 All right, so thanks again and everyone have fun wherever you go next and I'll see you in a few minutes. Okay. Bye Hello everyone and welcome back to the 130 breakout session here in breakout zone one for the arts and community track Just a reminder, and I know I've been saying this all day But you can roll the full conference schedule on our website at conference dot open simulator dot org You can post your questions in local chat I'll pick them up on the use stream chat or tweet your comments using the hashtag OSC one three We're really happy to introduce Annabelle Fanshawe who will be presenting using the build it once approach to make content for the metaverse I like that idea in this session You'll learn how to make content that can be deployed throughout the metaverse with a minimum of stress Format your workflow and utilize simple modeling techniques to build a content warehouse for yourself I sure hope I don't have to keep that warehouse in my inventory. It's already bulging But I'm sure this will be very interesting, especially in the minimum stress part Ann Fanshawe is an Emmy award-winning set designer in the physical world and creator of virtual environments in the metaverse She is the principal and founder of alchemy sims a collaborative of many talented designers and builders Who built the largest tree in second life at their headquarters now. That's something I would have like to see that Ann and her build team have been making interactive landscapes and story game sims in second life and open sims since 2008 veterans in march 2014 Taylor and francis will publish her first book virtual world design available in bookstores and online Except it's from that book will be included in this workshop An interesting side to me about this book is that it took anabel 18 20 that's 1820 cups of coffee to complete And that is a lot of sloshing and slugging away to the finish. So well done, Ann Please join me in a warm welcome for anabel I don't don't forget about the 24.5 ounces of eye drops Um, hi everyone. It's great to see you all. I'm glad to be here to do this I thought that this talk should be more of a workshop. So there will be lots of time for questions at the end Design workflow for creative ideas is a circulatory system of your project It must be kept unobstructed by the blockage of incompatible software formats inconsistent work standards and lack of proper planning In this presentation, you will be introduced to standards and practices That enable your team to function more effectively Scale up more efficiently And optimize your content creation practices I like to call this the build at once system In this presentation, I will talk about three major topics How to organize your building methodology How to develop a great team And how to make content that can be deployed throughout the metaverse with a minimum of stress As a designer of virtual spaces, you will eventually work in all sorts of environments And you will need to repurpose content as well as refine it in 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 at once framework You create a set of work standards and you save your team the headaches and lost time from backtracking And redoing work because something got lost or was made incorrectly We have a lot to build for the metaverse. Why should we waste time? The creative spark is what sets us apart from big data and its predictions about what we want We need methodologies for building so we can follow these dreams easily Be an aggregator Take the best aspects of all these elements and forge them into something new We are shaping the visualization tools of the near future as well as the look and functioning of social media We don't want to waste time. It's up to you to take the path of your interest and to augment your experiences on it You are a project manager Even if you are a team of one You need to think of critical paths or the best method for getting a project done Project management is like pushing a wheelbarrow of frogs to the market So you need some tools to keep them organized Here are five basic steps you can take now to set up standards and practices and streamline your next project Let's go through them one at a time Richard Powers said type a few lines of code and you create an organism Create a three or four letter name code that can be retrieved anytime and use it to describe all of your files Find a code that fits. What is the dna of your project? I like to think of this as the tag and release program once the file is tagged It can be released into your inventory and like tag wildlife You can dial in its location with a simple search command to work correctly. You must ask for a consistent application across the team Let's say your project was about building a schoolhouse If you wanted to make a three letter word for this, you might choose ovs our virtual schoolhouse This is the main branch of your dna code Everything for the project gets this code And then depending on what you're making for the ovs you start to define it using a logic tree For instance, if you are making a texture for the inside wall of the schoolhouse You would name the texture ovs inside wall schoolhouse.jpg If you are using spotlights or projectors, you can add in an additional code in this case sp for spotlight And what kind of lighting the spotlight is doing in this case a wall wash of blue Now for each of these names, you know exactly what the object or texture does and what project it belongs to Sorting is easy when your inventory gets disorganized Simply ask for all the objects with ovs in the title and voila you have them able to drag and drop into the project folders Charles Dudley Warner said a great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas Standardizing your image resolutions is very important The power of two compels you All of your textures will be created as squares with these numbers 10 24 by 10 24 5 12 by 5 12 256 by 256 This is the power of two or two to the nth 10 24 is two to the 10th 5 12 is two to the ninth 10 24 pixels would be for signage or highly detailed close to the avatar textures 5 12 would be for most everything else 256 would be for anything really small or far away Find the framework learn its rules and let it be your second nature While you are creating the methodologies for your team Ask yourself can the texture be optimized? Am I using the smallest resolution possible? Is it named properly? Am I making it in the fewest possible steps? Collectively what is the total server load for these textures and objects in my project? And is every step of my build process streamlined? The last 10% of a project takes 50% of the effort Refining the details is only possible if you have a detailed plan What is a detailed plan? It has the following items It describes the creation of an environment that supports the backstory message or overall POV in terms of terrain architecture color palette sound lighting avatars textures Scripting and all other items you are adding A detailed plan has the design and creation of these elements broken out into sequential tasks And it has a time frame established for each task I believe that it's important to understand the work Not the job descriptions that people in your work group do and how they communicate about it Actually, the most important part of this chart are the connective arrows the lines of communication Traditionally a graphics company or a design company would break out into two large groups Roughly divided into creative and management This is not to say that there are no creative managers or management-minded creators Our job descriptions are inaccurate for the current workplace in my opinion One thing I've noticed is that the more connections and lines of communication a worker has The more influential and effective they become So as you can see the art director is one such individual Another complex system you need to understand is project development I believe you need to understand this system in order to manage the workflow and make maximum time available for creative thinking Anyone familiar with the title changes on a seaside harbor Has observed that as the tide comes in there will be lots of swirls and eddies in the water All surrounding the main direction of the title flow Project development takes the same sort of shape conceptually speaking There are many side circles of development going on which all contribute to the overall push in the direction of the goal In the world of software development, there is a term called agile development This strategy has merit in the process of designing a new virtual environment In the project development workflow chart, you will see that the central flow of the project is surrounded by agile cycles On the right side are the verbal elements of the environment and on the left side are the visual elements of the environment As the project progresses from concept through development to creation Each level will contain a cycle of iteration and incremental change which gets fed into the mainstream for overall construction It isn't necessary because each new element added to a virtual environment will affect the overall balance The load on the server and the accessibility Of course, there are limits. No one can build a house if the brick maker keeps redesigning the bricks Most of the cycling will be done in the concept and preliminary phases. These will spin very fast changing daily, if not hourly Farther up the ladder, the cycles of levels design and model making will spin more slowly as changes to those elements take more time and effort In the center of it all are four very important correlated systems 3d and 2d designing coding and script writing optimization and the sound design All of these systems impact each other And the members of these groups need to be in constant communication regarding their needs and impact of other work on their construction Finally at the top of the chart In sync with the creation of the final virtual environment will be the creation of the video trailer and website to advertise and promote the new build Let's zoom in on one of the agile cycles The client approval cycle It's following the creation rest test format that a global based design group can provide While members of one team are creating and testing members on the team located many time zones away are resting And we'll pick up the creation and testing cycle when they come back the next day Of course, it's always optimal to have the global teams close enough in a time frame so they can actually have a meeting in real time once a day As each new tweak is added to the design the client should cycle it through their approval format and feed their input back to the designers When approved the design exits this agile cycle and moves into the final build stage Eventually your build group design company or school may need to find A way to organize a large group of people for a project This can be a real challenge to a workflow if productivity and creativity Are hampered by excessive layers of management unproductive meetings and bureaucratic office procedures Here's a basic office structure for a large virtual environment design office This is a conceptual representation of the structure Your office may need to include an educational planning department or human interface testing department or a mobile media integration department The structure of the team should be flexible enough so they can add on departmental modules and when new projects require them You may decide to make your company all virtual and have the company headquarters in a virtual world Daily communication can be supplemented by having a company group chat channel The virtual equivalent of a water cooler meeting so people can take advantage of crowdsourcing when they have a problem or a question You may be starting out or for budgetary reasons need to keep your team smaller A small dedicated highly skilled team can accomplish much with careful planning The first thing you should assess is how your skills break out and how to combine them to complement the team functioning To some extent you should each know how to do the other person's job so you can step in if they get overloaded This is how a small team a small design team functions best They exchange tasks and work together to keep as much fluidity and flexibility in the creation process as possible Of course good clear constant communication is of impairment importance here You should all know both your strengths and weaknesses and work together to buttress each other's efforts You should also look to outsourcing things like back office work and special skills that are needed infrequently No matter the size of your design group What helps them become a great team are these factors They have clear simple goals that are meaningful to them even if they're working on a very large and complex project They provide each other with mutual support in skills and morale All members of the team are constantly striving to improve their skills and understanding of design And that effort is supported and encouraged by the entire company This chart illustrates the build at once content flow for design development in second life open sim and unity 3d You probably want to choose 3d modeling software that is platform agnostic So people can work on the operating system of their preference This design method structure is focused around a shared content library Full of items with file formats that can be utilized by all the destination platforms You should look for the common file formats that can be imported and exported from the software your team likes to use Try to utilize the most common formats like the kalata dae format And the autodesk fbx or 3ds formats and you will have fewer translation issues Bear in mind. It's the kalata dae not the autodesk dae format that is universally accepted in second life and open sim Just a few words about our favorite modelers If you use sketch up as a 3d modeler in this scenario, your prototype models can be viewed in the virtual worlds and on unity 3d Blender is a free program so you can set up lots of workstations for an expanding team without much overhead 3ds max is an industry standard for architecture filmmaking and prototyping. So there's lots of support online There are probably some more software programs you like and want to include here But these three will cover most of your needs and fit your price ranges In our virtual worlds, we are at the crossroads of humanity People of all ages and abilities are moving their avatars across your landscapes It's especially important that you consider all levels of ability when you design a virtual environment And make sure that you've created access and visibility odd ability and mobility A significant portion of the population is red-green colorblind This can become problematic when you are using color to signal with So always check your graphics with a color proof plugin that allows you to see the graphic as a colorblind individual would Also, make sure the fonts and size of lettering are readable and in a good clear contrast To make the signage even more accessible You can add in a proximity activated sound clip that reads the pertinent information to the visitors Also having an audio component to your tour vehicles will support accessibility Make sure your landscape is accessible your doorways high enough for cameras and hallways wide enough for turning around with the camera in tow Support the mobility of someone who may be using puffs of breath to move their avatar By making sure there are no places they can fall into or get stuck in When you take the small amount of extra time to check these things you assure yourself of a happier more immersed visitor population Workflow optimization and creative development techniques have only been lightly explored in this presentation You as a designer can find deep minds of information about this topic all over the web and learn even more about it from your peers Always take the time for a long view on a project So you can get the structure of the working environment sorted out before the creative tornado sweeps through the system You will reap reap the benefits of quality design delivered on time and on budget I'll take any questions now There's more information about my book and our projects here Thanks for watching. Um, how do I see the virtual world? Five years from now I um, I think it will be very interesting. I think it will be very haptic or Uh driven by more than just our hand on the mouse I hope that our graphics will be better easier lighter faster Um I'm gonna speak a little bit to that about that tomorrow too in my in my talk I think that we're going to see the end of um more's law and we may Have software that's much better because we can't rely on the speed of a graphics card. So I'm looking forward to that Okay, I'm going to work my way down through the questions here Uh advice on planning between prims mesh and sculpts on a sim Well, uh sun zoo the bottom line is the server will only run so much So you have to decide where you want to put your Visual interest and what type of structure serves that the best if it's a prim Which you automatically buy a certain number of faces with Then use that if a mesh works better where which it might be lighter use that Sculpts are good too. Um, we still use a lot of them So it's really a really more about designing what you want to do and then fitting your type of content to it And uh to steven Um Are am I more standardized on mesh for open sim and second life projects? And do I find any disadvantages with that versus prims and sculpties? we are because Alchemy sims and the folks that build with me Like to build stuff both for second life open sim and unity 3d We basically Stay with mesh as much as possible. Of course, you know, you can export prims now Thanks to singularity Or somebody did it. I mean it wasn't singularity. I think it was So you can bring them out. Um prims prims are good for certain things and not for others They're always there when you need them, which is good So I would say that we do about 90 percent mesh, maybe 10 percent prims at this point Yes, I think we should all expect to have mesh capable viewers now. Yes I'm I might a book tour. Um, I don't know. Uh, it depends on what my publisher says Um, I would like to present it at some upcoming conferences Although I haven't decided on any yet. Um, I What i'm doing right now actually is creating a series of videos Two two minute tutorials is what I call them to go with my book Which will be loaded up to a youtube channel and We will also have a great deal of content that comes with the book Which you'll be able to download as dae files or as a whole oar A lot of the projects because I have my own grid We we built a lot of projects in their own region so you can actually download the entire region with the school house Model if you want it so My tour may actually be on my grid Uh sound design Again, I'll speak a little bit about this tomorrow, but sound design is of great interest to me and I Spend a great deal of time recording with my zoom recorder And uh layering it and creating layered soundscapes all over my sim again You're you're bound by how much the server can deal with so you make your choices if sound is what you think your Project is uh more about than the visuals then put your put your sounds everywhere Are you going to get limited on the number of sounds you can actually have on on a region? But uh it it's it's a pretty large number. I think it was 32 the last time I checked, but it might have gone up higher Uh, let's see um our overall uh ryan and our overall uh cross platform strategy is fundamentally like this um First of all, we have to we have to decide what the client wants I mean the client may come to us and say I want an open sim environment Or I want a second life environment Uh, and you know we ask them like 150 questions about what they want to do with it and what they want and what their what their message is Uh, and then once we kind of get all of that sorted out and and yet get the The framework together about you know, where are we going to end up with this stuff? Then we can sort of define our workflow, but what essentially it is is I will uh, I will go Into sketch up and into uh layout, which is sketch ups um 2d Creator I will I'll build 3d models and and make pictures of them in in uh layout Which I can export as a pdf document and I will sort of Create that detailed plan that I showed you earlier You know trying to define everything right up front First of all for client sign off, but secondly for everybody on the team to get on the same page And we will go through a great deal of detail about how things are going to be built and what kind of uh research We're going to use to guide us and then once we kind of get that you know get that foundation built Then the workflow essentially, uh my modelers like Layton will will uh create the objects And then we'll look at them and we'll we'll decide if they work or don't work and maybe make some revision to them Uh, I will I tend to be the one that does the landscaping and does the sound and does all of the sort of environmental big stuff and uh Layton and others tend to do the the modeling and Oh, we have a couple of scriptures that we work with and they and they will take care of any scripting If necessary for interactivity and things like that So it's the best for us as a team of three typically And you know should we get into a much bigger like will you do our whole grid kind of project? Then we'll probably need to be double or triple that size I hope that answered your question riana And by the way alchemy sims will be joining the hyper grid soon. So you all be able to visit No alchemy sims grid is uh in the metaverse. It's just a standalone We do have a warehouse In second life. It's in bay city Um, you can just look me up in second life under anabelle fanshaw and come visit the warehouse We we will because we didn't want people to have to pay to upload Files and models. We decided to have a little warehouse In second life so people could just come in and get that content Uh, you know, I think I've been using agile For most of my life. I just didn't know it was being called agile uh We in my in real life. I'm a designer of scenery for television and uh, we go through this routine all the time You know, we will we will create a An idea we'll draw a picture of an idea and we'll show it to a Producer and the producer will say that that's kind of what I wanted But could it be more like this and then we go back and we do it again and we go we talk to them again So we've we're constantly cycling in the in the creation rest test Situation even sometimes up until the minute it it goes on the screen It's uh, just kind of the way you have to work these days. You know, everybody Wants and needs feedback Everybody needs as you said ryan and everybody needs to do iterative design And it's um Is it the trip to it though the thing I've learned over the years is sometimes you end up You show the you show them something And they end up changing it and changing it and changing it until finally you come around in a circle Back to where you were when you show them the first picture. So sometimes um Do you want to sort of keep that in your back pocket? So that you know, uh, you know what to try to get back to if you felt like it was a good design So, uh, you know, I shouldn't lose your way. You should always have a good design compass As you go into this kind of iterative design You should know where north is Oh and by the way, I put these slides up on slide share So you can check them out. Oh, yes, uh design for all is one of my things. Um All right, I I think I think it started with, um Some of the stuff that gentle heron was doing in second life And I just started looking at it and I just started thinking, you know, this is this is silly that I'm Not, uh Doing this With everything I make so I just kind of at that point in my in my design I career I just said, you know what it's all going to be designed for all now Everything I do is going to be designed for all and to be honest once you kind of get the the Color proof set up in your in photoshop and and gimp has a has a plug in you can use they all have it you can get a you can get a An app for your phone that lets you look through the camera at what stuff looks like two colorblind various types of colorblind folks so you know you you You just sort of get it just becomes second nature as you start doing it and then it's just much easier To to do it. It seems like a big pain in the neck at first, but ultimately it just becomes what you do Hey, there's the link to my slides The sunday slideshow is there too, but I'm actually going to add another slide into that so that's going to change In an hour or two Oh, this is my first book so I was it was something what I like what I thought it would be and something Some new stuff. So it was a very interesting and very exciting process and now I'm writing a Proposal for my second book which will be about unity 3d and utilizing that for visualization You know, steven. I don't actually know how often I have vision disabled folks using my builds Because I'm sometimes I'm not there However in my book in the sound chapter The project in that chapter is to build a game that is audio only And it basically levels the playing field Um by having you create a large black box full of black partitions With sounds in them. So you can't Even find your way around By looking You have to go by sound and you have to have a headset on too, of course So so it's a it's kind of an interesting challenge and quite difficult actually I think to navigate Maybe not so much for the folks that are used to doing it What made me interested in virtual worlds to begin with? Oh Where do I start? uh, I um I think it started with an article that I read in wired in 1993 94 something like that. There was an article about a company from Uh, I think they were from israel and they had taken some of the old Military simulator equipment and you started to use it to create virtual scenery for television And I read this article and it was like every Strand of my dna stood up on end and I knew that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life And I called them I picked up the phone and I called them and I said I'm a set designer And I think I can do a pretty good job of designing a virtual set And they had actually just been bought by a company in california santa monica So they called me up and said sure. Why don't you come out for our conference next week? So they flew me out to santa monica and taught me the system And that's how I got into real-time systems and virtual scenery Now that is the kind of stuff that has a person standing in front of a green screen and they're Embedded into a 3d environment and then composite it into television So the only thing really it has in common with what we do here is that it's real time and it's 3d once I found out about second life, which I did when I was home sick with the flu in 2007. I Came in and I never left So gretta Jive and unity 3d. How do they compare with second life and os grid? Well, you know, you don't have as you don't get to be a creator very much When you're working with second life and and os grid It's You know, you kind of like the the environment is made for you and you go there Unless you're the one creating the environment and then you can build it in You know and and load your build your stuff in max and load it in there or build your stuff in sketch up And load it in there and then you can you can build it. So it's kind of like a prepackaged Deal with unity jive unity 3d, you know Second life unifier all those unity based virtual worlds Second life and os grid, of course, we're all get we can all be creators if we have permission on the lands and And that kind of thing Sun Tzu, I will not speak about cbs here since I am not a representative for them And re and and yes, I did mean unity 3d It well, you know It was the first one was for a virtual set design. So that felt pretty good The second one was for a special about charles schulls the cartoonist of peanuts and that was pretty good too These things come usually a long time after you've finished the project. So you sort of don't really relate them to the project But it was very nice to be recognized I'm happy to hang out and chat if you folks want to stay Let me start at the top here Sun Tzu when I say about images I typically prefer 512 by 512 png Because a lot of times I have alpha channels or a trend slept transparency on them I only use the pc system. So I can't really speak to what the mac experience is with this kind of file format However, I'm sure it's probably pretty consistent I I think Stephen my I try to keep my design team very small You know, typically it's just two or three of us because It communication Becomes, you know more difficult the larger the team, but in real life. I work with groups of people up to 40 Sometimes 50 Depending on how big a project it is and yes, it gets you spend half your time writing emails so I think um, I think you just sort of you know That's your trade-off you get to do a big project which everybody Has fun with and you have a lot of email or you work with three or four people You have a lot of fun and you don't have a lot of email one thing that's that I find very important is to to retain a uh retain a good communication with your team members even even when you're not really You know in a in a crunch for something Sometimes it's good to just kind of hang out with them on skype and brainstorm about stuff or you know, sometimes We'll just go you know late in vicki and i will just go hopping Sim hopping just to take a look at what everybody else is doing and that's really important I mean you're you can't work in a vacuum. It's really important to go out and look around Let me scroll back here and see if I missed anybody's question. I apologize if I did It's a lot of text The other thing about the colorblind Testing is I had actually had a client That uh was colorblind and he asked me to design a logo And I put red and green in it and he rejected it and I said why why didn't you like it? And he said it wasn't colorful enough and I said He's got red and green in it and he said oh, I should have told you I'm colorblind So just goes to show you In terms of my png's um I think I actually use eight more than 24, but I'd have to actually go back in and look You know, I This is just sort of experimentation So, you know, maybe you should do a few tests and see what loads faster than others in your system given your machine With on your grid The trouble is it's also subjective Yes, absolutely stave and I totally agree with you And it's it's becoming important in gaming. I think it should be important here You know, I It's but it's it's not just about it's not just about accommodating disabilities. It's about thinking about design for all It's about thinking about people who don't speak the language you do people who have different cultural moors people who have different Uh, uh, senses of scale and architecture, you know, it's it's about understanding a lot. Yes, exactly universal design Design for all making sure that it that the affordancy the implied use of an object is clear to everyone I have a question for you folks, uh, would you all just say, um High or yay if you're a designer and and uh The local chat so I can see how many of you are Always good to branch out This thing I did I like about being a designer is I always get to ask a lot of questions So I'm pretty curious Okay, well, uh That's great. It's really I'm just going to wrap it up now and we can be on time and Um, although there's nothing after us. There are lots of activities and um, so I just wanted to thank you so much Annabelle it was really informative and well presented and Really good luck and hardy. Congratulations on your book being published Um, this is the last session here at breakout zone one And what a great first day for the first conference in the first zone. Say that past But um, it's not over yet. We'll be back tomorrow for more brilliant presentations And there's still two conference events left today Um at 2 30 to 4 30 Uh pacific time you uh have the opportunity to visit the air force research lab virtual open house um It says it requires a local account or you can grid hop and all the User ideas all the accounts that were created with the oscc Are uh grid hop enabled so uh, you'll be able to go that if you have one of those and the information is up on the Um schedule Of how to get there and I will look for it and post it in here in a minute Um And also for one of the events here's one of my favorite parts of any convention tonight at 8 p.m. Pacific time There's a dance party with a live dj. So if you're around, please come and join us and help celebrate this first ever annual conference Just to note that that's that Uh event is uh adults only and no child avatars permitted Um more details and location at the conference schedule So if I don't see you tonight, I'll see everybody tomorrow for day two And I really again. Thank you. Annabelle. It's really been a pleasure to hear your presentation and hear your thoughts on things Sure and Yeah, and thanks to the audience for being so great. So have a good