The Voices in My Head

As every cow and chicken in the land must know by now, BigPond has launched its presence in Second Life, in a set of 11 sims, the centre piece of which is called simply The Pond. And I am proud to say I had a part in building these sims. Most of the work was by Gary Hazlitt. To be sure, mine was just a small part compared to what Gary did. He did pretty much everything except my build and the Sydney Harbour Bridge (good job, Charlene Trudeau). But culturally, my bit was a very significant one.

I built the Sydney Opera House. You can see some decent pictures over at sloz.

As iconic buildings go, nothing represents Australia more than anything else (Uluru is the natural icon for Australia if you ignore man-made structures). Australians are immensely, and justifiably, proud of this building. Criticism was somewhat inevitable under the circumstances.

When I was given the design brief, my initial reaction was to fall off my chair. I honestly took it to be a joke at first. The building is famous not only as an Australian icon, but for being technically very difficult to build historically - the techniques to build it didn’t even exist when it was first drawn up! I actually took some persuading to accept the task at all, as I wasn’t at all sure I could do an adequate job.

Since it is so well-known, anything less that perfection was bound to get criticism for not being a faithful copy, and a faithful copy would get teh same kind of criticism the original received. And of course, it is indeed getting plenty of criticism, but I am pleased with the end result, although given an extended period of time to do it and a better machine, I know I can do better.

Within the brief, there were a few ideas I wanted to implement. The an important point was that there be at least one event space. the most notable one in the end result is the Cavern Gallery underneath the build. But I consider the above ground “stairs area” to be event space number two, suitable for live music events. Finally, there is a small gallery at the seaward end of the building.

So, without further ado, here’re some blasts and counter-blasts…

• It isn’t as big as the real Opera House; some details are missing.
• In terms of ground area, of course it is smaller. Ditto for vertical height. I was given a very limited area to build it, and within the limits of that space, I tried hard to make the proportions correct. But feel free to give me an entire sim to build it, pay me for my time, and I will cheerfully start over and make it to scale. I’ll have a better machine by then too, so I will be able to use certain 3D architectural models that are available online, for improved accuracy.
• The stairs in the above ground area use textured ramps instead of making each step from a prim. Making each step as a separate prim would slow the loading speed unacceptably, and would raise an issue of whether to build the steps to be proportional to the building (i.e. so small as to be all but invisible anyway), or proportional to the avatars (and so look chunky compared to teh main build).
• The glass foyer is missing. Again, intentional. I experimented with including that foyer. But the possible solutions meant either making it proportional to the main building (avatars would feel like giants when next to it), or making it proportional to the avatars (it would then look gigantic compared to the main building). There was no way to include it without the sizes looking really odd, so the best solution was to remove it entirely.
• The textures on the walls of the building suggest a single floor where there would be 3-4 floors in the real building. Once more, intentional, to prevent avatars feeling ridiculously oversized when walking around the model.
• The ribs on the inside of the sails are missing. I wanted to include them, but they were technically very difficult to do - far harder than the initial sail shape (itself very time-consuming). There wasn’t any practical way to do them and keep within the time schedule I had been given.
• The sails are the wrong colour and shape.
• In reality, they are of course white, with a certain herring-bone pattern at a fine level and dark lines running along the length of them. However, they are also slightly shiny in real life, and take on the colour of their surrounding landscape. In their natural location, this is the sea and sky, and so they take on a slight bluish hue. Unfortunately, due to their location in SL, making them shiny wouldn’t achieve the same colour effect at all, so the compromise solution was to code that shade into the prims directly. Making them full-bright was to simulate the floodlights that surround the real building in all the publicity photos.
• Regarding the shape, I realise they aren’t quite perfect. Close, but not perfect. I know there are complete VR 3D models of the building available for download, and if only my machine could handle running a full 3D model viewer, photoshop, Second Life, and a web browser, I would have used that as a base for making the shapes. In the end, I was forced to do it by eyeball. I know there are ways to make a more perfect copy of the sail shape, its just that my machine would melt if I tried to run the programs needed for it. I’m getting a new machine next month though.
• There should be a door leading into the gallery that displays the construction process, to preserve the smooth outside lines.
• In the original design, there was. Removing that door was a deliberate decision outside my control, to encourage visitors to enter and look around. And please, do visit that room and look around.
• What’s with that funky entrance to the Cavern Gallery anyway?
• Yes, I am well aware that there is no such space in the real building. Given the limitations of scale, there was no way to include an internal event space in the physical location where the real event spaces would be. A cellar was the logical alternative. One method that was considereed and rejected was a sit-teleport to a skybox that would more accurately emulate the interior. Another thought was to have the sails at the front of the building contain the entry to the event space. But that would have made the entrance to the Cavern Gallery in a position that would be aesthetically displeasing. As I said though, I want to remodel that entry. It went through a few changes, and I am still not entirely happy with it.
• The rails/lamps/benches aren’t the same as the ones at the real Opera House.
• I was feeling creative.
• You aren’t Australian! How dare you make our icons!
• I seem to recall that Jorn Utzon wasn’t Australian either. Someone send him some mail right now for daring to build an Australian icon while not actually being Australian.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Art, Negative, Positive, Warda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.