ARCH1392 - Digital Collaboration Studio 2009

Exhibition - Array of Screens

2009-07-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

The exhibition of the Final Fabrications, featuring a screen for each of the teams and a 7th screen to cover the course as a whole looked simple but effective in the Red Centre foyer. The array of screens look great, esp at night with them glowing out across Science Square. This shows we should have digital displays in there all the time.

Here are a few shots:

EXHIBITION

2009-06-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Red Centre foyer exhibition space will soon have each groups work up on display, the trailers created showing off the environments created using the real-time engine in a digestible format. I hope we will get a nice suite of people from across FBE and related areas to see the work over the next few days as the long row of LCD screens project some of the quality coming from the new Architectural Computing Program.

Starts Thursday 25th
Red Centre Foyer
Drinks and nibbles from 4pm on the opening day.

Wk12 Guest Spots

2009-06-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Russell Lowe (well known to all) will be sharing some of his work with real-time engines. He will demonstrate some of the work on Hospital design and his recent explorations using Crysis. Russell has been a long term proponent of repurposing gaming technologies for architecture and visualisation of various sorts and thus brings great insight into their use, present and future.

Stephen Peter will then join us to talk through your prep for Grad Project as well.

Red Again talk

2009-06-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

Shilo McClean mentioned her connection to he Sydney ACM Chapter of SIGGRAPH during her guest spot and here are the details of the next talk she referred to. The Red camera is the big gun in digital cinematic cameras and has helped revolutionised the film process over just the last few years.

Topic: Red Again - Update on the Red Camera
Speaker: Mike Seymour
Date: Wednesday 3rd June 2009
Time: 7:00pm to approx 8:00pm
Venue: Elwynn Lynn Conference Centre, College of Fine Arts (CoFA), Selwyn St, Paddington
More Info: Details on the Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH site

Elective Courses for 2nd Session

2009-06-01T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here are the details on the two elective courses that have been offered to you for second session, all information, including times and course content, is in the web pages provided.

Game Design Workshop

COMP4431
Malcolm Ryan
malcolmr@cse.unsw.edu.au
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4431

&

iCinema Studio

SART3801
Matthew McGinity
icinema.studio@cse.unsw.edu.au
http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/icinemastudio.html

iCinema Demonstation

2009-05-26T21:20:00.001-07:00

The final guest lecture is actually an excursion to the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, this will be a lot of fun, and you will get to see some cutting edge technology in a range of fields all relating to Digital Interactivity. We will meet at 12:55pm at the bottom of the Scientia Building steps, and we will all go in together at 1:05pm. DON'T BE LATE!

Here is an excerpt from the website http://www.icinema.unsw.edu.au/index.html:

“The iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, established in 2002, is a joint venture of the College of Fine Arts, Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales. It brings together researchers and postgraduate students in new media, aesthetics, cinematic theory, multimedia design, computer science, cognitive science, software/hardware engineering and mining virtual reality.
The iCinema research program focuses on research into digital interactivity for benchmark applications across the arts, culture and industry. In particular, it is focused on the way the digital can be used to imagine new ways of living in the contemporary world, redefining how we seek recreation and learning, and the way we work and do business.”

Play Custom Map in Crysis Game Environment

2009-05-20T21:56:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to information on play a custom map with the Crysis Game:
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=11373

Specialisations

2009-05-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

Student	Specialisation
Essmael	Analysis
Alichia	Packaging, skinning, etc.
Cameron	Advanced AI
Kenneth	Custom Animations (Character + Vehicles)
Swati	On Screen Overlays (Text, information, etc.)
Wirada	Weather Controls
Jackey	Cutscenes, Staged Walkthroughs, etc.
Wilson	Custom HUD
Suthea	Traffic Control
Jane	Advanced Sound
Melissa	Advanced Doors and Windows
Karl	Multiplayer Options
Phillip	High Quality Video and Image Export
Stephen	Custom Mini Map
Eva	Custom Lighting Interactivity
Allan	Advanced Water
Pui Pui	Advanced Textures
Gordon
Michael	Video (Materials, Web, etc.)
Joanne	Custom Characters (change Default, etc.)
Wing	Advanced Elevators (Movers, Escalators, etc.)
Teresa	Advanced Player Movement (Teleportation, flying, etc.)
Jae	Custom Vegetation
Monica	Interactivity with In-game Objects

Andrew Wallace guest spot

2009-05-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

Our next guest spot is to be presented by Andrew Wallace a recent FBE graduate working for LCA (Lara Caldera Architects). He has used several real-time engines in the support of projects and competitions with them including this model for their Greentech 'Eco House of the Future' competition:

[LCA eco-house concept in the Crysis engine via the LCA site]

This video shows off another environment and design:

Shilo McClean Guest Spot

2009-05-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

Our next guest (week 9) will be Shilo McClean

Shilo McClean is the author of the books: Digital Storytelling: the narrative power of visual effects in film (MIT Press, 2007) and So What’s This All About Then: a non-user’s guide for digital effects in film (AFTRS, 1998). She is the producer/director of the digital visual effects videos: How Long is a Piece of String and Adding Strings to your Bow.

She will bring her immensely connected perspective to the collaborative creation of digital film works.

Links:
Shilo MClean's Blog
Digital Storytelling on Amazon

Think and Act Glocally – global collaborations for sustainable future.

2009-05-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

We have Dr Deo Prasad presenting the guest spot for this week titled: Think and act Glocally – global collaborations for sustainable future. (Glocal is a term being used as a mix of global and local)

Deo will doubtless be covering the trials and tribulations of working with countries and their governments on collaborations at a global scale. His area of expertise is building and environmental sustainability and now their relationship with climate change. He has been working with international organisations on reforms aimed at tackling our global sustainability problems, so there will be plenty of insight into how collaborations work (or dont).

[Image from the UNEP site of the Maldives, pledging to be the first carbon neutral nation]

Reference Sites for the United Nations Environment Program:
UNEP
ROAP

Nice examples of Crysis in Architectural Practice

2009-05-03T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is a video that shows some really nice examples of some architectural projects in Crysis. There is a lot of French speaking people at the throughout, though near the end they start speaking some English. Regardless of the language, these are the types of visuals you are all aiming for in your Fabrications.

Assembling Imported Geometry in Pieces

2009-05-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

One problem that many of you will be facing is re-assembling your buildings in Crysis, brought in from Max (or similar) in lots of pieces because of too much geometry in the overall form. It seems the most important aspect of this process is to export all of your Max pieces with a common pivot point. Here is a video that Russell passed on to me about this issue (the video here is just a 5 minute preview, to see the whole video, go to the CryMod thread provided below):

Watch Assembling Buildings in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

It is from a thread on CryMad at:
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=17496

Here's another interesting video that Russell sent me showing some limited interactivity in a semi-interactive sceen:

This is again from CryMod, and while not exactly a tutorial, at least a suggestion to how this could be done yourselves can be found at:
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=41256&hilight=animated+texture

Collaboration Topics - Round 3

2009-05-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Here are the third set of topics for each team to research over the next week. As individuals you will need to find a source for each topic assigned to your group, giving your team a total of 8 resources, 4 for each topic. You will need to individually sumarise in a post to your individual blogs your source, including any images and diagrams that may help to articulate the ideas in the chosen source. You will also need to add to the Collaborative Wiki on your topics, collaborating as a team to increase the repository of knowledge available.

Team A - Atlar

TECHNOLOGY

COMMUNICATION

Team 1 - Omega

RECORDS

KNOWLEDGE

Team B - Urbans

INTENT

MANAGEMENT

Team 2 - E-Volve

REMUNERATION

PLANNING

Team C - Orange

CULTURE

CONFLICT

Team 3 - Digilism

HIERARCHY

CONTEXT

Jack Barton - Next Guest

2009-04-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

UrbanIT is the title of Jack Barton's guest spot this week where he will cover a range of projects involving research, cities, data, councils, perceptions, visualisation, government and industry centred around his current work for the UrbanIT project. There is plenty of collaborative effort involved and his work/research is very relevant to your futures.

[City of Sydney Project image via Jack's website]

links:
Jack Barton
UrbanIT

Psychology of Collaboration

2009-04-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

Tom Denson's talk introduced us to a suite of interesting ideas around the psychology of teams, groups and collaboration. Hopefully everyone founds some threads that they could thing about including in their blog or wiki entries. The UNSW Library has an armada of psychology books if you want to look a little deeper - and quite a few E-Books as well.
Perhaps a psych course could fill a gen-ed course option if you have any slots still open.

Tom Denson - Next Guest

2009-04-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Tom Denson is our next Guest Spot speaker, coming from the UNSW School of Psychology he will be exploring some of the psychology of teams and groups. His research has been centred around aggressive behaviour and also brings plenty of understanding in collective responsibility, group dynamics and more.

Guest Spots

2009-04-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

Neil Brown's spot on world domination and global Linux development showed us that collaboration can be very successful using alternative hierarchies and different models. He has loaded up his slides for us on his blog if anyone would like to follow up on things.

---

Here is the timetable for the suite of guest spots and don't forget that a group of individuals is being assessed each week for their participation with the guest, but anyone can chip in for general participation marks as always.

wk4 Apr-02 1:00PM Michael Brand
(Construction Management and Conflict)

wk5 Apr-09 1:00PM Neil Brown
(Global Open Source Linux Development)

wk6 Apr-23 1:00PM Tom Denson
(Group Psychology and Teams)

wk7 Apr-30 1:00PM Jack Barton
(Urban Research, Government and Visualisation)

wk8 May-07 1:00PM Deo Prasad
(Global Collaboration on Sustainability)

wk9 May-14 1:00PM Shilo McClean
(VFX & Digital Storytelling)

wk10 May-21 1:00PM Neil Morris
(Senior Management and HR) – To Be Confirmed

wk11 May-28 1:00PM iCinema field trip
(3D visuals, programming and art)

Draft Collage

2009-04-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

I quickly put together a collage of images from everyone's Draft Environments. The image shows off the progress being made through all the groups in terms of both the fabrication itself and the collaboration required to bring it all together.

Collaboration Topics - Round 2

2009-04-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

Here are the second set of topics for each team to research over the next week. As individuals you will need to find a source for each topic assigned to your group, giving your team a total of 8 resources, 4 for each topic. You will need to individually sumarise in a post to your individual blogs your source, including any images and diagrams that may help to articulate the ideas in the chosen source. You will also need to add to the Collaborative Wiki on your topics, collaborating as a team to increase the repository of knowledge available.

Team A - Atlar

INTENT

CONTEXT

Team 1 - Omega

REMUNERATION

CONFLICT

Team B - Urbans

CULTURE

COMMUNICATION

Team 2 - E-Volve

HIERARCHY

KNOWLEDGE

Team C - Orange

RECORDS

MANAGEMENT

Team 3 - Digilism

TECHNOLOGY

PLANNING

Collaboration Topics - Round 1

2009-03-18T22:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the topics for each team to research over the next week. As individuals you will need to find a source for each topic assigned to your group, giving your team a total of 8 resources, 4 for each topic. You will need to individually sumarise in a post to your individual blogs your source, including any images and diagrams that may help to articulate the ideas in the chosen source.

Team A - Atlar

CULTURE

MANAGEMENT

Team 1 - Omega

HIERARCHY

PLANNING

Team B - Urbans

RECORDS

CONTEXT

Team 2 - E-Volve

TECHNOLOGY

CONFLICT

Team C - Orange

INTENT

COMMUNICATION

Team 3 - Digilism

REMUNERATION

KNOWLEDGE

Collaboration Studio Course Blog

2009-03-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

This is the Course Blog for ARCH1392 - Digital Collaboration Studio. You will be able to find class messages, weekly tasks, links to students Personal Blogs, and Team Journals, as well as other relevant course related material.