Research and Tests on Interactivity

These past few days consisted of me researching about interactivity within our built environment, I found that the crymod website is really usefull and has provided me without an immense amount of information required to complete the fabrication. I did some tests on opening doors, which was successful, and also making glass shatter.

This is what I created for my test, just a simple wall with a door, and a window to the left.

My attempt to smash the glass.

Attempt successful.

Spraying the window with lead.

Attempt at opening the door.

Successful.

I think I may have to do a few adjustments to the model and maybe create an open space where the location of the door is; then add doors in sandbox 2 to make them openable.

The Final Form

Throughout the last few days I have been adding extra elements to the building, e.g. stairs, placing doors, fixtures, fittings, and furniture. Arranging the furniture is not as easy as it seems, you really have to take into consideration the spacing between them, and also the layout. I'm glad I've finally got this done and now to move on to my next part. AI and interactivity within the built environment is basically adding people into the building (making them do things e.g. walking, swimming), interactivity, making objects move, doors openable, and glass breaking. This week is really going to be tough but hopefully all goes well.

An overall view of the final model with furnishings, some of the walls and ceilings had to be hidden in order to observe the interior spaces.


The other side of the model, showing living spaces, kitchen and bathroom areas.

Week Sick (6)

This week I have been sick, so not much work has been done, and I did not attend class this week due to an eye infection. My team mates noted to me that the new schedule has been created working on the remainding days we have left. So far by looking through the new schedule, it looks pretty tight, it has its good, and bad. Good thing is we know what everyone is doing and when they should be completed by, nicely layout out. The bad is time, we dunno if we can complete it in the time frame given, and problems may occur as they always do. So far it looks realistic to do, we have alot of work to do on the coming days ahead.

Collaboration Topic 2

Hierarchy
Generally when you think of hierarchy you would imagine a pyramid table, with CEO's at the top and works down to freshers down below. In a typical office environment you would have freshers which are important to the organization as they have fresh minds, adds more energy to the work environment and have the latest knowledge in the field of work. Next up are executives (generally assigning work to the freshers) then managers (efficiency, decision making, resource allocation etc.). Finally at the top, is the CEO which is an executive position in charge of scientific and technical issues of the company.
You could now see how collaboration relates alot to hierarchy, example, the freshers working must collaborate with the managers to make sure everything is correct, then the managers to executives to CEO's. Right now in our situation our hierarchy would probably be split into just three sections, at the bottom is the people who will generate and work on the fabrication, then the team leader (assigning tasks and deadlines) whom may discuss issues with the tutors (makes the final decisions and opinions).

Referece:
S.C. Mishra. "Understanding organization hierarchy", Articlesbase (2008) accessed on 11 April 2009, http://www.articlesbase.com/career-management-articles/understanding-organization-hierarchy-822075.html

Knowledge
Everyone has some sort of knowledge which they gathered through personal experience, trial and error or through education. Now days having great knowledge in the field of work you do can easily bring you to your goals, therefore making it easier for you to understand and work becomes more efficient and flows much more smoother.
Knowledge in a collaborative environment could be an advantage, as everyone shares their knowledge on that particular subject generates more ideas which could lead to solutions and greater achievements. But having advantages also has disadvantages, for example two different minds think their knowledge of that particular subject is great, but one may disagree to that persons knowledge which then causes conflict within the team environment.

Break Report

The break provided a good time for our group to get back on track and on top of things, we all were working on our part during the Easter break. My task involved everything to do with modelling, so i started to finalize the model, thinking about realistic sizes and dimensions of rooms etc.

This is the basement level; this level will act as a recreation area, swimming pool, the columns hold up the bridge that runs across opposite sides of the room.

This is a level above, swimming pool, the area to the right is the restroom and spa area. To the right is the stairs which leads up to the living spaces.

Top left and bottom left will be bedrooms, between them are restrooms and a small book area. Top right is a conference room/ study area, and bottom right is the second living room. Notice the middle, you can see down into the pool area, this area will provide lighting to the interior spaces.

The ground level has access to the outside world, the spaces consist of, two bedrooms (bottom) large living room/games room (top), and to the left we have the kitchen, dining area, and the bathroom.

Next part of my task is to add furniture, and think about fixtures such as door knobs, lighting fixtures, and how to fill up the empty spaces.

Week 5

Well first thing first, our group finished off posting on the class wiki so other groups can expand on our synopsis. During the lecture this week we had guest Neil Brown from the Linux development talk to us surprisingly about all the topics of collaboration we mentioned for our class wiki. Neil started off by introducing us to the 3 main topics he is going to discuss, philosophy, tools, and people. he discussed that when working with codes within Linux you have to be able to make the code clean neat and easy to understand, therefore it gives the next person more of an opportunity to come alone and enhance it, but making it work is not enough it must also be maintainable. having the right set of tools will make it more easier to collaborate with one another and make things so much easier. When Neil was discussing people i noticed he mentioned the method of hierarchy quite a few times.

After the lecture our group discussed how we were going to make up our schedule for the final fabrication project. We thought about milestones and so it makes up work up to something and achieve it, we came up with the following:

• correct scale of the building
• finishing the exterior and interior of the building
• modelling furnishings
• textures, scaling textures, bump maps
• terrain, layout, orientation, making the site more noticeable, defining the building site and context of the place
• environment, time of day, type of vegetation used, lighting, atmosphere, objects, sounds
• interactivity, having vehicles to get around, AI's and what will they be doing
• preparation for the presentation, power point, video walkthrough

After discussing these problems we assigned the tasks to each individual and the date it should be done by. I created the table below which show our schedule.

Wikipedia Page Analysis - Technology

The overall layout of this website is simple, clean, and easy to navigate through. Its quick and easy to access all the different options as they are located on the side bar on the left hand side, wikipedia keeps consistency throughout the website. Normally when searching a topic e.g. technology the first few paragraphs gives you a description and definition of technology. Below this is a table of contents which are also quick links that takes you straight to the heading, having this helps the navigator quickly search for their topic of interest.

Some important or key words (coloured blue) are linked to different pages, by clicking on this it will give take you to another page which provides you with more information. Pictures captioned with descriptive text below it, clicking on the picture will take you to another page which you can download the full size of the image, also this page will provide reference and information about the picture, e.g. date, picture taken by whom.
There are more functions to wikipedia, e.g. the search bar on located on the left hand side is really handy and it at a position that is easy to locate. At the end of the page they provide you with related information on the topic and also references of their sources.

Wikipedia provides you with the power to be able to edit and page. Edit as in edit everything, spelling, gramma, and even removing. If one wishes to add more information they must properly reference their source accordingly. Wikipedia provides other functions such as a discussion page, history, source viewing.

Reference

Source: Technology Page, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology, (Date Accessed on 10th April 2009)

Week 4

During this week every group had to present their draft fabrication, we had a guest lecturer that talked to us about conflict in the work force. Quite an interesting talk as we have a glimpse of what really happens out there under a building project; where there is so much more conflict than you think.

Presentations went pretty well for everyone, interesting and thoughtful designs from each group and some with alot of progress done. Our group is still working out how to correctly import textures into the Crysis engine, I think it is really important for us to get it out of the way this week, so we can focus on furnishing the internals and think about the layout of everything. It would be great if we got this finished off quick smart, as we have to think about other things such as, sound, making objects movable, making doors interactive, and maybe making glass breakable.

During this week I will focus on completing the weekly task, which is posting my collaboration topic onto the class wiki, and reference them correctly. I should start looking for articles and sources in libraries, instead of the good old Internet.