External Contributors and X3D Specification

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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.