21
3
“Build It Once”
Optimizing Your Design Workflow
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
—Arnold J. Toynbee
3.1 OVERVIEW: REDUCING REPETITIVE BUILDING
ANDINCREASING CREATIVE DESIGN TIME
Design workow for creative ideas is the circulatory system of your project. It must be kept unobstructed
by the blockage of incompatible software formats, inconsistent work standards, and lack of proper plan-
ning. Inthis chapter, you will be introduced to standards and practices that enable your team to function
more efciently, scale up more effectively, and optimize your content creation practices. This is called the
“BuildItOnce” system. As a designer for virtual spaces, you will eventually work in all sorts of environ-
ments and will need to repurpose content, as well as rene it in the more advanced systems. No one likes
to waste time rebuilding something because it will not load properly into a 3D modeler or a virtual world.
The pitfalls are many and can catch the unaware or unprepared designer. By planning your project within the
“BuildIt Once” framework, you create a set of work standards, and you save your team the headaches and lost
time of backtracking and redoing work because something got lost or was made incorrectly. Let’s get started.
3.2 FIVE BASIC STEPS TO SET YOUR STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
There are ve basic steps to help you overcome workow blockage from inconsistent work standards and
lack of planning.
3.2.1 organize your file sTruCTure
To drastically cut down on the time spent looking for a previously built item, set up a logical le structure for
your project in your computer and duplicate that structure in your virtual world inventory. When you upload
a mesh or texture to Second Life or OpenSim, it lands on the top of a pile of items in your avatar’s inventory.
After a day of iterative design uploads, things can get messy. The rst thing to do is to make a “named”
project folder for your avatar’s inventory, which includes subfolders for all of the components you will be
using. The “name” can be an acronym for the whole project. For instance, if you were working on a project
called “OurVirtual Schoolhouse,” each folder and each item you upload would start with “OVS.” Here is
how your le structures would look:
OVS Project Folder (contains subfolders)
OVS Animations (contains subfolders)
OVS—Animation les and the like
22 Virtual World Design
OVS Avatars (contains subfolders)
OVS—Avatar skins and the like
OVS Documents, Notecards, Notices
OVS—Schedules and the like
OVS Meshes (contains subfolders)
OVS—Avatars (contains avatar components)
OVS—Buildings (contains buildings and their components)
This is a sample list only; you may need to add more folders to customize this for a specic project. By
following the practice of naming each folder and subfolder with the identifying three-letter acronym, your
entire inventory for that project can be isolated with a simple three-letter search keyword. Anything miss-
ing or hiding in the lost and found section of your avatar’s inventory can be easily located and led in the
appropriate folder. By utilizing this le structure across your virtual world platforms, in the cloud/server
storage, and on your computer’s le system, you will provide a content structure that you and all of your
team will be able to utilize with greater efciency. A little cleanup and reorganization at the end of each day
should be enough to keep it functioning well. See Figure3.1 for a screen shot of a le structure setup used
on aSecondLife project called SL8B.
3.2.2 Clarify your Terminology, going eVen deeper
Take the time to dene what your nomenclature standards will be on the project and make them clear to the
entire team. You have started this by naming all of your le folder structures with a three-letter keyword.
FIGURE 3.1 Screen grab showing Annabelle Fanshaw’s inventory le structure for the SL8B project in Second Life.
Notice how all the folders start with SL8B, so they congregate in the appropriate place.
23“Build It Once”
Let’s develop this idea. When you also include the “OVS” in front of each texture you make, every mesh,
and so on, this organizes your content even more. There are even more ways to use proper naming to clarify
each item’s identity and function. For instance, suppose you have made a new wall texture, a desk, and
you have built an inworld spotlight prim for your OVS project. A clear set of names would be as follows:
ovs-insidewall_schoolhouse.jpg, ovs_small_single_desk_schoolhouse.dae, and ovs-SP-wallwash-blue.
In each case, the name starts with the project keyword code “ovs” and then the name continues to dene
the item by what it is, such as “insidewall,” “small_single_desk,” and “SP-wallwash” (which means a spot-
light that lights the wall at a steep angle, creating a wash of light). The last bit of each name tells us more
specic qualities of each texture, object, light, etc. The wall texture goes inside the schoolhouse, as does the
desk, and the spotlight is set to a blue color. The use of dashes or underscores is up to your discretion, you
may simply leave a space there if you desire.
Try to be as descriptive as you can without getting too wordy. Make up a list of abbreviations that the
whole group can utilize so everyone is on the same page. With a logical naming system, any member of your
team should be able to quickly nd a specic object among the hundreds generated during the creation pro-
cess. And, they will know exactly what the object is without having to open the le. Even a model or texture
that has not been used for years is still useful because it can be easily found with this system and repurposed
for a new build, saving you and the team time and money. Figure3.2 is a table of suggested name abbrevia-
tions and a naming methodology that you can use with 3D models and virtual environments to indicate the
kind of object, light, texture, and so on in your scenes.
Type of Object Prefix Used
Other Qualifiers
(e.g., location/looks at/color/size, etc.)
Resulting Name for
YourInventory Object
Point light PL PL is on the ceiling and is pink. PL-ceil-pink
Spot light SP SP points at talent on stage from right side. SP-talent-SL (SL is stage left)
Direct light Dir Direct light acting like sunset on whole scene. Dir-sunset
Projector light Proj Projected movie on northeastern wall of house. Proj-movie-NE-wall
Camera Cam Camera from front of stage in television studio
set that looks like an ofce.
Cam-2-Ofce
Wall Wall Northeastern wall: 1 of 10. Wall-NE-1
Door Door Northeastern door for bedroom. Door-NE-bedroom
Window Win Northeastern window: 6 of 20. Win-NE-6
Trees/plants/other
vegetation
Tree 3-meter tall oak tree in winter look. Tree-Oak-3m-winter
Architecture/buildings Bldg Small guest cottage for estate. Bldg-cottage
Special effects/particle
effect
SPFX Roaring bonre for beach scene. SPFX-bonre-large
Animations AN The lambada dance, male partner’s
choreography for your party scene.
AN-Lambada-male
Clothing and skins:
upper/lower/head/
tattoo/alpha
Up/Low/Head/Tat/Alpha Dragon tattoos for upper parts of male body. Tat-Up-Male-Dragon
Sounds Snd Large waterfall. Snd-waterfall-large
FIGURE 3.2 Table showing suggested abbreviations and nomenclature for lights and camera types, 3D model types,
scripted particle producing objects, animations, skin textures, and sounds used in virtual environments.
24 Virtual World Design
3.2.3 sTandardize your resoluTions
Set up the resolution standards the team will use for textures in every project. For 90% of your texture work
within Second Life, OpenSim, and Unity, an image the resolution of 512 × 512 pixels will be more than suf-
cient. Only when you need high delity of detail should you go to the maximum setting of 1024 × 1024
pixels on a texture in Second Life or OpenSim. The resolution can be taken even higher in Unity, but you
need to remember most high-end graphics cards and platforms top out at a resolution of 2048 × 1536 pixels,
so your rendering cost may not be worth the extra delity [1]. Of course, when you are making a new texture,
working from a higher-resolution base image is preferred, so you can max out the detail of the image and
then reduce it to the 512 pixel size.
3.2.4 sTreamline your upload meThodology and TesT eVeryThing
Decide ahead of time how you want to upload your mesh models. If you are not sure how much various set-
tings on the upload menu will cost in terms of land impact and upload charges in Second Life, take advantage
of the Second Life Beta Test grid, which will not charge you upload fees. You can log in to this right from
the viewer’s main page, under the Log into Grid menu. After some testing, you can dene your preferred
land impact for meshes in Second Life, level of detail (LOD), and physics settings and synch this with your
3Dmodel building methods. Like the texture resolutions, you should seek to nd the optimum numbers of
vertices and faces for your models that give the highest LOD with the lowest land impact.
Cross-check these virtual world settings with the model’s appearance in Unity or any other platform you
are using so you know your mesh models look good everywhere and run efciently. If you are adding on to a
previous build in your virtual environment, it would be good practice to go through that build and check the
relative land impact costs you already have in your objects. You may nd some surprising results, especially
if you have some old hollowed or twisted prims (primitives) lying about. Just select the objects and compare
their relative land impact costs as displayed in the Build/Edit menu under the Create/Land Impact/More info
link. See Figure3.3 for a screenshot of this feature.
It is possible that the land impact of many objects, especially their physics weights, can be greatly reduced
without having an impact on their functionality by changing the type of physics settings and making your
own physics shape les. There is excellent information available about how Second Life measures land
impacthere (http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Prims-Prim-Equivalent-Land-Impact-a-too-long-guide/
td-p/1293579).
Note: It would be good practice to make a habit of reading articles in the creation forums of Second Life
(http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Creation-Forum/ct-p/CreationForum) and Unity3D (http://forum.unity3d.
com/forum.php) every week so you can stay on top of what is being developed and tested.
3.2.5 CreaTe a deTailed plan
Make graphics documents, rough models, storyboards, and even animatic movies (movies made from
clipped-together artwork and stills) to organize the project, dene your team tasks, and assign them. This
is like a “to-do” list on steroids and creates a detailed plan that everyone understands. Figure3.4 shows an
example of how an alien avatar was conceived for a 2010 project in Second Life.
In another example of planning, Figure 3.5 shows how SketchUp (http://www.sketchup.com/) was used
for a proposal presentation in 2010 for a game sim built in Second Life. At rst, a rough schematic model was
made, and from that model a series of sketches was generated so that the client (IBM Art Grant committee)
understood the complexities of the build.
25“Build It Once”
Taking the time to make a detailed plan serves you in many ways. It can be used to sell the client on the
idea and your professionalism, to organize the team and rev them up about the project, and to help you see
the overall scheme for workow for the project.
3.3 LINES AND ARROWS AND CHARTS, OH MY!
The following section presents some large charts that represent possible workow scenarios for your design
studio. As you know already, each project in the virtual environment design is a bespoke creation, but like
that great tailor on Savile Row making custom suits, you will need to have your creation methods organized
and rened. The best way to utilize the information in this section is to consider these concepts rst and then
to observe your team’s workow. It may be that you utilize different software or have the need to interact
with many other teams. Take the best parts of these ideas for your use and customize the details to t your
particular team and project.
3.3.1 “Build iT onCe” ConTenT floW sysTem
Figure3.6 has a chart that illustrates the “Build It Once” content ow for design development in Second Life,
OpenSim, and Unity. The software was chosen to t a work group that utilizes both Mac and PC platforms.
FIGURE 3.3 Screen grabs from Second Life showing the process of assessing the land impact of previously built
objects on your land by using the advanced information link (center box) under the General Tab of the Build Menu (right
side box) in the Firestorm viewer. On the left is the “What is all this?” help browser web link provided by Firestorm to
explain the meaning of “weights” and “land impacts” generated by your content.
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