Hall-elujah

In the last edition of the gazette, we hinted that the Deans have planned a renovation so wonderful  that you couldn’t miss its installation. Hallelujah! A new version of the Lecture Hall, the site of our popular classes, is installed at Caledon Oxbridge Village as a second lecture hall for use.

Dean Ravelli Ormstein has been overseeing the renovations, assisted by Chancellor Martini for texturing and stained glass ornaments, and Mr Sauce Sorrowman for scripting. Other staff such as Dean Tali and Miss Bulmer have assisted too. We caught up several weeks ago as he was putting in the final touches on the new lecture hall.

I walked up the new staircase and fancy handrails and into the hall. I gasped to see the Octopus chandelier made of stained glass. There was also a better use of graduating height levels for the audience hall.

“This is an amazing improvement!” I said. “And look at the lever box for controlling floor and lights!”

“Yes, the machinery is not scripted yet,” he said. “We still have to use the old one for the time being.”

One of my first questions was whether Dean Ravelli saved the lecture hall to do last, and if there was any order to what he renovated.

“I don’t have any order in my building. I just build on where I have ideas. Today I want to fix something… and texturing the lamps at the wall.”

“So it evolves gradually? Will we be surprised what comes next, after the lecture hall?”

“I guess we will discuss that with the other deans, what will be next. I already started with the Cathedral, the first hall. But it would be better to make a meshed version of the small college building or the rail station, since both are simple and quick to do.”

I asked if there were any restrictions on how the campus buildings are remodelled.

“Well only those restrictions we define ourselves. One of the main restriction is that the overall look stays as we are used to.”

“Yes, it won’t be natural in RL to wake up to a different look. But this feels familiar and yet better on many levels because you retained the right features.”

“At the beginning the idea was just to mesherize the buildings and keep the original look and proportions. But while building the college, we had ideas how to improve the looks, adding more details and making the architecture more realistic.”

I asked Dean Ravelli when the renovation commenced. He checked his Blender files and replied that the oldest file on the College building is from November 10th, 2012.

“Well, building the meshed college took so long, because we always had new ideas to improve it, and it is still not finished. Martini is working on textures for the stained glass windows and I’m improving the old textures and making normal and specular maps.”

I praised the texturing on the new mesh buildings and asked if he used different resolution ones.

“The textures are the same as we used on the old prim Colleges, but normal and specular maps were added and mesh builds have full control how to map them on the faces. So overall, it looks much better. At least I hope so!”

“How about land impact values?” I asked.

“There is not a big difference in LI. The original colleges had 54-57. The meshed ones have about 60, but much more details!”

“So this was around two months ago you replaced the colleges?”

“I don’t remember anymore. Wasn’t it between Christmas and the New Year?”

“It must have been nervous and exciting! Was there anyone on campus when you did that?”

“Oh,” he said. “Just checked it. Was around April 1st. No joke! Yes there were a few avatars around, but they weren’t affected.”

“We all should have been there to watch you, Dean Ravelli! With festive balloons.”

“But it didn’t take that long.”

I asked who noticed the changes first, but Dean Ravelli didn’t remember offhand.

“We were all excited when we got your email, teasing us if we noticed the change.” I said. “It showed how carefully you replaced the buildings. People were not immediately aware…”

“Which brings me to another topic,” he said. “Performance. The buildings use a small set of textures only, perhaps only 12, because we wanted a low-lag region or better, a region which runs smooth on slow machines.”

“So how did you do that?”

“Optimizing, optimizing, optimizing. each LOD have to be optimized as far as possible. I never use the tools to auto-generate the lower LODs. I create them manually in Blender so I keep control over each vertice and face.”

I was surprised to then hear him say that he uploaded 5 different files for each of the LOD.

Dean Ravelli went on to explain the renovation process. “I make notes about the Export/Import process, then checking the object weights, like Download, Physics, Server and Display. those values tell me, where I can look for optimization of the mesh, or of the textures. And camming out too, yes. Checking how objects look from distance or with different viewer settings.

“You approach it with scientific precision!” I grinned.

“Thats what I call ‘optimized mesh.'”

“Hmmm,” I said. “I don’t think that many builders are that careful.”

“Sadly no. It is really a lot of work and all at the same time, keeping the same look.”

“I really hope you didn’t get too disappointed we didn’t notice straight away,” I said. “It actually showed how carefully you placed things. I mean, if the performance suddenly became ultra laggy, or the colleges got deformed when we log in… THEN we might know something happened!”

Then I asked Dean Ravelli how he measured the object weights – on blender? Or in SL?

“The viewer measures it for me, you can access it from the Build window, just click on “More Info”… Have you found it?”

“Yes!”

“I have some 1024*1024 maps on the Colleges, those are far too big. Like the wall texture: it has the tiled brown wood, the red wallpaper below and a beige sandstone below. it is one of the original Oxbridge textures. But I have never baked any textures to get these patchwork textures. The textures/diffuse maps used are 512*512 or smaller. but there are some Normal and Specular maps still at 1024*1024, which is far too big, they need a very long time to get downloaded.

“For Textures / Diffuse maps I prefer tiled textures, I don’t bake those in Blender but I do bake Normal Maps in Blender. First I model the surface with the details I wish, then I bake its normal. Specular Maps are easier to make, just using a 2D graphic software with the Textures and define parts which have to be shiny e.g. for windows, the reflection of light on a surface. You can see it on these windows here.”

I peered closely at the wall.

“The wall is one square texture with two windows on it, but only the parts with the stained glass is shiny. Today I was working on this Specular Map, to make the thin leadframes diffuse (if that is the right word for ‘not shiny’).”

“So texture combine with the specular map whole overall look?” I asked.

“In the old buildings it is just the Texture using the Alpha channel for the glass. I use PNG only, since it offers the Alpha channel. JPEG isn’t appropriate for textures. for this wall there are three files which have to be uploaded: Diffuse, Normal and Specular Map. All together they combine what we will see on this wall, yes. If the sun is in the correct position, you will see how the normal maps make gives it deepness.”

“Does it matter what graphic setting?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “You better go to Ultra settings.”

“Dean Ravelli, I have a special question for you as an investigative journalist! I was visiting Caledon Burroughs, and I saw some plans for a campus redesign rezzed in the air! Is it early days or is a redesign underway?”

“Well, not sure what you have seen, there are two redesign plans somewhere in Caledon…”

“They are on a mesh small-scale model. One for you, Miss Glorf and existing layout.”

“Oh!” said Dean Ravelli. “One of them is about rearranging the entire campus. Tali and Sauce invited me long time ago for a brainstorming. We made separate models. Perhaps Glorf made one later too.”

“So what was the outcome? What new layout will we go with?”

“Well, no decision was done so far. and I think we had at least two different options about it. it is something which has to develop one by one in our brains and hearts.”

“Perhaps it will take a big change, like a return to a full sim, for such a redesign to happen?”

“I would not make a big change. Our scholars and visitors like or even love Oxbridge like it is. So making smaller changes one by one is better to get it accepted.”

I nodded.

We talked briefly about Dean Ravelli’s recent trip to the UK on a cycling trip, and I then asked if he had any future building projects for the RL photographs there.

“Nope, I’m totally focussed on building  for Oxbridge since my RL time is limited.”

“Did you see any buildings at Oxford that you thought, Wow! Great for COU?”

“Oh I saw them, yes. I even got tears in my eyes when I arrived there. It was 4 am and I cycled all day and night to reach it. Then I got tired of the flat landscape there so I took the next train to the west coast and a ferry to Ireland. The streets were so much better in Ireland, for cycling.”

“Wait, you first cried with excitement and then got bored?”

“Yes, bored by the landscape only! But the buildings in Oxford are great, no question.”

“Did you use any photo’s from your trip to Oxford, in your renovation work here?”

“Well, so far none of the photos I took at RL Oxford are used on the buildings. I went to the UK and Ireland to find inspiration on architecture generally, so I made hundreds of photos of old buildings. Two days I spent in Oxford, mainly to make photos for textures, but the weather wasn’t good enough so I will go there again one day.

“In North-Ireland there is a small village called Caledon. I made about 200 photos there, and one will find its way to the roofs of Oxbridge.”

“Wonderful!” I said. “Did you see any krakens or come across a cavorite mine?”

“I met Saffia Widdershins at Oxford, she was involved in creating the original Oxbridge. No krakens or cavorite. But the landscape and estates really reminded me of Caledon.”

I smiled and thought how lucky we were, to have a Dean that puts so much love and attention into the renovation works at the university campus.

Even after our interview ended, I could not help visualising a solitary traveller who catches an overnight ferry from the continent over to the British isle,  and then cycles day night until he arrives at a university town. Streetlamps bathing the regal sandstone facades with a warm and welcoming glow. The pilgrim has reached his destination and his eyes dampens to see the inspiration for Caledon Oxbridge University.

I wondered whether I, too, will have tears in my eyes when I make that pilgrimage one day to the town that inspired our wonderful campus in Second Life.

In the meantime, we hope the next time you take a class or attend an event at Caledon Oxbridge University, you will get to see the new lecture hall! We hope you will spare a moment then, to consider the many hours and expert details that was lavished to make it look as shiny and perfect as it does. Hall-elujah!