Authors
Brent Nickel
Craig Nagy

Contents

Overview
Scope
Tools & Resources
Concepts & Methods
Credits

Overview
The Brock Campus 3D (BC3D) project seeks to model sections of Brock University's campus. Our initial thought was to create a useful model which prospective and current students could navigate to become familiar with the campus. From the beginning, a real time rendering environment was desired and as such, a game engine was the tool of choice; specifically the Unreal Engine by Epic Games. Numerous issues were encountered during implementation since we were only vaguely familiar with the Unreal Editor (UnrealEd). We quickly realized that the scope of the project would have to be narrowed considerably; a looming deadline was particularly persuasive. Herein is a detailed description of the processes, tools, and results of the Brock Campus 3D project.

Scope
Our initial and ambitious plans were to model the campus in great detail; interior and exterior of buildings along with the landscape. The editor proved to be cumbersome in several aspects discussed later. Our final scope involved modeling as many buildings in general as time permitted and to concentrate our efforts on one or two buildings to provide greater detail. The final product for this project models the Mackenzie Chown Complex, Inniskillin Hall, Taro Hall, The Alumni Student Centre, Thistle, and The Schmon Tower. Detailed emphasis was placed on the Schmon Tower as it seems to be a strong figure on the campus and along the Niagara Escarpment's horizon.

Tools & Resources
As mentioned, the Unreal Editor was the primary tool for this project, however several other crucial tools were required.

Unreal Editor
The Unreal Editor is available free from Epic Games which made it an attractive option compared with other commercial modeling products. The game Unreal Tournament 2003 also comes with the editor and associated textures, static meshes, and other game artifacts. Using a game engine provided many benefits such as optimization for performance, Maya and 3DStudio Max compatibility, an advanced physics engine, scripting capabilities, etc.

Unreal Developer Network (UDN)
The UDN (http://udn.epicgames.com/) was an invaluable resource for learning how to use the Unreal Editor. Tutorials helped gain an understanding of the complexity involved in creating any map for gaming or otherwise and to also realize the power of the editor itself.

CAD Drawings
Since we wanted to create our model as accurately as possible, we sought maps from the Map Library to no avail; however they did point us in the right direction, to Brock's Physical Plant department. Visiting the Physical Plant web page (http://www.brocku.ca/pplant/) uncovered scads of technical CAD drawings for most of Brock's buildings; residence plans were restricted. These were only 2D drawings, but they would be sufficient for our purposes. This leads directly into the next tool.

AutoCAD 2004
To view the DWG drawing format, we needed a viewer. Several free viewers are available, however we needed the ability to measure building dimensions. AutoCAD 2004 was available from the AutoDesk web site (http://autodesk.com) in streaming format. The streaming slowed the application, but it gave us the necessary measurement tools.

Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop was used to create and modify various textures used on the buildings and terrain.

Digital Camera
Since we were limited to 2D CAD drawings, it was necessary to gather visual references by walking around the campus taking pictures at critical locations. The collection of photos can be found in the galleries.

Workstations
For efficiency, two computers were used, one solely for UnrealEd with the development version of the map and another for AutoCAD and UnrealEd for testing purposes.

Concepts & Methods
UnrealEd uses a subtractive space environment; the environment can be compared to a large block of clay. Using the various tools called brushes, such as cube, sphere, sheet, etc, volumes are subtracted and added within the environment.

Development of the model could only be done by one person at a time. Therefore, collaboration involved one person taking measurements and performing calculations for the next pieces to be added/subtracted and the other, putting together the pieces and resolving measurement inaccuracies.

This project began by calculating the space required for the entire campus since our plans were overly ambitious at the time. To do this, it was necessary to determine a scale for our world. UnrealEd uses its own units, aptly named Unreal Units (UU). After some research and several failed trials, we settled on 1' = 16 UU. This had the benefit of being a power of two which Unreal works well with since the grid is also in powers of two and it's more efficient to store and process such numbers. Additionally, since Brock is not consistently flat, some areas had to be recessed.

Following the scale, we had to determine a story height. Again, we were limited with 2D drawings and did not plan on measuring ceiling heights, thus we chose a height for all stories throughout the model (192 UU). Although a constrained height had limitations, it simplified grid alignment, reducing further problems.

One of the next tasks was setting up the skybox. In outdoor models, the sides of the large subtracted box are flagged as 'fake'. This tells Unreal that there is a location elsewhere which defines 'walls' that will act as if infinitely far away. This location is the skybox. The video in the downloads section does not show this clouded backdrop, but the images in the galleries do. The video was created in the editor using the matinee tool, but that tool cannot display the backdrop as it would appear in the game.

Finally we could begin creating buildings, which at first glance seemed fairly straight forward but turned out to be very challenging. Brock from above is relatively simple, but when dealing with the third dimension, many angles start to appear and blocks of varying sizes complicate matters since no two added blocks should overlap, nor two subtracted blocks. The rigidity of adhering to the dimensions of the CAD drawings slowed progress significantly and reduced our scope further.

Ideas & Wish We Could've...
- Hollowed out more buildings; as is, some of Thistle is hollow and every floor of the Schmon Tower
- Finished the west side of the campus
- Provided access to the upper levels of the tower with a scripted elevator
- Added landscaping - Unreal has extensive collections of static mesh models which would be great to populate the map with
- Textured more buildings with textures other than our standard texture (Brock is mostly cement anyhow)
- Added sound to our matinee video
- Write a script which finds classrooms

Results
Although we do not have exactly what we had envisioned from the beginning, those expectations were made without full knowledge of the application domain. In the end however, the final product serves as a solid base for meeting those ideas above. A video clip of a flyby can be found in the downloads section; note however that animation was not our goal. If one were to navigate this map with Unreal Tournament, a general familiarity could be gained for part of Brock's campus.

Credits
Epic Games
Physical Plant
Brian Ross
Mary Owen
Sharon Janzen