124 Virtual World Design
visited. These were created in SketchUp from simple geographical outlines. Along the timeline, nd some
times or locations that you would like to “landmark.” Graphic directionals like the arrows and push pins
(also available in the mesh model content) will encourage the visitor to stop at various locations and learn
more about your personal history. You may also want to add some “Post-it” notes or written signage, which
are made with simple prims and texture les, on your timeline.
The forms and objects you choose could be based on your infographic in Visualize.me or on some theme
completely designed by you. Something to experiment with is making a basic element or two in an external
modeler like SketchUp, Blender, or 3DSMax and seeing how this imports into your build. This array of
forms and graphics is all about you, so express yourself. If you are a pilot, bring in a plane model; if you are
a swimmer , make a moving water texture. Whatever you do, “own this build.”
To inspire you further, the next section of this chapter has images and discusses some art/database projects
that were created in Second Life and OpenSim. You will see that there are few limits on this kind of design.
6.10 ART AND DATA VISUALIZATION IN A VIRTUAL WORLD
There are two systems that have to work in concert for data-inuenced art and data visualizations in a virtual
world. One is the external server where the data are stored in a database, and the other is the internal server
that holds the virtual world system. As Ben Lindquist said: “To put it in the simplest terms possible, virtual
world data visualization is a mapping of data dimensions—a column in a spreadsheet, for example—to
virtual world dimensions such as color, height, or distance along an axis” (from email conversation, 2012).
In Figure6.22 (top section) are images from three works created in 2010 on the Beach Ride region of
Second Life for a Sculpture Park sponsored by Alchemy Sims. Layton Destiny created “Ancient Sun and
a Fresh Kansas Breeze,” a windmill that responded to the winds of Second Life. Arrehn Oberlander built
FIGURE 6.21 Screen grab showing the timeline with arrow and pushpin focal points added as well as “Post-it” notes
on the back wall.
1253D Modeling, 2D Graphics, and Data Visualization
Data-driven Artwork and Data Visualization
Virtual interactive databased sculpture by Glyph Graves in Second Life
Created by Ann Cudworth (Annabelle Fanshaw) and Ben Lindquist (Arkowitz Jonson) on Alchemy Sims Grid
“Ancient Sun and a Fresh
Kansas Breeze”
Virtual wind driven sculpture
“Tidal Mills”
Tidal data driven
kinetic sculpture environment
“Barometric Bubbles”
Real time temperature data driven
bubble rezzing sculpture
“Forest of Water”
Each interactive “tree” represents
data from a river on Earth
“I thought I Hated Him”
“Dance” of the composite indices
from Shanghai and New York
“Memonic”
Temporal Geolocation in the Twitterverse
“Enfolded”
An ever changing sculptural
response to Earth's magnetic field
Layton Destiny Annabelle Fanshaw & Arkowitz Jonson
All of these works were created in Second Life
Arrehn Oberlander
FIGURE 6.22 (See color insert) Screen grabs from Second Life and OpenSim, showing several examples of how
external data can be introduced and utilized to create artworks in the virtual environment.
126 Virtual World Design
“Barometric Bubbles,” which lled the air with bubbles in response to the rise and fall of barometric pressure
in his real world environs.
Ben Lindquist and Ann Cudworth created a data visualization art piece called “Tidal Mills.” Their
initial concept was to display a dataset in an “artful” way. Readily available complex datasets are hard to
come by, but they did nd a good one in the tidal predictions for the New York City and Long Island area.
Together, they created kinetic sculptures on a virtual beach that moved in response to the shifting tides.
More information about how “Tidal Mills” was designed and made are available on the Alchemy Sims You
Tube channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw1IQ7nTTJs).
Glyph Graves, a prize-winning virtual world artist, has played with physical world/virtual world inter-
relationships in many of his works. For instance, in “Reections within Diversity,” he created a virtual sens-
ing environment that mapped the avatar’s spoken language to a colored light in a real-world glass sculpture.
Using real-time data from all manner of natural (river heights/temperatures, the earth’s magnetic eld, solar
wind from space, data from Antarctic weather stations) and man-made phenomena (stock market indices),
he creates conceptual art in sound, color, and space that are captivating to the visitor. In Figure6.22 (middle
section ), you can see images from “ForestofRivers,” “I Thought I Hated Him,” and “Enfolded,” which
interact with the visitor or move and create sound in response to real-time events. Movies of these artworks
can be seen on his You Tube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/GlyphGraves).
In Figure6.22 (lower section) is a data visualization sim called “Memonic” built by Ann Cudworth and Ben
Lindquist. This environment showed the visitor a countrywide slice of Twitter activity in real time and allowed
the visitor to “call” the tweets (linked to color coded spheres) to his or her location by saying keywords in chat.
Although not shown in pictures, other notable data visualizations have been done by David Burden with
Daden Limited (http://www.daden.co.uk/solutions/datascape/about-datascape/) and by Eric Hackathorn at
Fragile Earth Studios (http://fragileearthstudios.com/).
6.11 CONCLUSION
This chapter has covered a lot of ground and presented a survey on 3D modeling, and 2D graphics that are
the essential elements of a virtual world. The textures, prims and meshes can be used by you in a million
ways, so dive right in! When you get more experience, you can start to relate the things you make in a virtual
world, through the application of scripting and databases, to the outside world, and create a “mixed reality”
experience for the observer.
No matter what modeling program or what paint program you choose, what is most important is that you
come into the project with a clear idea of what your message is and how your team will tackle it, step by step.
By doing that planning, not only will you make it easier to complete the task, but also you will nd it easier
to budget.
REFERENCES
1. Cinderella Castle, Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_Castle. Accessed December 17, 2012.
2. ProBuilder, company website, http://www.sixbysevenstudio.com/wp-exible/project/probuilder-for-unity-3d/.
Accessed December 17, 2012.
3. Pixel Lab, Sculpty Paint, company website, http://elout.home.xs4all.nl/sculptpaint/. Accessed December 21, 2012.
4. Kanae Project, company website, http://kanae.net/secondlife/index.html. Accessed December 21, 2012.
5. GIMP—The GNU Image Manipulation Program, organization site, http://www.gimp.org/. Accessed December
22, 2012.
6. Making Transparent Textures—Second Life Video TuTORial, You Tube, http://youtu.be/ekLIgpRHSq4. Accessed
December 23, 2012.
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