What would replace a doorway?

This question really hits it home.  Why do we pursue realism in the virtual world?  It's not just because it is what we know, but rather because it is what everyone knows!  Most builders aren't trenching themselves knee-deep in theory and declaring a manifesto: they don't have to!  Some certainly do and I think they derive a good deal of satisfaction from that, but most builders you'll run across just want to make a nice house.  A nice house that they've tried their hardest to make easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing, and enjoyable to visit.  When it comes down to it, a house with no doors or windows that is a few hundred meters up in the air is, well... it's awkward.  We're conditioned to reality, and for better or for worse, it is our easy and common solution to mimic reality the best that we know how.

For this reason, we have a ground plane, though it is only a flat simulation of a true ground.  We've created sunlight... even though our virtual plane orbits no star.  We strive to make sure that our creations make 'visual, physical' sense, even though that floating object will never suffer the effects of gravity.  It is a peculiar habit, but it's a very poignant example of how our virtual forms can interact with function.

Form and function.  Now that's a big topic in architecture!  I'll have to discuss that further in my next entry. :)

Is grassroots advertising the answer for Active Worlds?

Of the things I would say that I am not, a social builder would be one of them.  This is probably perplexing if given any thought, because I enjoy building towns and even the occasional collaboration -- but that isn't my preference.  To be honest, I feel that I've come to a compromise with townbuilding because the projects I like to build are so massive -- mountain ranges, neighborhoods, cities -- that it would be impractical to have a single builder on the project.

This may explain some of my more recent projects, such as incentive neighborhoods in the Southern Highlands and Builder's Challenge. I tend to set up a context as a larger, pre-existing environment that builders come in and fill.  Still social in a way, but I'm never building alongside others -- I'm a before and after thought.

Either way, the challenge and experience gained by working with other builders in this way has been invaluable to me personally, so I'm always glad to see new builders coming through.  New builders have new ideas, and that can inspire all sorts of things in a project.  This sort of truth is behind my approval of a trend that citizen Urbane Chaos has taken to lately -- writing articles about Active Worlds around the web.  And what an article! Most everything I'd want to tell someone about Alphaworld is nicely formatted and ready to go on that page.  This should bring in new builders by the truckload, right?

Well, maybe.  I've dabbled in a bit of this myself -- with limited success.  If you follow the forums you may remember that we made FARK.com last year during the There fiasco, which drew a few older members out of the woodworks.  I'll occasionally spread links on social networks and have taught others how to use them effectively, and personally I feel that this as a method of advertising has a lot of potential.  If you'll notice, Flagg has picked up on it in the past few months... utilizing re-tweeting to spread his message and starting a Facebook Fan Page to get the userbase mobilized in advertising.

Twitter / Flagg: AWI's ONE-DAY SALE Announc ... via kwout

Active Worlds hasn't really had any sort of advertising for years, and I think this may as well have been their un-official policy all along.  Word of mouth; if it's a good product, you'll tell your friends about it.  Before social networking, this was unreasonable... and the Active Worlds Universe has really suffered because of it.

These days... I don't know, is it?

I feel like a lot of us have given up on that route some time ago, but it may be worth it to revisit the idea.  In Urbane Chaos' example, I had never heard of hubpages before visiting... but they seem to have it all right there.  The method here is to write and article, and use their tools to add some pictures and make it visually interesting.  There are numerous feedback options -- including facebook integration -- that then allows readers to take the article and share it how they will.  In this particular case, some AW citizens have done so by sharing it on their facebook feed.

Other avenues have also seen success -- Flagg's retweet contest drew 12 retweets (about 7 more than I had anticipated), and reached at least a few hundred additional people because of it.  He threw in a prize for incentive, but I really see potential there.  A good number of tweets can get passed over before something really sticks, and it only takes one to get the attention of hundreds.

As social networking outlets gain in popularity, it seems that this idea that was once asinine and destructive may actually be viable now.  Given the current situation, I'd say it is worth a shot.  At least with these few anecdotes, I see the potential for a successful advertising campaign.

What do you think?