The Education Grid (Class #10 Homework)

This screenshot is linked to the Education Grid, a Media Grid connected to the Immersive Education Initiative. This website describes the history, liability, security, access, content, services and tools of the grid. In this exact screenshot, the ownership and security of creations is discussed, in the headline "Open Source, Royalty Free, Openly Distributable".

FINAL 5a: Greenfoot JoC #4 Finally some code!

This screenshot shows the trick the turtle program running on my computer. I programed the turtles to turn and move using the code shown in the video. The turtles are moving in a circle because I coded them as: move(4); and turn(3); like in the Joy of Code video. It is a final exercise from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

Work in Progress Screenshots:

The following are the screenshots showing where I read the Java info, did a little of the tutorial to learn what Greenfoot was, then did the first JoC video.

Final #2: Monocular Depth Cues

Depth Cues in Cloud Party

Classroom
Size Difference- As you can see in this classroom, the desks appear smaller as they are farther away from me. The desk next to me looks as large as my torso, while the desk at the end of the row is probably the size of my hand from this point. The reduction of size in the desks as as they go down the rows shows the viewer that the first desks are much farther away because they are much smaller, compared to the desks near me at the back of the classroom that gradually get much larger.

Lighting and Shading- As you can see a bit in the above picture of the classroom, there are windows lining the left side of the room, letting light in. In the below picture, the light in hitting the chairs in such a way that the lighting is different on each part. The part of the chair closest to the window is being hit directly and is the lightest shade of brown. The back of the chair is hit with the smallest amount of light so it is the darkest, where the seat of the chair has a medium amount, making it a medium shade of brown. This lighting gives the chair depth because the light is hitting it in different spots because of the different parts the 3D chair has.

Turkey Isle
Occlusion- In this picture, There is a rock with a tree in front of it, as well as another tree with a turkey in front of it, with my avatar in front of the turkey. I can tell what objects are in front of others because of occlusion- the object farther away is partially hidden by the closer object because it is in front. This portrays depth because I can tell an object is closer to me if it is blocking another behind it.

Texture Density- The texture of the ground is a rough terrain, demonstrated with non-straight lines and shading running along the screen. I can tell that the ground is getting farther away because the lines become much more dense. Right in front of my avatar I can see each line and shading clearly, while far away from me there is no shading and just lines very close together because it is so far, demonstrating the depth of the world.

Koblenz Art
Linear Perspective- This platform has a pattern with straight lines running across it. As the lines get further away from me, the get closer together. For example, the two lines next to my avatar's head become about twice as close when you look at the furthest point of those lines. This gives the illusion of depth because I can tell that the ground is getting further away as the lines run closer together. If this platform went much further I would eventually see the adjacent lines meet at a point.

Atmospheric Perspective- The three trees on the right of the screenshot below demonstrate atmospheric perspective. For the first tree I can
see the different shading on every leaf, and the patterns on all the leaves. For the tree next to that I cannot see the patterns but I can still see some shading. On the last tree I only see a blur of green. This tells me that the tree that I can make out all the patterns of the leaves on is much closer to me than the tree that I can't see any leaves on, just a fuzzy green.

Class 10 Score Card

Virtual Eagles in first woohoo!

Class 9 WebGL Assignment

Summary of the WebGL Overview:

WebGL is a program that runs through JavaScript that allows users to create 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional shapes, that was created by the Khronos group. The history of WebGL shows that it was created by Vladimir Vukicevic while working at Moxilla, while he was experimenting with Canvas 3D. Though Vukicevic started experimenting in 2006, Khronos Group did not take hold of the program until 2009. When the non-profit started the working group in 2009, they had a good amount of initial participation from other big companies. For example, Apple, Google and Mozilla backed the program, named WebGL Working Group. The well-known Google maps was actually an early application of WebGL.

In March of 2011, the first official version of the program was released. One year later, Ken Russell became the chair of the WebGL Working Group. The second version of the program is currently being worked on, and development started earlier this year in 2013. Many mobile and desktop browsers support WebGL, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer (desktop), and Android, Blackberry, Firefox, and iOS (mobile). WebGL is pretty user friendly because scenes can be created without programming, it is pretty easy to embed into a microcontroller, and users can publish creations online through WebGL.

Class 9 Cloud Party Assignment

These are the screenshots of my time building in Cloud Party. I chose to go to a deserted island to build, and I used one large cube, two medium, and four small cubes along with two chairs, a soccer ball and a metal ball to create an 11-piece sculpture. The last three screenshots show my finished product at different angles to show that everything is 3 dimensional and touching to make the sculpture.

Compared to Open Simulator: I liked building in Open Simulator better. I felt like there were more options for different colors and textures, and more shapes besides a cube that could be created. In Cloud Party, you can choose to create with furniture like chairs and couches, as well as doors and beds, which is nice. However if you are building a sculpture or a rocket or something else that you want to just be your original work and shapes, I would go with Open Simulator. It has more options for different shapes and it is much easier to move shapes around in OSgrid. However, I thought they both worked relatively well to create.

Class 9 Assignment in OSGrid

These screenshots document my trip to OSgrid. I used Firestorm release because it was one of the only programs available for Mac users. The first screenshot shows uploading the program and the second is me entering the sandbox area coming out of the Welcome Center. I then found a world that let me "create" (the first two worlds I transported to said you cannot create here- not sure why). The next screenshot shows me creating a typical 3D sphere, box, and cone. The I started to make my rocket, following the directions from the YouTube video. I was able to get my cone to fit perfectly on the body of the rocket by copying and pasting the exact coordinates from where the cylinder was to where the cone should be. I walked around the rocket and took screenshots from different angles to show that it did fit all together.

11/7/13 Update: I added fins to a new rocket by adding two hemicones.