Virtual Library - Day 5

Texture Projection

Projecting an image onto the structure via a light source was an idea from one of my journals that I wished to bring to our design. Accomplishing this in Second Life however is no easy task, and the various graphics settings has to be altered slightly to use the setting, and even then there are potential problems

Jackson Pollack projection

In Second Life, with the "shadows" option turned on, you have to then set the box to Sun/Moon + Projectors. This grants the option to project textures through the light source. Across the entrance above, 

Conclusion and Credits

At the end of the day, I feel our project has worked out quite well, and a big thanks to my teammates of course.

You can find their respective blogs below.

twan888.tumblr.com

yhon208.tumblr.com

Virtual Library - Day 4

Form

The form of our new structure has grown a lot more complex and intricate. We took the prim shape of the tube and the torus and edited many variables of the shape to twist, taper and bend the shape.

We then repeated the shapes we created and weaved them all together to enclose and create a heavily abstract space to house our architectural journals and blogs. 

One feature we tried to accomplish was to have our structure interact with the environment and relate it back to it's context, so specific shapes were manipulated to fit and play with the surrounding mountains and underwater. One prominent example being the main, large spiral, that uses an alpha channeled Mark Rothko painting, that fits in between the two large mountains. This frames a clear entrance for the users to go through as well as bringing the mountains into the design. 

Other examples of how we related the design back into environment are the arches that also are embedded into the sides of the mountain and into the seabed, with the various twists and curves mimicking the contours and slopes of the land.

Overall shape

Between the mountains

Lights

Another note was how we observed our structure at different parts of the day and how the light bounces and plays off the various surfaces. For the moment we have just placed lights of a cool, blueish colour palette.

Sunrise

Sunset

Midday

Midnite

Staircase
Another detail we placed in our structure was a set never-ending looping stairs of influenced by the works of Olafur Eliasson. With the stairs we wished to make the structure be accessible at multiple levels to have interesting views outwards to the vast endless ocean and through the twin peaks towards the other projects.

The stairs also fit in with the overall motif of the project with the various swirls and curves, as well as sticking with the monochromatic colour scheme.

Olafur Eliasson - Staircase

Textures

The biggest change to our work however were the application photoshopped textures onto our work. Using the works of famous contemporary painters, such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko, we achieved very unique and abstract materiality to our work.

By going through the methods of offsetting the images to then make it seamless across all edges, we also used Alpha Channeling to make select areas of the textures transparent when applied to prims. As we finally applied the textures upon our distorted shapes, it achieved the look of grand, arching paint strokes in the air. As one of my teammates put it, it gave the impression of "painting in the 3rd dimension" and we found it really interesting how that can relate to the architectural process.

Alpha Channeling is the process of using custom made channels in photoshop and brushing in selective areas we wish to make transparent. Using the black brush we can block in areas and make them opaque, while using the white brush we can brush back areas and make them transparent. The strength of the brush can attain various levels of transparency.

The Alpha Channeled texture must then be saved as a TARGA file, (.tga) and with the Alpha Channel box ticked. We then imported the .tga files into Second Life at the cost of 10 Linden dollars and placed them on our prims.

Franz Kline - Alpha Channeled and inverse colours

Franz Kline (American, 1910-1962). Mahoning, 1956. Oil and paper collage on canvas. 80 x 100 in. (203.2 x 254 cm). Purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Franz Kline - Alpha Channeled

New York, N.Y., oil on canvas by Franz Kline, 1953; in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. 200 ×128 cm.

Mark Rothko - Alpha Channeled

Mark Rothko -  Untitled, 1969

Useful Links

Another set of useful links with information for using Second Life. The main Wiki page contains many tutorials and useful content including script languages, taking advantage of certain features of Second Life and so on. However during the development of our structure we wanted to bring over the idea of projection mapping and projecting images onto our building to create a dynamic play between light and shadow.

The article on Deferred Rendering Test as well as the Knowledge Base for Lighting and Shadows explains the points a lot more.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Deferred_Rendering_Test
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Lighting-and-shadows/ta-p/997819

Virtual Library - Day 3

Site
Today we developed the design to take the site into consideration. With two high peak mountains surrounding the building to the north, an endless ocean view to the east as well, our site has a serene, peaceful and contemplative mood that we want to take advantage of. This is also aided by the fact that we share the only immediately visible structure is another project's library that does lend itself to the overall atmosphere of the site.

Moon

So the view is one of the points on our list of priorities, however another point we wished to tackle was submerging our building and not ignore the contours of the land and the coastal bed.

From that state of thinking, instead of covering up the natural coastal slope we integrated it into our design with minimalistic stairs leading down to the bottom floor which is our newly established lobby. The sea bed would also be part of the floor on the lowest level. Changing the entrance area to the lowest submerged level of the building would also create a better sense of flow and direction as the users of the buildings would circulate naturally from bottom to top.

Lobby Entrance

Spiral staircase inside

We also experimented with the overall shape a lot more, including changing the amount of floors, level height, curvature, spacing between the buildings and the the shape of the floor plan.

Experimentation 1

Experimentation 2

Lastly my team member created large amounts of custom textures on Photoshop through the use of various effects and Offsetting the image to make it seamless so it would apply onto prims seamlessly. Here's an example of one of her many amazing works.

Virtual Library - Day 2

Our group then worked to develop and extend the idea to create architectural space and also achieving various moving parts via scripting

By using the cut path option, I created a spiral staircase connecting the multiple levels of the library together. In this attempt we considered making the first floor have open windows and large glass walls to take full advantage of the vast ocean view for the lobby area. On the second floor we would close off the space with more emphasis on walls to achieve privacy and to allow the spiral staircase to run outside the building and at the same time not obstruct the view.

Moving the spiral staircase from the inside to the outside also allowed better use of the space as the majority of the building's floor plan wont be taken up by the obstructive staircase and placing it on the outside takes advantage of the views around our site, creating a more efficient space.

Motion

Our team also wanted various moving elements in our design and with Scratch for Second Life we scripted various cut rings and the spiral staircase to rotate at various speeds to really bring the building alive.

 Unfortunately displaying the motion is difficult through a screenshot

 By using Scratch it also opened up the opportunity to create dynamic staircases. For example the platform my avatar is standing on is divided into multiple sections each with their own unique script. When the prims receive the message "stairs down", in other words when I type the phrase in chat, they would move downwards to form a spiral staircase.

Also I added another script onto each prim in where if I type the words "stairs up", they would then move upwards to allow access to higher levels. This method would save space in the building and allow for interesting means of circulating through the structure

Scripted spiral staircase

Staircase going down

Script for the first step to go down

Script for the last step to go up

And lastly we experimented with conveying our information to the users of the building by placing our blogs on differently shaped prims. However in the end, a normal rectangular shaped prim was the only convenient method of placing our websites.

Blogs on spheres, cylinders and half cylinders

Useful Links
As I experimented with scripts, I found a few useful links that helped me understand Scratch for Second Life a lot better, hopefully any readers interested in the area would also find the information useful however basic they might seem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi9Jf_vHKUg&feature=relmfu - Second Life Lock Door script
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHb8WBtyKQg - Scripting a light switch
http://code.google.com/p/secondlifelivelyscripts/ - download custom script for light switch