It's Been a While

I've been traveling a lot this summer, and as a result the El Cerrito in Second Life project kind of got put on hold. We have been showing it to some people at higher levels, and as a result of that, the focus of the project has been changed to include more disciplines and impact more people.



While the island construction is still being based on the village of El Cerrito, NM, the purpose of the island is to provide a field school experience across all disciplines, so that the project can impact as many people as possible. We are concentrating our efforts on figuring out ways to make this environment more easily accessible, as well as building "plug and play" type tools that will be easy for any faculty to use. Our intention is that the island include all of the elements that will enable faculty across all disciplines to add their own brand of interactivity to the sim.

I am still tasked with creating the basic village, and at some point during the summer, I flattened the island, tore down all the buildings to begin again with all of the photo texture mapping I did while I was in the actual village this summer.

Instead of using a height map raw file to build the mesa's, I decided to use a series of flats to create the illusion of the mesas. This gives me more room for the village and the fields, and hopefully, the outer sides of the flats can be made to look like ocean views for our neighbors' sakes.

I have already completed two blocks of the village. It looks a lot different than the original version that I recently flattened. I think my building style has improved, but I also have decided to make all the houses out of blocks to make the prim count low, which means that you can't walk into them. If we ever decide to go that route, we can always redo the building. I also decided yo leave some of the detail that I would normally clone out of a building texture. For instance, I have kept some grass, flowers, etc that stick up from the bottom of a house foundation. I then go back in and put some actual flowers in front of the building, using a layering effect. I think it's working out pretty well.

My current plan is to lay out all of the village structures, then I want to add the roads in by using some mega-prim overlays as the actual village ground. Then I will begin to add in the mesas and other natural aspects. Anyway, here's what it looks like as of right now; today I start on the east block.


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