Abbey, Aidan, and Kenyon
Progress:
After having some time to mull over our project, talk with Austin, and take a visit to the Carleton archives, we have made it through the first hurdle of deciding exactly what our project will consist of. We decided to narrow our objectives down to an interior model of the Sayles Gymnasium and an exterior model of Mudd Hall. This way, we will be able to make a more cohesive product that will also make sense given our time constraints. Furthermore, after our visit to the archives, it became apparent that there are no high-quality floor plans of Evans before the 2001 renovation, effectively shutting down our potential plan of reconstructing its interior and helping us narrow our objectives down. Given our current plan, we have now begun to do some of the basic building for both models in SketchUp, focusing more on the general structure and layout rather than the aesthetic details. We will go back to the archives at the beginning of next week with a goal of gathering lots of images to fill in those details.
Problems:
There haven’t been too many problems so far, though arguably the most prominent issue is that the floor plans for the original Sayles building do not have specific size markings. Thus, we will most likely have to use other sources such as current Sayles floor plans or the already-built exterior of the current Sayles building in Carleton’s CityEngine scene to accurately represent the size of the building. As previously mentioned, we also ran into issues with availability of information on Evans, which led to our scrapping of that plan altogether.
Tools/Techniques:
We have decided to move forward with our plans of using SketchUp to model each building and Unity to make them presentable. We have now determined that Sayles will be presented in the form of a user-controlled walkthrough, while Mudd will be presented as a prerecorded video showing the exterior model from all angles.
Deliverables:
March 6 – Complete the models (it is now clear that we will need more time than anticipated for this portion)
March 8 – Implement the Unity walkthrough/video (given Aidan’s Unity experience, this process will probably take a bit less time than previously expected)
March 9 – Publish all material to the website.
Hi Team,
Your plans seem to be taking shape. You can access the VirtualCampus building models if needed, but since much of the intellectual work of your project will be reproducing Mudd without being able to visit it, I’d rather you make progress on your own before using the already generated model.
As you model and envision the final product, think about how the planning, sources, tools and user experiences differ when modeling interiors vs. exteriors. These should form the basis for much of the methodological discussion in your final write up. Reread the 3D modeling articles on the schedule for help in conceptualizing these challenges.