SecondLife Library

Teammates: Theja Jayalath and Hyewon Lee.

Our first approach to our library was to create a repeating structure that could integrate with the mountain and over which water could flow. We worked with symmetrical hexagonal shapes that we joined and cut entrances through.

Theja and me on site

As an interactive element, we put sliding doors as an entrance to one of the rooms. These doors are just like real-life automatic doors: they open when an avatar is near them.

After realizing that our library exceeded the floor area permitted , we did some remodeling and  kept only three rooms. We also transformed these rooms into more irregular and abstract shapes, adding pyramidal windows and distorting the hexagons. This added appeal to our project.

We kept our initial idea of water flowing over the structures, so we  added prims scripted and textured like water, and two particle systems for the fountain and drops of water (scripts were from the "teal" particle lab). The cones where the water was emanating from were camouflaged behind rocks that we bought in the marketplace. Additionally, we added a steam with a script from the Free LSL library. 

To create an interesting media texture, I used three photoshop features that I had never used before:

- Alpha channel
- Offset Material
- Lighting effects

Image I took from Google Images

Using photoshop, I offset the image but it did not match the edges. 

To solve this problem, I cropped the image so that the edges matched perfectly when offset.

Then, I used the alpha channel to separate the opaque (white) from the transparent (black) parts of my new texture.

After adding color to my texture, I used the lighting effect to make it appear as though light from  lamps are  on my texture and to give it a more interesting effect.

This is the final texture I made, in tga format, and then uploaded to SecondLife.

My texture in one of the rooms of our structure (as you can see, it is transparent and you can see the lighting effects on it)

My texture viewed from outside of the building.

Railing made of glowing tubes. These tubes move up and down in a random order, The floor and stairs are interactive: they light up when they are stepped on. This script was obtained from sutor.com

Tubes are in movement. The floor is glowing since I am stepping on it.

We added the same script that we gave the glowing floor (with adapted values) to make the books slide off the shelves when clicked on.

In this room, the chair slides out when touched.

Finished structure.

Access to my blog in the Library, where my three journals can also be accessed. 

Journals

Arkitektur: the swedish review of architecture

Arkitektur: the swedish review of architecture

Arkitektur is a Swedish architecture magazine that covers fields in architecture that play roles in public discussion in recent years. It is fully written in Swedish, with no translations. The pictures above are from the May 2012 publication.

Monograph.it

Monograph.it

Monograph.it

Monograph.it is at the same time monography and review. It follows an original criterium of pictures' itinerary and is written in Italian with English translations. It is relatively recent (started in 2010) and there are only two large books at the University of Auckland Library.

Arkitekten

Arkitekten

Arkitekten. This Danish architecture magazine focuses on novel designs and important daily architectural discussions. It is written in Danish with no translations. The pictures above are from the May 2012 publication.

Working with ArchiCAD

Treehut created with ArchiCAD. Orthogonal view.

Another axonometric view.

Perspective of hut.

Another perspective.

Floor plan shows sectional cut line.

Section of treehut.

Theja's modifications to my hut - insertion of people, bushes and a bench.

Theja's hut. I inserted a ground base to her hut when I joined her teamwork project on ArchiCAD.

Introduction to SecondLife

Dramatic lighting created on SecondLife, using the principles of additive colour (colour is created by mixing the visible light emitted from differently coloured light sources - here I created a white light using red, blue and green light sources with values close to 255).

Using the render tool in Photoshop, I created white light by casting  red, blue and green lights with 255 values over a black background (additive colour).

After taking a picture of my dramatic lighting, I placed it on a prim that I made on SecondLife. It appears to be a giant mirror where my avatar and prims are reflected on.

After experimenting a bit with SecondLife, I ended up making a few interesting objects. What appears to be a cloud or ice cream, is a pyramidal prim that I twisted and made flexible, so that it bends with the wind. The floating 'apple' house was made by sculpting a sphere, and adding a window texture to it. The larger blue glowing structure in the back was made by repeating prims and adding light to some of the faces.

Using Scratch4SL I made some of the prims magnify in size in a random order, creating an overall  interesting effect on the building.

First half of semester drawings