Hey Guys!

Hope everyone is surviving the semester well enough! I happen to be in Siena, Italy for the Computer Applications in Archaeology conference–which is awesome! I’m giving a presentation with Jeffrey Glover from the Anthropology department and Brennan Collins from the English department, discussing the collaborative effort of recreating a past landscape of Atlanta. I’ll be talking about the 3D Atlanta project for my part and showing off some of the SIF work we’ve been achieving.

Speaking of which–it’s time to update you guys on where we’re at with the 3D Atlanta SIF project. I finally finished my textured model of the Solomon Barbershop on 60 Central Avenue! It looks beautiful–to me at least. I had to brush up on some Photoshop skills to paint the texture on the building based on the old photograph. You can see the finished result compared to the original black and white photo I used as a reference.


The UV coordinates are far more organized as you can tell from the screenshot below, than they were before. There are still a few rough spots of misproportion, but luckily they are on small, barely visible faces on the model–crevices really. As I explained in previous posts, unwrapping a mesh’s UV coordinates is a complicated process of making sure things are proportionately the same on the actual image–otherwise you’ll run into problems of the same size bricks in a texture appearing to be different sizes on the model.

When I have time, I would like to create a ‘normal map’ for the model as well to help create visual depth, where the model lacks it–for instance small pieces of wood dividing window panes. As it stands now, I used some visual tricks with shading in the texture to achieve pretty convincing depth without a normal map, but these models and textures can be tweaked at a later date.

Wasfi and Nathan are hard at work finishing their models as well and by the end of the month, not only will we have 3 complete models, we’ll have a fully interactive environment with a quick Oculus Rift setup for everyone to start trying out. I would like to implement the Leap Motion controller you saw in earlier posts about the Digital Signage project as well so that some of the interactions in 3D Atlanta can be touched with a virtual hand while wearing the Oculus Rift. Obviously this will change the way the user will interact with the environment, but we can figure out those details as we arrive at them! For now we are sticking with the “Point and Click” interaction theme. The other team members have put together some impressive information as well so stay tuned as I update you guys on that or read their blogs to find out more!

Cheers,
Robert