Visualisation of future learning environments

weCAMP Final Report

2010-04-01T15:35:00.003+01:00

The JISC funding for the weCAMP project has now formally ended, but the weCAMP project will live on through an additional Benefits Realisation project. The uCampus platform will also remain openly available on the web for the foreseeable future.

To read the final report for the project click here: weCAMP Final Report

External Evaluation Meeting 13.01.2010

2010-01-14T17:20:00.002Z

James Pinder and Diane Hart, the project external evaluators, led a team workshop to discuss the progress of the project, the results of which will feed into the summative evaluation.

The team covered a lot of ground that involved reflecting on the initial project aims and objectives and contrasting them with what had been acheived so far in the project. Married to this was further discussion about an external dissemination strategy for the project.

The external evaluation report is aimed to be complete by the end of February.

Project Board Meeting 14.01.2010

2010-01-14T17:10:00.002Z

The weCAMP project kicked-off the New Year with a Project Board meeting. The aim of this meeting was to receive project steering input from the board to make effective use of the final three months of the project.

As a summary of buildings in uCampus we have now modelled over 300, 48 Grid Blocks (48+ Hectares), 38 Groups of Non-uni Buildings, 69 University Buildings, 90 Uni-Building Floors and 13 Spatial Taxonomical Models. We are aiming for 75 university buildings for the end of the project.

Darren presented the uCampus 1.0 release candidate platform - the final release of the platform for the weCAMP project. The principal development from 0.51 is the ability to visualise the spatial uses of rooms within a range of university buildings. Each room has a specific colour tag which can be turned on or off. Colour coded room uses can be viewed across any number of buildings simultaneously.

The meeting discussion focused on dissemination planning and developing new avenues for project development within The University of Sheffield and other institutions after the JISC project funding is concluded.

I-borrow Assembly in Canterbury

2009-12-21T12:11:00.003Z

Three members of the team attended the I-borrow Assembly on 11th December and enjoyed a fascinating day beign shown round Augustine House and learning more about the process and results of the I-borrow project.

Part of the day involved discussing future collaborations and possible BR proposals along with the SMART project team at New Bucks University. It was great to meet face to face. We hope to further develop collaborations in the New Year.

Many thanks to everyone in the I-borrow team for organising and hosting the day.

The Augustine House Experiment

2009-12-21T12:02:00.003Z

The weCamp team has successfully bid for and been granted JISC funding for a benefits realisation project to develop a 3D visualisation with the I-Borrow team from Canterbury Christ Church University. The project aims to represent the data collected from mobile laptop usage within Augustine House - a new learning centre at CCCU. Partners from Bucks New University will also be involved as part of the project evaluation.

Modelling the Students' Union Redevelopment

2009-12-16T12:10:00.009Z

We have been working with Students' Union staff since early October 2009 to create 3D models of the Union building's redevelopment. I see this is a great opportunity to engage uCampus with a real user group and test out the methodologies and technologies we have developed so far.

All is going really well. We have now completed what is called Union MODEL 1 project which intends to visualise the entire Union building under construction. MODEL 1 is built in six levels, and each level contains at least three layers: Floor, Spatial Taxonomy, and Signage. MODEL 1 is our first case study into the use of Image Texture of X3D in producing the Signage layers to show the Union's outlets in a more recognisable manner.

The test video clip below is generated to show a navigational route starting from the new East Entrance on Level 2 to the Source area on Level 3. The idea is that multiple such routes will be generated on the basis of Union MODEL 1 and make them readily accessible from the Students' Union Website.

A WMV clip of tour around the Union of Students

2009-10-29T11:14:00.007Z

During the visit to the Union's Marketing and Communications Team, we were asked if a video clip could be porduced to show a navigation sequence inside the Union buildling. Back in my room, to build an example, I used a desktop video capture package call CaptureWizPro (free trial version) to generate a WMV clip while navigating around the Union building on uCampus.

The clip shows how Leo and I reached the meeting room from the Union's main entrance. X3D player such as Octaga Player Pro has a built-in vedio capturing facility which may speed up the production of navigational clips.

Meeting with the Students Union representatives

2009-10-28T14:52:00.006Z

We have just met with representatives from the University of Sheffield Students Union to discuss collaborating on developing our visualisation of the Students Union building to aid students and staff with the development of the new union building. We discussed a number of exciting ways that we could explore benefits offered by uCampus.

Lisa Scanlon and her marketing and communications team talked about the need to create flexible space for students to utilise in the union building; for collaborative working, society meetings, and a whole range of learning situations. We understand that whilst this space has been outlined the need to carefully consider the range of facilities, functions, thresholds and boundaries that can be provided and the necessity for students to be engaged in this design and planning process is crucial and yet to be determined. We feel that this would be a good opportunity to work together, using uCampus as a tool to help this process.

In the short-term, developing a 3-D model of the existing union building to show how it can be accessed during the construction and regeneration of the union building. This may include highlighting temporary entrance routes etc.

In the medium-term, developing fly-throughs or virtual tours of the new building to help introduce it to staff and students. In addition providing a model that students can explore at their leisure, before they have even been to Sheffield, to explore the myriad of opportunities that the union offers. This could be as much about learning opportunities as access to bars and shops. The impact that this could have on aiding student induction could be very powerful.

We have concluded that Lisa and her team will develop a wish-list of what they would like to explore and we will then provide information on how this can be achieved in order to move forward so that they outputs are in-step with the imminent building work.

17.09.09 Project Team Meeting

2009-09-17T15:20:00.003+01:00

Notes from today's project team meeting...

Puja has been working on the terrain modelling and all the proposed squares are now being finalised and put into place. This is expected to be completed in the next couple of weeks. Panagiotis has been developing the specification for modelling the blocks that will represent the individual spaces within the university buildings. The team will be working with Masters Students to develop this representation of space over the next few months. The launch of uCampus 0.5 has been a landmark for the team and Darren has been at work debugging the new platform, improving performance and usability. Howard has been working on the evaluation reports from practicing architects and students that have been trailing the platform.

The next step in the project is to plan the major development packages up to the New Year. This will involve the last major innovations in the platform and significantly raise the level of useful application that is available. This process involves expanding the taxonomy of spaces and then being able to filter searches and visualisation of different aspects of the building models, from types of spaces through to structural elements of the building.

uCampus version 0.5 is released

2009-09-11T10:43:00.005+01:00

We have now released version 0.5 of uCampus. This is a major update for the platform which now supports the visualisation of the taxonomy of spaces. This has been an important requirement in the project plan from the outset and so it is wonderful to finally see it realised after so much developmental effort. We hope that this feature will prove to be of significant practical value to our exising user base.

From a development perspective, support for this feature required careful consideration during the analysis and design phases. As is typical of web-applications, integration required work both on the client side and server sides. For the client this meant designing and implementing a simple and consistent user interface component to fit into our client application in a seamless manner without over complicating or cluttering the existing interface. During development, care was taken to ensure that this component integrated well with the platform as a whole and there were no hidden side effects or regression artefacts caused by its addition. Our client is based upon a document-view architecture where there can be multiple views of the same data which all have to be synchronized so that they function in unison.

More development was required to support the taxonomy of spaces on the server side. Our entire platform has been developed under Java, with Enterprise Java being deployed on the server. We approach our web-development following the standard three-tier design pattern for web-applications with presentation, service and data tiers. Consequently, every new feature that we introduce necessitates additions and amendments to each of these tiers. The carefully considered choice of Java at the beginning of the project anticipated this and has allowed us to streamline the development process which does help to simplify the process somewhat. We can benefit from code and object reuse between tiers without the complication of having to concern ourselves with interoperability issues that may have arisen otherwise.

Supporting the new taxonomy meant additions to our xml schema and these also had to be supported in the respective components of the data tier. This required some modification and extension to our existing SAX and DOM parser engines and extension to the objects that they instanced. Once this had been achieved amendments to the service tier could be applied. To service the taxonomy models required upgrading the existing model server. This module manages and controls the serialisation of our models to the client. Care had to be taken to ensure any changes that were made in this area of the code didn't break our existing functionality and some regression testing was undertaken to ensure that this was indeed the case. This was slightly complicated by our server already being live with existing users. Mid-way through the process we also migrated our platform to a new server which meant rotating the server IPs in the client to check it still worked. Finally, support was added in the presentation tier for the client interface and testing of models could proceed.

We now have an important part of the project complete which we hope will open up new development paths for us in the future. We are now able to consider further extensions of our model server module to include a planned X3D manipulation engine which will allow us to perform boolean operations upon our existing model database. This will allow us to enhance the resolution and provide greater control of the models requested by our users. Having provided a sound basis for future expansion, we are looking forward to the next phase of the project.

External Contributors and X3D Specification

2009-09-11T10:39:00.002+01:00

The introduction of external contributors seems to have been a success so far. We recently comissioned six more buildings to students, including the prominent Geography and Planning building. There are now 7 external contributors who have been involved in uCampus, and at least two more have shown interest in collaborating with us in the future.

The contributors have to follow a (rather extensive) specification to produce the models. This aims to guide them step-by-step through the modelling process, starting with Autodesk AutoCAD files and ending with the X3D ones, with Autodesk 3ds Max and VRML being the intermediate formats. The specification has a number of details of a technical nature that are irrelevant to this post, but emphasis is placed on the homogeny of the models, and their proper formatting so they will be as efficient as possible.

There are considerable advantages in using external contributors -the volume of the building on the platform being the most prominent. By creating a detailed spec, we can take advantage of various people's different modelling skills, creating models that can be plugged in directly on the platform, and controlled by the system. The fact that most of the contributors are students means that they can be employed at the University payment rates, theoretically achieving some economy over market prices. However, this did not apply in the first few models (and especially in the case of the Arts Tower), so a new "bidding system" was launched from this month, allowing contributors to bid for each comission, and it being allocated to the lowest bidder.

Obviously there have been some difficulties as well, as it is to be expected when so many new people join a project. The most important one seems to be the difficulty of some contributors to conform to the requirements of the platform. This is more pronounced in the case of people with extensive modelling experience who tend to follow a particular work pattern they are familiar with. We are dealing with this by stressing the importance of the specification and explaining the differences of this project with a generic modelling job in commerical architecture. Practically all contributors faced difficulties with the X3D format, which was to be expected somewhat as it has more in common with computer graphics than CAD systems -overall it is a similar situation with what we faced with the students during the Interactive Urban Visualisation module. Drawing from our experience with the students, we gave to contributors short tutorials in X3D and, as expected, the results were significantly improved.

There remains an issue with people unfamiliar with AutoCAD who build everything in Max using meshes. Although the X3D can be fine-tuned to conform to the platform standards, we still have to deal with extremely big file sizes (typically 6-10 times as much) with the respective cost in the running of the platform -though the differences are not so pronounced in a single building, as uCampus expands in scope it can lead to serious performance issues. This is not easily addressed, as Max modellers would understandably find it tedious to learn AutoCAD, especially for a small comission. Final decisions have not been made yet -the two options seem to be either better screening of the contributors or just accepting lower standards and the respective performance costs.

Overall though, the introduction of external contributors has been a very useful step, more importantly so because it proves the potential of uCampus to extend to many directions and include more people with a very small amount of preparation. The next big step is the introduction of a specification for the taxonomical models. This should allow the project team to open the taxonomical modelling process to external contributors as well. Given the experience so far, this should be very exciting!

Following the Steps of the Arts Tower ...

2009-08-14T07:34:00.008+01:00

Jessop Building - School of Music

The Octagon Centre

White Rose CELTE

University House and Union of Students

We now have four University biuldings added to uCampus: White Rose CELTE (by Preeti Preeti, 2 Floors), University House and Union of Students (by Binh Nguyen, 6 Floors), Jessop Building (by Anish Sharma, 3 Floors), and the Octagon Centre (by Anish Sharma, 4 Floors). This new collection of models further demonstrates that students' participation in the 3D modelling of the campus buildings is going well.

Click the images above to get a larger view.

uCampus is Now World Wide

2009-07-31T09:42:00.005+01:00

Following a successful security audit carried out by the CiCS team at the University of Sheffield, the uCampus Platform (Release 0.45) has been made accessible to the World Wide Web since 4:00pm 30 July 2009.

With this world-wide accessbility in place, the weCAMP project team are now able to undertake the next stage of user engagement and evaluation activities. We have several external user groups in mind including the professional architectural practices employed by the University of Sheffield to design and deliver new builds and refurbishments, the Sheffield City Council, potential collaborators on JISC Benefits Realisation projects, researchers/educators abroad who have shown interests in uCampus.

I have written a web page regarding how to Download, Install and Launch uCampus. There is aslo a uCampus User Guide available that gives an overview of how uCampus may be used. I hope to start receiving questions, comments and suggestions on the uCampus Platform and the weCAMP project in the days months to come.

uCampus Release 0.45

2009-07-26T12:07:00.005+01:00

uCampus verson 0.45 was released on Friday 24 July 2009. There are several new developments in this intermediary release (the next release is scheduled as Release 0.5):

(1) uCampus is now running on a new Virtual Server provisioned by CiCS - the UCAMPUS_SHEF server is shut down to save electricity and awaits relocation to a more suitable server room;

(2) A new batch of 13 grid sqaures are being deployed;

(3) The first version of uCampus User Guide is now made available under Help together with a link to the weCAMP Blog Site; and

(4) A new command Select All is added to allow users to retrieve all uCampus X3D models in one click, which could potentially make us lazy.

The Arts Tower is deployed on uCampus

2009-07-21T18:07:00.003+01:00

The entire Arts Tower has been modelled and deployed onto uCampus today. It contains a total of 23 interior floor models each of which can be selected and displayed individually.

This marks an important project development as the Arts Tower was modelled by a post graduate student at the School of Architecture, Binh Nguyen.

The result demonstrates that the modelling methodology and the data standards as established and specified by Panagiotis Patlakas are working well. This initial test bed case essentially opens the door for other 3D modellers to participate in the continuous expansion of the uCampus X3D model bank. Any student at the University with 3D digital architectural modelling skills can produce X3D models conforming to the uCampus modelling specification.

There are another three PG students currently undertaking 3D modelling of St George Church, Jessop Victoria Wing, and the Bioincubator. We are eagerly waiting for the further results to confirm the methodology and specification.

uCAMPUS Launched across the UoS

2009-07-17T09:45:00.003+01:00

uCAMPUS has now been added to the the software available on all computer desktops that are managed by the computer services department at the Unviersity of Sheffield. This is a big step towards insitutional innovation and change for the weCAMP research project. Staff and students can now access the uCAMPUS 0.04a and upload designs if they wish. We are now working towards putting the platform outside the firewall so that it can be utilised by external consultants and accessible to JISC partners.

Online JISC Programme Conference

2009-07-17T09:34:00.002+01:00

Last week we took part in the online conference [using eluminate] with the other JISC research projects. Despite some technical issues, the day was a success in providing feedback about how our assembly with the I-borrow team from Canterbury went. In addition, we managed to communicate with the Erewhon team about linking up later on in the summer to discuss future collaborations. Applying for further benefits realisation funding to develop new project directions was also discussed, enabling us to work towards applications.

EDULEARN 09 Conference Paper

2009-05-30T10:11:00.000+01:00

EDULEARN09 the International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies will be held in Barcelona (Spain), on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July, 2009.The main objective of the conference is to promote and disseminate the experiences in New Technologies in Education and E-learning in all educational fields and disciplines.EDULEARN09 will be a unique International Forum for those who wish to present their projects and discuss the innovations and the latest innovations and results in the field of New Technologies in Education, E-learning and methodologies applied to Education and Research. This conference will be held at international level, counting with the participation of attendants from all parts and continents of the world.
The JISC team decided to attend this conference as it is a brilliant opportunity to put uCampus on a global platform. The abstract, written by Dr. Peng was submitted to the EDULEARN committee in April 2009 and soon after we received acceptance and were invited to write a paper in May 9 and attend the conference in July. After initial discussions the team decided to call the paper “VISUALISING FUTURE LEARNING SPACES IN CONTEXT: THE SHEFFIELD EXPERIMENT”.
The paper describes the design and development of uCampus platform, data and client. But mainly it focuses on the experiment carried out with students in the University of Sheffield taking the Interactive Urban Visualisation Modelling module (henceforth IUVM), which is required for the school’s Masters in Sustainable Architectural Studies, and can be taken as an elective for the MSc in Sustainable Architecture and Computer Aided Environmental Design, and the MAs in Urban and Architectural Design. IUVM is a combination between a typical architectural design studio and an advanced CAD module. Students were expected to submit design proposals based on a given brief while making maximum use of the uCampus platform in order to analyse and understand the current situation, derive the relevant data that will aid them in the design process, share ideas and exchange opinions with fellow students, and present the product of their work to the studio reviewers. Enrolled in the IUVM module were 22 students from various countries, whose educational background is typically architecture but also encompasses other disciplines associated with the built environment such as engineering, town planning, etc.
The paper goes on to describe the different file formats the students were asked to work with and also outlines their experiences, and results. Although we have briefly mentioned in the conclusion the various other applications of uCampus and its user groups and future potential, it was not possible to include these in detail within the scope of this paper because of time restrictions and word limits. However, the team plans to outline these in detail at the conference during the presentation of the paper and hope to generate interest among a wider audience. It has been decided that Panagiotis Patlakas and myself will be representing the team in at the conference to present the paper in July 09.
This is the team’s first paper and we are all very excited to find out what opportunities it brings for uCampus .

uCampus Release 0.04a

2009-05-22T12:34:00.011+01:00

We have now released version 0.04a of uCampus. There are a number of new features in this increment so it is quite a significant update for the platform. Our enhanced interactive map is now a central feature of the user interface and provides a visual means of object selection to complement our existing interface. We have also georeferenced our map and this has enabled us to interface to Google Street View so that users can effortlessly find campus locations from directly within our application.

In general, the application is becoming more and more feature rich over time and this is reflected in the tool button additions to the user interface. Behind the scenes, we have implemented the second generation of our XML schema which will open the way for some more advanced features that we are planning in the next interation.

In addition, uCampus 0.04a is now a tenth of the download size than the previous version. This means that we can now employ Java Web Start technology as a means of client deployment. We hope that this will greatly simplify the distribution process for our users and ensure that they are always using the latest version of our software.

External Project Evaluation Development

2009-05-22T09:54:00.002+01:00

Last week the weCAMP project team attended a project evaluation workshop organised by Diane Hart & James Pinder [the projects external evaluators]. The session was a good opportunity to discuss the development of the project and check that the project was meeting the objectives agreed at the outset. The group discussed a draft logic plan, formative and Summative evaluation techniques and how these elements would be integrated in the the project evaluation report. It was a good opportunity for the project team to reflect on the work so far and ensure that milestones and targets were correctly identified for the remainder of the project.

weCAMP JISC Programme Meeting Manchester Poster Image

2009-04-29T09:20:00.002+01:00

Representing the weCAMP project team, Leo, Panagiotis and Chengzhi attended the JISC Institutional Innovation Programme meeting held at the MacDonald Hotel Manchester on 23 and 24 April 2009. The SSBR Team had done an excellent job in making the event useful to advancing all projects. We particularly benefitted from the discussions with the Erewhon and i-Borrow teams within the cluster. We very much look forward to the Assembly activities as planned.

JISC Manchester Programme Meeting

2009-04-24T10:00:00.003+01:00

We are currently taking part in a very productive meeting for all the programme research groups. We have been developing links with several project teams and generating proposals for future assemblies.

The I-borrow team, Christ Church University, Canterbury are keen to work with us to embed their project [the geo-location system for laptops in a new learning facility] by using the Ucampus system as a framework into which a model of their new learning facility can be added and then the data from the laptop locations inputted. It is an exciting opportunity to test the application potential of Ucampus.

Additional collaboration with other research groups to follow...

JISC meeting Preparation

2009-04-16T10:53:00.001+01:00

Preparations for the JISC meeting/conference in Manchester are well underway. Ucampus 0.03a will be used at the meeting with delegates being able to use and test the platform for themselves. The poster is being developed. A sample image below gives a taster of how it will turn out.

08.04.09 Project Team Meeting

2009-04-16T10:48:00.000+01:00

Notes from last week’s project meeting...

Darren has been working on fine tuning the user account system on Ucampus, allowing users to experiment with building designs in private or in the public domain. One crucial addition is the ability for users to delete their work! Changes to the user interface also make it easier to navigate and are more intuitive when selecting spaces and places around the university campus. The next couple of week’s work will focus on making the base campus map interactive.

Puja has been working on developing the background map to sit behind an SVG layer, adding additional landscaping elements. Within the interactive model, the appearance of the terrain has been altered to make it easier on the eye as well as providing a suitable background to the 3d models. Our aim is to have 83 squares of terrain modelled at the culmination of the project.

Panagiotis has been developing new 3d building models and enhancing the colour schemes for the 3d models to make them more visually accessible. An improved ‘walk’ facility now allows users to navigate around the 3d landscape and into buildings, which begins to highlight the complexity of the models being created. This facility also opens up opportunities for creating animated functions, including virtual tours round buildings and departments.

Howard has been developing detailed proposals for future evaluation workshops, including the activities that users will undertake and ways of publicising the events.

One issue raised in the meeting was the importance of writing/creating a user guide for the Ucampus system. Although there is a help function on the user interface, this only supplies minimal information. As a wider base of users start to interact with the system, such a facility will be crucial to its usability.

uCampus Release 0.03a

2009-03-27T21:14:00.002Z

Today is another important day to mark in the weCAMP project history. After 12 working days since the release of uCampusClient 0.02a, Dr Darren Roberts makes Release 0.03a available this afternoon. This version implements User Account Management (UAM) and various refinements to the user interface.

Why User Account Management?
UAM is something that I have always wanted since the old days of SUCoD. It has been widely reported that End-User Privacy is an important requirement to be fulfilled in order to achieve a higher level of usability of an interactive urban contextual modelling platform. Design practitioners are reluctant to make their early design ideas known to the public. They want to try out some initial ideas in privacy until the designs are developed to a certain extent that they are happy with.

What Darren has delivered through the current UAM is exactly the privacy that end users need when performing personal online experiment. A registered user of uCampus will be given a username and password controlled account where all the models uploaded by the user will be hosted. No other users can see these models held in private accounts until the owners of the models explicitly make them published in the "public" domain.

UAM can also be used in team working by a group of users sharing an account with the same usernsame and password as set up by themselves. When this group of users login to uCampus with their joint account, they will be shown all the models they have uploaded as a team.

How well uCampus UAM will be received by the users is yet to be tested. The first weCAMP Project Workshop will be an ideal occasion to work this out.

Seeing it on uCampus!

2009-03-24T13:52:00.007Z

To echo Howard's latest post, I would like to post some snap shots of the new Learning Hub as proposed by the Team A students working up to the Review 2 session on 20 March 2009 at the School of Architecture.

I have uploaded their core design onto uCampus on their behalf to make it viewable to other students as an example of how the uCampus platform could be used to visualise 3D design proposals in the University campus context as modelled by the JISC Project Team.

Starting the evaluation process in earnest

2009-03-23T13:35:00.001Z

Now the project is underway, and looking very impressive, it is time to start the evaluation process in earnest. The first external group of users are beginning to get to grips with the platform. This group is an MArch group co-ordinated by Chengzhi. They are developing 3D visualisations of assorted schemes for the development of the Jessop Edwardian Wing and the vacant Jessop East site. They are now three weeks into the project and the schemes are developing well. All groups have appeared reticent to engage fully with UCampus but those that have made some explorations are beginning to show some interesting results. Perhaps the most graphic of these - and certainly the one that has caused the greatest discussion within the project team - is the team that have exported the model and then texture mapped building facades onto the model.

The impact on the team has been one of really focusing what we are trying to achieve. It is interesting that this discussion has occured in the same week that Google Maps Street View has gone live. The focus of the model is not a photorealistic representation of the campus, and in this we cannot compete with Street View. We are creating a conceptual and analytical tool that allows the exploration of the campus at a variety of levels. One criticism levelled at the model in its current guise is that at times it becomes difficult to read as buildings tend to merge into one another from certain view points. It is now important that we start to work on how we are representing data within the buildings as this will directly impact on how the exterior of the buildings are mapped. Now is the time to start refining the graphical representation of the platform and maintain a real architectural quality to the information available.

A quick check on uCampus initial results

2009-03-17T12:21:00.003Z

The Project Team have been working on the Jessop site for sometime aiming to produce some initial results to carry out the first test bed case involving a groups of 20+ real users. I did a quick check on the cluster of models for the Jessop Edwardian Building, Jessop Victorian, and BioIncubator (the upper snap shot below) in relation to a Bird's Eye view of the site from Live Search Maps (the lower snap shot - before the Jessop West was built). Will users have a high level of confidence on the uCampus models as produced?

Project Board Meeting 25.02.2009

2009-03-13T09:40:00.005Z

The project board meeting took place two weeks ago and marked an important milestone in the project development. The meeting was the first opportunity for the board to see project outputs, including the first release of the user interface and 3d models mapped onto their terrain.

The project board were impressed by the results after such a short time period and expressed their interest and excitement at the potential of the project. A range of issuees were discussed during the meeting about possible developments and in particular the benefits of the project to the university internally, externally and in the JISC community.

There were no significant changes of direction suggested by the board members, who confirmed the importance of being aware of potential project applications whilst enriching the existing project path.

The first uCampus Platform Release (version 0.01a)

2009-03-06T13:38:00.000Z

The first trial version of the uCampus Plaform was released this morning. The Team (Darren, Panagiotis, Puja, and Chengzhi) did a presentation to a group of 25 taught masters students at the School of Architecture. The students working in four groups will be using uCampus to develop 3D design proposals for (1) Reuse of the Jessop Edwardian Wing as the University's new Learning Hub, and (2) Redevelopment of the Jessop East Site.

For the initial phase of data development, several types of 3D models in the X3D format have been made available through uCampus: (1) 100m x 100m Terrain blocks representing the campus lands and roads etc, (2) Non-university buildings of surrounding local cummunities, (3) University buildings, (4) Floors of selected University buildings.

The students were shown how to install the uCampus Client package, lastets Java platform and a choice of some free downloadable X3D viewers/players. The team then demonstrated how the various kinds of 3D models can be selected, combined to generate user-defined campus models all in-realtime.

All 3D models generated on uCampus can be downloaded to the user's own desktop/laptop that can be further used as the basis for developing 3D design proposals. Students were also shown the Uploading facility of uCampus for them to submit their own models to the server which can be further combined with other models generated/submitted previously.

The idea is that the students are asked to work on the uCampus platform in anger with specific design briefs to fulfill. The JISC project team will then collect questions, feedback and comments from the students as the first group of real users. We have organised regular weekly project reviews in which each student team will present their work in progress and their user experiences with uCampus.

The 0.01a release is a result of about 30 working days since the whole team were put together. In these 30 or so working days, the team also centended with relocation from the Arts Tower to the Crookesmoor Building, two weeks' snow/ice, and a late delivery of the Dell server rack cabinet.

In the next few weeks, the team will continue developing more datasets and interactive function as the students are developing their project works. This phase of platform development and working directly with the first group of end users will prepare us to better undertake the first major project workshop scheduled in late June or early July 2009.

04.02.09 Project Team Meeting

2009-02-12T14:50:00.000Z

The projects Server is now established and the proposed general user interface [GUI] mock-up has been developed by Darren. X3d models of the first learning spaces on the campus are starting to be developed by Panagiotis. We are still trying different viewers to find the best controls for the model to make it easy for people to manipulate. Examples of building envelope were presented and discussed, with particular reference to the level of detail to be modelled so that users could understand the space, but not become overloaded with information.

Puja has developed a way of tagging the building models in Adobe illustrator – which is good news. All layers can be viewed and Lines can be tagged in groups, which makes for neat coding! A reference grid for the university campus base map has been set on a 100x100m gird. We are developing the an SVG basemap for the campus that can be interactive, allowing people to select buildings and explore them

The first user evaluation event is planned for March 2009, involving Masters students to test the platform and try to upload new design proposals to the platform. Howard has been developing the brief for the students to use with Chengzhi. 2 groups will develop a macro scale project on the Jessops site, whilst2 groups develop a micro design for jessops Edwardian Wing.

Platform, Schemas, and other stories...

2009-02-05T13:07:00.000Z

Don't mean to sound overly optimistic, but it seems some good progress has been made since the last time I posted something. We have not yet finalized the GUI but there have been enough discussions to establish a base to work on. The main issue remains how to accommodate the demands for a broad overview for the occassional user, and the specialized, particular demands of a "power user". It seems the second category will need an elaborate query tool. These are some examples of a possible GUI that was suggested at some point:

Darren is doing a good job on creating the platform -it seems we are sticking with using svgs on a raster image for now -though we are thinking of providing an option where there will be a schematic map made completely out of vectors, in order to have a resolution-independent case.

We have been talking a lot about the XML schema as well. Various documents have circulated back and forth and we have come to an agreement on the basic principles. The referencing structure is practically completed and it seems to tie nicely with the work Darren is doing. This is a recent document that gives an overview of the ideas:

Recently I have also been doing some work on modelling the Information Commons interior spaces. The process involves using drawings from various source (e.g. Estastes, the architects etc), modelling the spaces in CAD, then exporting them to .x3d. We are concentrating on the teaching & learning spaces right now, but this might change later on if we have more time.

Hopefully the next post will include an xml example as well as snapshots of our first models!

Ideas,Interactive Map and Interface

2009-01-28T15:34:00.000Z

A little more than a week into the JISC project and I can feel the excitement building already. It was great to finally meet the project team and try to grasp the general and individual ideas.With lots of different perceptions and possible solutions,it promises to be a very interesting project indeed.

While Chengzhi and Darren have been working hard setting up the server, I have been familiarising myself with maps of the target area.A discussion with Chengzhi yesterday about the Interactive Map on the first GUI made a lot of things clearer, especially with the layers and object groups we aim to provide without confusing the end user with too much visual clutter.After detailed thought,the layering for the Interactive Map have been thus decided:
1. Aerial Imagery
2. Text Information (Buildings/Streets)
3. Terrain Information (50x50 grid)
4. Ground Surface Information (50x50 grid)
5. Non University Buildings
6. University Buildings
7. Vegetation (this is still an optional layer depending on information supplied by University Estates)

Also on its way, is a little experimental SVG file with sample data exported from a vector graphic program to check compatibility with Darren's coding.So far, everything is looking good and we are hoping that information from University Estates and ZMapping will also fall into place.

With the server up and running and the team moving to its own office in Crookesmoor building soon, this will be an important week for us.Also our new laptops have just arrived and are being readied by the school's IT doctor Martin, so very soon we will have all the tools handy to go charging into the 6th March deadline!

Assembling the Server Racking System

2009-01-23T23:00:00.000Z

The long awaited 24U Dell Rack Enclosure Canbinet has finally been delivered to the JISC Project Team. Around 1:30pm, I was joined by Darren and Panagiotis and we started to figure out how to assemble the racking kits into the cabinet in which two Dell servers were to be installed. The SUCoD server (a PowerEdge 4400), aged about 7-8 years old, went in first. Much to my relief, it fitted very well into the chassis. The power redundent unit went in next followed by the new ucampus server (a PowerEdge 2950 III).

It took us about 2.5 hours to fit them all with the cables/leads connected. Both sucod and ucampus were then powered up. Good to see the two servers running OK with the new IP addressses. ucampus was then shut down leaving sucod running as normal.

As of today, the hardware setup is almost ready for the team to embark on the very first phase of the ucampus system framework and databanks developments.

ucampus.shef.ac.uk is born!

2009-01-22T16:01:00.000Z

At last, the new web server dedicated to the JISC project is now set up by Darren successfully and is ready to serve. The DNS name is ucampus.shef.ac.uk

It will still be a while before we can see anything happening.

21.01.09 Project Team Meeting

2009-01-21T17:11:00.000Z

The project team welcomed Puja Basu. The team is now complete and working towards our 1st real deadline of 6th March, which is the first user evaluation involving Architecture Masters Students.

Panagiotis and Darren have been defining the work packages leading up to the first user evaluation and the proposals for the platform and interface are now formed. There have been a number of detailed discussions about the exact nature of the user interface and project parameters. It has been a real challenge for the group to convey their individual ideas to each other in a way that everybody else understands as the team are thinking on a range of levels; technical/programming, metadata, 3d visualisation, user interaction, legibility and accessibility. Whilst this process has taken some time we believe that we all agree on the detailed approach.

The team will aim to have 3 university buildings modelled internally and externally for the March user evaluation. The base 3d computer model of the campus is being ordered and this will provide a background to the interactive buildings. Users will be able to interact with the buildings and generate specific views of the campus internally and externally, through which they will then be able to download the context, design their own new buildings/spaces and upload back onto the platform for others to view, evaluate and discuss.

2009-01-21T12:52:00.000Z

Graphic User Interface Design

Darren (the Web System Developer) and I have been working on the design of a Graphic User Interface (GUI) the past two weeks. The main aim is to satisfy two different requirements: on the one hand a simple and sleek interface is called for, in order to keep up with contemporary standards and make the user's interaction with the front-end part of the platform as easy as possible. On the other hand, there is a demand for a complex query system that will give the user the option of selecting the models to be generated by defining an extensive set of parameters. These can be said to generally consist of three categories of different conceptual layer controls: object control layers, history layers, and visualisation layers. At the same time, there is a requirement of a log of the generated models, and a combination of these.
An attempt to tackle this issues was presented at the meeting on the 14th of January. This was based on a tree structure for the object control layers, with a separate pane for the visualisation layers, to be turned on and off on demand. Other subjects, like the knowledge bank and the models log were addressed in separate panes. This GUI was seen as too complex and visually unattractive by the rest of the team and was rejected.
A new design is being tested and will be presented on the project team soon. This is based on a two-tier system: a simple, intuitive system for basic selections, and a panel that is called on demand for the complex queries. It has been tested on various use cases and seems to be responding fine so far.

 

XML Schema Architecture
Parallel to the GUI design, I have been working on the XML schema. The final, official schema will not be produced for some time, as it will obviously have to be subject to many changes. However, the XML architecture has to be realized in order to store the metadata, and allow the X3D files to be referenced through it. A first draft of a possible XML standard was produced based on the original GUI. However, this has to be changed as additional visualisation and object controls are added. There is progress though, in that the main requirements regarding the tie-ins and the referencing process between the XMLs and the X3Ds has been pretty much clarified.

External Evaluator Meeting

2009-01-14T14:33:00.000Z

The two project External Evaluators, James Pinder & Diane Hart, met with the project team earlier today to discuss their detailed roles in the project and define how their evaluation should progress. As a rough guide Diane will focus on evaluating the project working with the internal project team and user groups, whilst James will focus on the impact of the project on external bodies/stakeholders and institutions.

14.01.09 Project Team Meeting

2009-01-14T14:15:00.000Z

The project team are beginning to define the physical parameters of the project and are proposing to model up to 2o buildings on the University of Sheffield Campus. Each of these models will have external envelopes and internal organisation layouts. All other buildings on the university campus and surrounding area will be modelled externally. Quality of information and building data is more important than volume of buildings for this project, however a critical mass of buildings is required to get across the worth of the platform. The aim of 20 buildings to be modelled is an 'in principal' proposal that is subject to change.

A number of the buildings will be defined as 'Live Projects' that the unversity is planning to regenerate / develop in the near future and will act as pilots for the project.

Masters architecture students will be involved from March 09 – to help develop modelling and analysis of the platform.

We are beginning to investigate the possibility of geo-referencing X3d physical models and creating scripts that allow specific parts of 3d building and space visualisations to be selected and adapted on a 2d computer screen.

In addition we are discussing ways that we can implement a system that allows users to adapt floor plans and reconfigure spaces. Possible creation of new tools to allow people to do this without out using external software is being explored.

Setting up the new Project Web Server

2009-01-12T10:41:00.000Z

I have just been told that Phoenix Computers is going to supply us with a new 24U Rack Enclosure Cabinet to go with the PowerEdge 2900 III Server that they delivered wrongly last week. The cabinet worth of £1800 will be delivered to us free of charge in the next couple of days.

CiCS has also confirmed that a data point outlet and a twin power socket will be installed in the store room BS16a for us to set up the new JISC Project Web Server. All we need to do is to file an IP address registration request to obtain a static IP address for the server.

If all goes well, we should have the server up running on Monday 19 Jan 2009, or a day soon after - fingers crossed.

Project Team Meeting: 08 January 2009

2009-01-08T16:20:00.000Z

The first weekly project meeting of 2009 started by focusing on the development the visualtion platform architecture and a discussion about how best to navigate through the web-resource aswell as how best to represent space through 3d visualtisations.

Web system development starts: 05 January 2009

2009-01-08T16:18:00.002Z

Darren Roberts [Web System Developer] starts in-post, working on creating a Web-based platform for the 3D visualisation of learning spaces.

Inaugural meeting of the Project Board: 22 December 2008

2009-01-08T16:18:00.001Z

22 December 2008

Inaugural meeting of the Project Board
The first Project Board meeting took place in theSchool of Architecture, and was chaired by Professor Paul White (Pro-Vice Chancellor,for Teaching and Learning), attended by Neil Cameron (Head of Estates Department), Peter Stubley (Assistant Director, Academic Services and the Library), Adrian Powell (Team Leader, Learning and Teaching Services), Diane Hart (External Evaluator), Howard Evans (Lead Platform Usability Evaluator), Panagiotis Patlakas (Estates Space Metadata Developer), and Chengzhi Peng (Project Director).

[powerpoint slides link]

The meeting was a great success with a number of ideas being put forward by board members to ensure that the ‘Visualisation of future Learning Spaces’ project will be tied in to the future strategic and practical development of the university campus. Areas of the UoS Campus to be modelled initially have been developed to dovetail with the Estates Department’s 10 year plan for the St. Georges [engineering and computing centres] area of the campus. The UoS has also committed more involvement for the project from the Learning, Teaching and Skills department to support the project.

[meeting minutes pdf link]

Meta Data Development: 1 December 2008

2009-01-08T16:15:00.000Z

Panagiotis Patlakas [Estates Space Metadata Developer] starts in-post working on creating spatial taxonomy of learning spaces and preparation/ categorisation of spaces for metadata collection.

Project team established: 18 November 2008

2009-01-08T16:14:00.000Z

Final candidates contacted and invited to take up posts on the project. All three posts filled by Darren Roberts [Web System Developer], Panagiotis Patlakas [Estates Space Metadata Developer] and Puja Basu [3D Digital Architectural Modeller]

Projecty Post Interviews: 14 & 17 November 2008

2009-01-08T16:09:00.000Z

Interviews for the project team applicants undertaken for three posts: Web System Developer, Estates Space Metadata Developer, 3D Digital Architectural Modeller.

The Interview Panel: Chengzhi Peng (Chair), Jackie Gresham, John McAuley, Adrian Powell, Leo Care and Howard Evans

JISC Institutional Innovation Programme Meeting: 24 October 2008

2009-01-08T16:08:00.000Z

JISC Institution Innovation Programme Meeting at Thistle Barbican City hotel in London attended by Adrian Powell, Chengzhi Peng and Leo Care.

The meeting conference enabled the team to learn more about the JISC programme and begin to form collaborations with other institutions. From this initial meeting we have begun forming links with groups from Canterbury, Oxford and UClan.

Project posts advertised: 13 October 2008

2009-01-08T16:07:00.001Z

Three JISC project posts are advertised by the Human Resources at the UoS website and Jobs.ac.uk website: Web System Developer, Estates Space Metadata Developer, 3D Digital Architectural Modeller.

Project start-up meeting: 29 September 2008

2009-01-08T16:04:00.000Z

Project Start-up meeting at the School of Architecture University of Sheffield attended by Andy Dyson, Chengzhi Peng, Prue Chiles, and Leo Care. We are pleased to be told by Andy that the university of Sheffield bid was ranked the 3rd highest proposal in the current funding call for application.

Project inception: 16 September 2008

2009-01-08T15:45:00.000Z

Chengzhi Peng received an email notification sent by Georgia Slade at JISC stating that the Sheffield proposal “A Web-Based Interactive Visualisation Modelling Platform to Effect Participative and Collaborative Planning and Design of Future Learning Spaces” (Call II – Large-Scale Institutional exemplar Projects) was recommended for full funding to start from 1 October 2008 for 18 months.

Welcome

2009-01-08T15:41:00.000Z

Welcome to the weCAMP project blog.

This blog is set up to chart the development of this weCAMP research project, part of the JISC insitutional Innovation Programme.