Using Audio Whiteboard, I began by drawing the two-dimensional blueprint for the three-dimensional house I was building. Audio Whiteboard has a grid feature that I used to set a scale that compared directly to the meters set by Rocket World EMMS.
The first part of the house I chose to build was the garage, which consisted of taking several cube-shaped prims and changing their dimensions to make the walls and roof. I then used the X, Y, and Z-axis location feature within the program to ensure all of the shapes fit without any gaps or spaces.
The next step in building the house was setting the back wall and building the first room. All of the walls were built in the same manner as the garage, using both the cube-shaped prim and the position coordinates, and I set the distance to be consistent with the two-dimensional blueprint. The program restricts the size of a prim to be 10 meters in any one coordinate's direction, so the walls required several conjoined prims.
As the house I designed was symmetrical, I was able to build the second wing by duplicating the same shapes that I used in the first wing and changing the coordinates.
I elected to design the front part of the two wings in a rounded manner, rather than flat. As I wanted to have the house be as genuine as possible, I needed the rooms to remain hollow on the inside (as shown in the third picture) which ruled out using a hemisphere shape. I was forced to use several cube-shaped prims only 2 meters wide, and tilt each one 22.5 degrees further than the last in order to complete the shape. With the second wing I was able to duplicate each prim and only change the Y-coordinates in order to construct an accurate mirror image.
The front wall of the house was added using five cube-shaped prims, two of which were raised off of the ground by inputting a higher positional Z-axis in order to leave the space for doorways.
I decided to add raised roofs on the center part of the house as well as the two wings in order to provide a better sense of depth and texture. For the roofs of the two wings I used a pyramid-shaped prim and changed the dimensions in order to mesh correctly with the walls it was built on (the overhang was done intentionally in order to best reflect a real house.) As the center part of the house was too large to be covered by a single shape, I used two flattened prism-shaped prims that married in the middle in order to provide the peak I wanted.
Using four cube-shaped prims I set the outline for the swimming pool, keeping the spacing and size consistent with the two-dimensional blueprint.
Given that I elected to set the ceiling height for the main part of the house at 6 meters, but the ceilings of the wings at 4 meters, I needed to build up an extra two meters at the points where the wings and main house met. Using the cube-shaped prims and setting them to the size differential, I filled in the open areas. I then placed two more prism-shaped prims on either side of the original two, applying a shallower angle on these. In placing all of the shapes I used the positional feature and manipulated the coordinates in order to ensure they were all exactly where they were supposed to be.
I then built the doors and doorframes. Again, with cube-shaped prims, I build the door to the exact dimensions of the open area, and laid blocks on top and around the door in order to both make the doors noticeable and provide a textural, three-dimensional quality. Using the the linking feature, I linked all of the prims (with the exception of the door hinges and door knob, which needed to be switched to the other side of the door to provide symmetry) and duplicated the shapes, only needing to change the coordinate of the shape to cover the second opening. I then duplicated the hinges and doorknob, and placed them on the opposite sides of the door.
I decided to build a truck in the driveway to provide more detail. I used torus-shaped prims for the wheels, and ring-shaped prims to serve as hub caps. I then used cylinder-shaped prims to build the axels, and a shallow hemicylinder to provide the undercarriage. To build the body of the truck I used cube-shaped prims that were narrowed out to build the bed of the truck, and a combination of cubes, cylinders, and hemicylinders to attempt to mimic the curves of the cabin of an old pickup truck.
The two above pictures note the building of the roof on the garage side of the house, which was done in the same way as the left side, which was pictured earlier.
In building the pool, I used the land manipulation feature provided by the bulldozer to lower the land in the already constructed walls of the pool and fill it with water.
I also decided to build a fence around the property the house was built on. It was built using flattened cube-shaped prims with flattened cone-shaped prims on top. I then used the duplicate feature to add to the chain, then linking the two duplicate shapes in order to be able to again duplicate the larger shape. To build the gate, I also used cylinder-shaped prims for both the post the gate was secured to as wel as the hinges of the gate. The lock was built using a cylinder-shaped prim rotated ninety degrees, and a ring-shaped prim also resized and rotated.
After building the pool, I elected to construct a patterned patio. This was done by linking together two differently colored, flattened cube-shaped prims. I then duplicated the linked shape, and then linked the duplication to the original to duplicate a larger patterned shape. Using this process, I was able to cover the entire area around the pool with the patterned patio, using the Z-axis feature to ensure the walls of the pool were perfectly aligned with the patterned blocks.
To add more detail, I built a basketball hoop. The base of the hoop (meant to replicate water-weighted basketball bases) was constructed from a hemicylinder prim. I then added a cylinder on top to serve as the post, and placed a flattened hemicone on top of that to serve as the backboard. I flattened a cube-shaped prim and resized it in order to serve as the inner square. The rim was constructed from a ring-shaped prim that was then resized, rotated, and raised
The above pictures are of the finished house, both the inside and the outside. Every prim used in the construction of the house was mathematically placed according to both the blueprint and in relation to the other prims in the house.
The above pictures show an assignment I completed in an immersive education environment called Rocket World. The assignment was intended to be done by the class as a team, but as I was unable to attend class, I ended up completing it outside of class. The primary goal behind the project was to go about planning something in a two dimensional environment that would actually get executed in a three dimensional environment.
It is a final exercise from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc
