about

The first event that actively launched the LA VRML Users Group took place on Saturday May 31, beginning at 10:00 AM, and culminated at 6:00 PM on Sunday June 1. The VRML Barn Raising event was a unique, collaborative and participatory, education and production experience. It brought together a diverse team of 36 people with a wide variety of skills. All participants had access to Macs for graphic prep as well as PCs and four SGI 02 platforms running the latest multimedia and VRML 2.0 content authoring tools.

Specifically for this event, an array of 12 workstations, including Silicon Graphics, Pentiums, and Macs, were spread throughout Electronic Cafe International. Each station had a team of three people initially assigned, and one of the three a "VRML \Mentor", who directed the activities at that station. Software used:

- Silicon Graphics Cosmo Worlds and Cosmo Create

- Kinetix 3D Studio Max

- Microsoft's SoftImage 3D

- Paragraph's Internet 3D Space Builder and VHSB2.0

- Virtus Walkthrough Pro from Virtus Corporation

- Pioneer Pro from Caligari

- AvatarBuilder from Sven Technologies

- Integrated Data Systems VREALM Builder 2.0

- Superscape's VRT 5.0

PLANNING

GOALS

AVATAR GALLERY

All participants had ample opportunity to contribute to the collaborative activities going on at all of the workstations.

The primary purpose of the two day Barn Raising event was to bring together some of top VRML talent and tools in Southern California, and novices creating a unique educational oppertunity and enabling the teams to rapidly produce several VRML 2.0 presentations of the Electronic Cafe International's World Headquarters in Santa Monica.

Some stations worked on 2D imaging for applying as texture maps to
surfaces, others created 3D objects for inclusion in the models, while
others created Java applets for bringing behavior to the objects. Other
team members created avatars, and making the ECI VRML World multi-user
enabled. Selected digitized video from previous ECI Events, Midi sound
files, and other embellishments were prepared and will be integrated into
the VRML world later as the project continues develop after the initial
weekend event.

The VRML weekend was sponsored by Silicon Graphics, Cybertown, Oz Virtual, Sony ImageWorks, IDS, 3Name3D , NetPower and Intervista.