The most exciting part of this project involved the creation of a 3D model of the Science Concourse using VRML.  If you have not heard of VRML, it stands for "Virtual Reality Markup Language."  It is a standard for representing 3D models over the web, so we were happy to test it out and see what we could do with it.

Our Process:

A workable model required a model of campus (a scene) as well as models of the sculptures (objects).  With data from Facilities Planning, we were able to extrude the campus buildings on the science mall using Arcview and export them to VRML, so the scene was almost created for us in a short series of steps.

Generating A Virtual Campus From Arcview Shapefiles

Using polygon data  for building shapes and height data for individual buildings, we were able to render a 3D model of campus in Arcview and export it to VRML 2.0 using the 3D Analyst extension. <-- At left is an example of the data we had available for each building on campus. At right is an image of the polygons before --> they were extruded.

I added the Basemap.shp shapefile to a new View in Arcview.  In order to generate VRML, I turned on Arcview's 3D Analyst  (Click File -> Extensions -> 3D Analyst).  That added another category to the Project Window: 3D Scene.  I created a new 3D scene, since none existed, and added the themes from our View.  To extrude the buildings into 3D, I selected 3D Properties from the Theme menu.  Under Extrude featured by value or expression, I used [B_ht], the value for each polygon that contains the height data.

This is a wireframe diagram of Gould Simpson as it was generated by Arcview:

This shows the Gould Simpson building after being edited into a number of rectangular IndexedFaceSets with CosmoWorlds.  Unfortunately, applying textures to the buildings was a more painstaking process than creating the buildings.  We used CosmoWorlds, which is no longer available, to apply textures to the buildings.   Applying textures to these faces was monotonous, if not easy.  Creating the textures from digital images proved to be an interesting task in image processing as well.

You will need a VRML browser.  If you do not have one that supports VRML 2.0 (aka VRML 97), then you can download one from our plugins page. 

The virtual campus was generated by ArcView's 3D Analyst and exported to VRML 2.0.  The buildings are represented by polygons and were extruded by the height associated with each polygon.  Other data that went into the virtual campus included sidewalk and road layout.  These make up the base plane.  After being exported to VRML 2.0, field work was done to capture digital images of building faces.  These jpegs were then pasted onto the corresponding faces of each building in Cosmo Worlds from SGI.  If you have a VRML browser installed, take a walk through U of A's Virtual Campus. If not, it is strongly recommended that you download the Cosmo Player VRML browser, which can be found at our FTP site at ftp://Ag.Arizona.Edu/pub/win95/internet/webview/plugins/CosmoPlayerInstall.exe (3.15MB). Otherwise, click here for a simulated walkthrough of 30 images mirrored by 30 images taken in the field from the corresponding locations.   

The VRML is approximately 3.8MB in size, so the following download times should be expected:

56K    - about 1 minute
28.8    - about 2.5 minutes
14.4    - about 5 minutes

Enter VRML University

Our Procedure for generating this world.