This is it, the final blog post for MUV, and what journey it has been. Over the past 5-6 weeks I have poured my heart into this little forest of mine, and I am pretty happy with the results. As my previous post examined the many obstacles that I have encountered along the way, I will attempt to give a more general overview of the building process and my thoughts along the way.
When I first started building my Island I was very enthusiastic about the whole thing. I knew that my goal was rather ambitious but I didn’t realise the amount of work that went into building something this large and complex. Luckily before this feeling of being overwhelmed began to kick in, Claire got me onto some fantastic free trees, that she found in an OAR file. After taking these my forest began to come alive. I was only utilising basic designer skills at this stage, and hadn’t jumped into the technical aspect at this stage.
After about two weeks of terraforming and placing trees and rocks, my other assignments began to take up more and more of my time. This was really frustrating for me because at this stage the building was actually rather enjoyable. However with just a week and a half to go, I returned with full force to tackle this massive project. The forest didn’t look anything like I had imagined at this crucial stage, and it was at this point that I felt the most underwater (metaphorically speaking).
However I persevered and I soon found that everything began to look like I had originally thought. Well, almost everything, I was/still am having massive trouble with getting my Fog Emitters to actually do what I wanted them to do. I found that they frequently turned off by themselves, and only dispersed the particles in a circle pattern. I had tried changing the particle patterns in the Fog Script but with strange results.
When I finally came to putting everything together I was quite pleased, but I have to say that my final build didn’t live up to that first concept in my head. Perhaps something like that can’t be captured in reality, but I suppose it could if a really good builder came along…(psssst Isa).
I can say that completing such a large undertaking has given me a totally new understanding of the amount of work that goes into building in Second Life/OpenSim. Everytime I see something as simple as the Dodgems Bumper Cars, it makes me stand back and admire the workmanship and time/effort that goes into building something like that. You could say that construction in a virtual world has a steeper learing curve than in real life, but apart from this it is limited only to your imagination. It is easy to see why this limitless environment appeals to so many people, and will continue to do so for many years to come.
Thanks Isa and Arwenna for the awesome Semester!