Seeing it on uCampus!

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

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

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

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)

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

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...

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!