Paul Woidke's Second Life

With the BGSU ArtsX only a few days away, I’m currently focused on finishing any major areas of the Wolfe Center that still need work. Over the past few days I’ve worked on the choral rehearsal room and faculty offices, as well as finishing the main auditorium.

The choral rehearsal room is a space in which the BGSU ensembles can rehearse and is a pretty important part of the Wolfe Center. The walls and floors were the first thing that I worked on, and once those were textured I put up a data projector and screen (which I had made earlier for use in the digital art and graphic design computer labs).

I set the webpage on the projector screen to the BGSU Choral Ensembles homepage, and did the same thing with the screens for Digital Art and Graphic Design in the other labs.

With this done, I moved on the modeling the items that will be in the room. I started with some simple risers, which I made with around 6 prims each. These risers were then duplicated and scaled to fit in the room.

The next item I modeled was some chalkboards for the walls of the room. Since this room will be used by the College of Musical Arts, I made a board with bar lines. I duplicated the board and changed the texture on one of them to make a dry-erase board.

The next object that I focused on was a music stand. I tried to make a stand with a low number of prims that resembled the stands that are currently in use in the CMA. This was a challenge however, due to the shape of the stands themselves.

I started out by making the base of the stand using three ring prims, which I cut down to an appropriate length and scaled so that they resembled the base of a music stand.

I then simply extended the edge of each leg to fill in the center and added a cylinder prim to complete the stand base.

Next I used two perpendicular planes to make the top of the stand, and added a cylinder on the back as a hinge. I also used another cylindrical prim to make the stand telescoping (however, I notice now that I did not make this prim reflective metal like on real stands. I will fix this ASAP).

With this done, I textured the stand and linked all the prims (8 total).

The final item that I felt was needed in this room was a grand piano. However, as none existed in the BGSU Thor inventory, it fell to me to construct one. This was especially challenging given the shape and complexity of a grand piano, as well as my trying to keep prim counts low.

I began this task by building the heart-shaped frame of a grand piano out of a cube and two half-cylinders. I copied and resized the base I made to make a lid, which I angled away from the base.

I then hollowed out the base prims so that I could add the piano strings and other such elements. I added in a rectangular prim that would serve as the base for the interior. I also added a lid prop. I textured the piano’s exterior using a dark brown wood texture, which I darkened further and made reflective.

I textured the inferior using a similar wood texture, and added some rectangular prims with a metal grate texture on them. The alpha on this texture made it so that the grate resembled piano strings when I stretched it out. I added a gold color to these prims, and added a brass bar across the top as an anchor.

Next I made a base off the front of the piano for the keys, which I made with a single prim. This prim had a grid texture on the front face and a piano key texture on the top, with white on the other faces.

This about completed the body of the piano. I then made some legs for the piano using a rectangular prim that was tapered at one end. I also added the foot pedals to the bottom of the piano.

I then linked the prims and scaled the piano to the correct size. The body of the piano is composed of less than 30 prims.

The only thing that was missing from the room was a piano bench, which I quickly modeled out of 6 prims. I used a quilted texture on the top, which I recolored so that it resembled leather.

With the completion of the piano bench, the choral rehearsal room is pretty much completed. I still need to duplicate the music stands and arrange them around the room, but overall I feel good about how it looks.

~ by on November 30, 2010 .