IBE385 3D Design in Virtual Worlds

Course Outline (Fall Semester 2009) (3 credits)

Meeting dates: 14/9, 28/9, 12/10, 19/10, 26/10 at kl. 16.00 – 17.30

Learning Objective

Students should become familiar with design and building possibilities in Second Life. All students should attend the 5 course meetings and participate in projects assigned in lecture.

Evaluation - 60% In lecture projects work and participation and 40% Final Project (with presentation of it).

  • 60% In Lecture Projects = Students will receive credit for participating in the course projects, such as the book exercises (assigned in lecture).
  • 40% Final Project = Interior space design of a section of a ship that could be applied to a task of a specified employee training exercise.

Materials

  • Weber, A., Rufer-Bach, K, and Platel, R. (2008) “Creating you world”, Wiley Publishing.
  • In-class references are given.

Participants

Names (Second Life = aka in Real Life)

  • Aklom Haifisch = Judith Molka-Danielsen (teacher)
  • (Students must acquire avatars in Second Life prior to course start.)

Course meetings

(All course meetings are on Mondays 16.00-17.30 in Second Life on KamimoIsland.)

  1. (14.Sept) We cover Chapters 1 and 2. We discuss issues of organizing inventory, the basic concepts of prims and objects in SL. In lecture project is the students build “snowmen”.
  2. (28.Sept) Introduce the basic Object Editor and its features. We discuss how to add texture and light to objects. We discuss how to change the size and shape of objects. Continued with chapters 3 and 4 of the book. In lecture project is to build a spiral staircase as found on page 55 of the book.
  3. (12.Oct.) Visit a platform where a preliminary representation of Building-B at HiM is being developed to test emergency evacuation plans. Discuss the advantages or disadvantages of using 3D design of buildings to test safety designs. Next, request as anin lecture exercisethat students try out the settings on a particle emitter that could emit smoke. Everyone is given a smoke-emitter script. There is an emitter script on page 187 of the book. An emitter can be used to emit smoke from a kiosk, from a ship, or can be used to emit the wake from a boat. The emphasis is on Chapter 6, 7 and 8 of the book. These offer help with scripting.
  4. (19.Oct.) Review ideas for how to display or share information is on page 228 (Chapter 9) of our book. In lecture project is to build an information display. Add functionality to the build so that it can do things like display text or images, send email to the avatar that clicks on them, send the avatar to an external link on a webpage.
  5. (26.Oct) This is the last class meeting scheduled in SL. We will not have new topics today, but we will evaluate the Final Project design of your interior space of a ship. We will discuss the problems you may have encountered on building in SL, and in sharing builds with others. The projects will be evaluated on prim usage, functionality for the task (is it realistic enough, will it help employees to learn), and the use of scripting to convey information in the design.

Final Project

This is both a description of the assignment and some helpful links for getting started. The student may choose to begin the final project at any time.

Students are assigned a final project to create a 3D design of a boat interior space that has some equivalent function in real life (irl). The 3D representation of the interior space should convey some information about what those areas are used for irl. An example can be the game that is discuss on Page 230-231 of our book (Chapter 9). In this information about recipes is conveyed when objects in the kitchen are touched. Issues of Chapter 12 will be relevant for information display in the final project.

The overall student project is to make an interior section of a ship that could be used for employee training exercises. All builds must be set to share your designs so that they can be used, transferred and modified later on by others. You should build with all free and transferable textures and scripts. The final design will be evaluated in lecture on October 26th.

Resources

Several sites with good images of ships that might be used for your project are:

  • This is a very detailed design and good interior photos further down the page. Also see .
  • There is also the private site that shows the Mærsk Assister ( ).
  • Plus ( ). represent other “barges” and this site might have cleaner images.

Sources for free scripts are: and and besides this look in SL at ISTE library, ICT library and InfoIsland.