BBSC 303 Lecture / Workshop

Theme for the session: learning to relax ... and solve the problem.

Tactic: when an error message or dialogue pops up: READ IT and GOOGLE IT.

Specific example issue:

Export reliably to LightStudio:

Unfortunately, the Radiance renderer underlying 3DS Max cannot work with the object names that ArchiCAD or Revit are able to create. The work around is to Export to AutoCAD .dwg format. THEN in 3DS Max (9 if you are using Light Studio) using the AutoiCAD Legacy File Import format. This works for most people.

Those who have other issues often find it is due to some other fault with the way the CAD model is organised. One example we examined was the "set overflow in addobject"  error message: arising from objects being too close together. This can often be a result of the model having two objects that are co-planar (e.g. two identical copies of the same object).

A further strategy to be explored - particularly if your Revit model has "massing" elements in it - is to select to export ACIS solids rather than polyface meshes...

Use Max efficiently:

NOTES:

Many people are looking to use various combinations of lights (sun+sky) and cameras to create their renders. Rather than save many different Max files each with its own sky (and camera) - the option can be used for switching light sources on and off; and the option can be used to save 'scene states'. This approach permits the use of the option to set up a single job that runs (perhaps overnight?) to render all pictures (scenes) ina list.

has a "Multithread" option for using all the cores of a multi-core processor.

Select a bunch of objects and type a name into the Selection Set box in the tool bar - tis saves this selection set under this name.

The geometry file can be made much more efficient if you have multiple copies of objects such as chairs, light fittings, decorative facade elements, then making them into an array in the original CAD program, or in Max, ensring that all copies are 'instances' not real copies.

Render in mental ray and in Light Studio from the local D:\drive - it is 5 to 10 times faster than via the network to your 'My Documents' location. (Don't forget to keep the D:\ drive files and transfer then to the next computer's D:\ drive.

BBSC 303 Lecture, 19 May 2009

We spent a good chunk of the lecture reviewing the structure of a good web site that responded to the brief for the web project. The key was that the navigation should be simple, clear and focus on issues to do with making the model of the museum, not on the "assignments" or "tutorials" completed.

This is not to say that the requirements of the course are not to complete the assignments, but rather the brief of the web assignment shold be read and followed. 

In addition we covered efficient rendering in Max: mentalray and lightstudio have great similarities in terms of: 

• saving a map of the final gather / ambient light in a file (both renderers can be made much faster by saving this general light map; only to be used where the lighting conditins are the same, but capable of reducing the second and thirds render in a set for the same light condition by 40-50%.
• both programs support creating your own named settings files for the render process which remember all the settings in Final Gather or Light Studio from one computer session to the next. 
• both Light Studio and mental ray also support excluding the smaller objects from the render.  
• allowing the saving of image files in .hdr format to allow greatest flexibility in final processing of the render in photoshop (by adjusting the exposure).
  

Finaly, it was noted with respect to Light Studio:

• the 'simpleLS ' interface should not be used to generate any final hand ins as its picture quality is very poor; 
• the so-called 'expert' LS interface provides may settings for controlling the quality of the final render, including the ability to set a standard (local on the D:\drive for speed of renders) project file location.
• as noted in the online tutorial - and already mentioned in an April 11 2009 blog entry - the LS materials are to be found in a library on the P-drive. They are adjusted by the actual physical scalw parameters: e.g. 0.1m width planks for timber flooring. This requires the user to think carefully about the scale of the model imported.
  

BBSc303 Lecture, 5th May 2009 - Sam Curtis

3dsmax mental ray Setup Workflow  (similar workflow lightstudio, different daylight systems and materials)

1) Setup your units. Make sure you are working in real world units.

2) Import your model (via FBX for Revit). Check the units (Measure tool under the tools tab)

3) Create a Arch & Design (mi) 'matte' material (from the template), 50% grey. Apply to the entire scene.

4) Hide the glazing in your windows, or create a Arch & Design (mi) 'Glass: Thin Geometry' material (from the template)

5) Create a Daylight system. Say yes to both questions when asked.

6) Make sure the Compass Rose is not too big, and do not drag the daylight system out too far from the scene. Keep it small,just twice as high as your buildling.

7) Setup the correct location for the daylight system. Change the day and time to something suitable.

8) Set up your camera views.

9) Go to Exposure settings and change exposure pre-sets to 'Physically Based Lighting, Indoor Daylight'

10) Bring up the render dialog box. Set render size to 320 x 240. Turn on finalrender and set to Draft. Set image anti-aliasing to Draft (Min 1/64, Max 1/4).

11) Render.

12) Adjust the sun position. Change the time in the daylight system until the sun is in the correct position. Re-render and repeat until satisfied.

13) Adjust your exposure. Go to Exposure settings and again and change the exposure setting (Exposure Value (EV)) and click Render Preview. Adjust the exposure setting until satisfied.

14) Create your materials for your walls and floor.
For gib painted walls create an Arch & Design (mi) 'matte' material (from the template) with 80% white. This is the reflectance value real white walls.
For a wooden varnished wall, use Arch & Design (mi) 'Satin Varnished Wood' material (from the template)

15) For the rest of the scene, use ony Arch & Design (mi) or ProMaterials. There are ProMaterial libraries you can load with a wider range of pre-defined realistic materials

16) When doing final renders, increase the render size, anti-aliasing the final render quality.

 

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts

F10  Render Dialog
F9  Re-render last
F12  Transform Type-in Dialog (move, rotate, scale)

M  Material Editor
H Object Selection
Q Select
W Move
E Rotate
R Scale
Alt-Q Isolate Current Object
Shift-W Turn off navigation wheel
Ctrl-D De-select current selection
Space Lock selection

Materials in Light Studio - procedural materials; and

Procedural issue covered (from Light Studio / Advanced / Materials tutorial online at the course info web site):

• Loading the light studio material library from the P:\LightStudio folder.
• Opening the .cal file that is applied and changing the scale of the materials listed...

Planning the Modelling - and Materials basics in 3DS Max mentalray

Lecture April 1

Topics covered:
Set up a consistent underlying structure for the collaboration:

• structural grid?


• plan AND section joins


• scan images and overaly and cross check dimensions


• this is a model, not a set of construction drawings


• plan to model only what is to be starring in the images at the end

Materials in computer graphics were also examined in the context of modelling. Starting with the online notes about the use of diffuse, bump, displacement and opacity maps within computer graphics, we went through:

applying this picture:






As a diffuse map:













As a bump map:













As a displacement map:













And applying this image:

















as an opacity map:

Web 2.0 - 2009

The lecture today trawled through the concept of Web 2.0: A google 'define': search produces the following Wiktionary definition: "The second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static webpages to dynamic and shareable content".

The original Web 1.0 was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in the early 1990's. The arrival of Mark Andreesen's Mosaic web browser around the same time created accessible content: the first mix of text and images on the web, proving to be so powerful a trend that it "made the front page of the New York Times business section".

Examples of interactive web sites discussed are:
Flickr
Twitter
Blogger
del.icio.us

Technologies that are useful in the Web 2.0 world include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and folksonomies built on simple tags [A tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. ..]. The highlighted links at the top left edge of the BBSC 303 Digital Craft Course Information web page is constructed from an RSS feed reporting my Google (RSS) Reader subscriptions under the label 'architecture'. Just below this is a feed of my most recent del.icio.us links.

Other interactive web sites / services include:
facebook
myspace
bebo

In addition, we watched a couple of youtube videos:

The point? Assignment 2 requires you to "... actively document and collaborate online with your team partner and present the development of your project online in the form of a website." The goal therefore is to create a blog EACH, reporting your collaboration. The technologies of Web 2.0 are what will make our web sites readable, informative and able to be navigated simply.

The lecture concluded by referring back to the simple web page tutorial linked to the course web site. We covered again the use of HTML (hyper-text markup language) to place around text or media that affect its display. In particular we looked at the hypertext linking tag.

File translation issues:

The lecture on Tuesday 17 March and the tutorials on Thursday 19 March focused n file translation issues between the different original file formats in CAD and the 3DS Max file formats.

CAD	3DS Max 9 for LS	3DS ax 2009 for mr
Archicad	Export to .dwg: import via Legacy dwg	Export to 3ds; import
AutoCAD	import via Legacy dwg	import via Legacy dwg
Revit	export to dwg. import via Legacy dwg	export to fbx; import via fbx

NOTE: as covered in the online tutorials and in the tutorial class on Thursday, the Right Hemisphere product Deep Exploration can be used to clean up the object names in 3DS Max so that the renderers work properly.

Lecture 2: 2009 - Rendering with Max

The strategies for completing a rendering - a summary of the approaches that need to be adopted to Render within Max.

Basic concepts (summarised from tutorials):

• Global illumination - Radiance (Light Studio) and mentalray
• materials are specific to the renderer
  

1. light studio materials for LightStudio
2. Pro-materials for mentalray OR
3. Arch and Design materials for mentalray
   

• LightStudio only works in Max 9
• mentalray works in Max 9 and 2009: recommend the latter
• in both renderers define a sun and sky in very similar ways

1. Light Studio: Create tab/panel: Systems. Pull-down Light Studio option. Select Daylight. Choose location; date; time
2. mentalray: Pull Down menu. Lighting System wizard. Select tab. Create. Choose location; date; time. Accept options to make sky match sun and to set exposure for daylight with yes.

• in both renderers the 'indirect' illumination in bounces (mr) or as the 'indirect' box (LS) need to be a minimum of 2 outside, and 5 to 7 inside.
• In LS there are two render types: "Simple" FOR PREVIEWS ONLY and "Expert" for producing the actual renders.
• In LS there are many different materials, but 'plastic', 'glass', metal are the ones normally used. Have fun making a metal walled Gehry building!
• The LS manual is siomple and easy to read. The two tutoriala online should take you through all you need to know (the second 'advanced' tutorial is about lighting studies, but the materials section is useful for this course)
• mentalray has 'Global Illumination', 'Final Gather' and 'Caustics' settings: for this tutorial and most of this course, we will ONLY use 'Final Gather'.
  

Lecture - 1: 2009

Topics covered in the lecture:

The Course Objectives
The Tasks to be completed to meet these Objectives

• Task 1 - the tutorial exercises in Archicad, AutoCAD Architecture and Revit - plus Maxrender
• Task 2 - collaborating in the construction of a complex digital model of a daylit gallery
• Task 3 - creating a blog and web page to summarise the digital modelling

The Assessment Contract - and its role in reducing stress and workload
Workload management

The links to the past year's work:

• The Digital Craft BBSC 303 section of the www.arch.school.nz web site for models created between 1998 and 2005.
  
• And in particular the 'buildings' summary of these models.
• Plus the 'Reasonate' web site created by David Harrison in 2006
• Plus the Blogger web sites created by 303 students in 2007

Strategies for completing the tutorials and for choosing a partner to work with on the assignments.

lecture topic - May 29 2007 - handin ideas - assignment 1

Visual Styles in Autocad - there is a video on how to do them a a pdf on how to set up a style on the R:\BBSC\Course_Material\BBSC303\autodesk_adt drive - another way of doing the CAd program render and exploring possibilities...

Rendering softer images like this is also possible in Archicad - there are help files and tips on the use of Archicad on the R:\BBSC\Course_Material\BBSC303\archicad drive

Quicktime movie sun studies in Archicad / Viz are easy / Revit - and count as one render

Right Hemisphere 3D insert files in pdf (v5 will be installed very soon)





Warn people about impact of your choices:

• Right Hemisphere Deep Publish files ONLY Load in Internet Explorer
• Big files take a long time to download
• Link to adobe for acrobat reader
• Format of page may work best ('be optimised for') IE

Light Studio rpict NOT rview images should be produced... (i.e. Saving an rview 'simple', fuzzy, low res. light studio file will be marked down)

High Quality Images from Light Studio (once the geometry issues are sorted) are easy to produce - for examples: Irena Pratley's work from 2002:










NB: focus in Thursday's tutorial on getting textures like brick sorted...

• we looked at brick as a light studio material - this has a dirt modifier for better 'realism'
• we mentioned that the English version of the light studio material file library is on the P:\drive
• we noted that there are many light texture material files (so-called) cal files in the materials\library directory - these can be used to create corrugations or water via a formula
• we noted that rendering efficiency is improved in Light Studio by looking carefully at the material definitions

There are two new Revit user tutorials provided by Autodesk that are on the R:\BBSC\Course_Material\BBSC303\revit\autodesk_BIM_curriculum drive. In the metric_datasets folder is a 323 page pdf format workbook on the use of Revit! In the files_metric folder there is a guide, also in pdf, on the use of Revit files in 3ds max /viz... Whilst the 323 page book is something I have written about before as incredibly boring, it is worth mining for some gems of information, such as how to key colours on a plan / sectional model to data such as room names or areas:





NOTE: tehre is a simple blog here that describes how to create the space labels that are used for this style of presentation.

lecture topic - May 23 2007 - Rendering issues and ideas

Today Justin presented his Light Flow meter research with a request that one of your Light Studio renders is run with the light flow meter (see above from Kit Cuttle's book on Lighting) inserted into the picture taking up 30% of the view... AND the RTRACE render commands are followed to calculate the light intensity on each of 6 cardinal points of the white sphere.

lecture topic - May 16 2007 - Preparing final hand-in

The topic was examining images from the past to develop a plan to present well.

We talked about:

Ensuring that the images presented in the final render set developed a theme about the building. The goal was to try to focus on presenting in images some form of narrative that enhanced your reader/viewer's knowledge of the building or of the process of modelling or of the process of rendering... Examples that were presented of acceptable foci for a themed page were:

• comparison of the Light Studio and the Mental Ray renderers (e.g. time vs quality)
  
• an analysis of the way(s) in which daylight reaches the interior through sections and other views
• an analysis of the architect's writing about his/her building is revealed in the form /light interplay
• an examination of the role of light in the progression one makes through the building from outside to in or from gallery to gallery ...
• representation / revealing of the qualities of light in the major spaces in early morning / late afternoon - summer / winter - night / day - sun / overcast conditions
  
• interrogation of the design principles - formal / rhythmic / organic / asymmetric - affect the flow of light

We noted yet again that there is a requirement in the assignment to include the following (NOTE again, that both renderers must be used):

Assignment One - Part B

• Minimum
  The fifteen rendered images should be visible on the website in thumbnail form. Appropriate background image(s) to represent the view out from the building, or appropriate "textures" applied to art works in an art gallery or similar contextual information will be required.The web page should also contain appropriate text documenting: your name, the name of the architect, the course, the date and the name of the modeling and rendering packages used to produce each image.
• Below Average
  All above, plus: at least ten renderings using Autodesk Viz to simulate realistic lighting conditions in the space(s) in a minimum of two different ways using Global Illumination and not (7 of one approach: 3 of the alternate is the maximum deviation from the desired 5:5 split in pictures).
• Acceptable
  All above, plus: documentation of the image differences and the settings used and time taken to render between the two Viz renderings approaches.
• Average
  All above, plus: all fifteen renderings using AutoDesk Viz/Lightscape AND Rayfront/Radiance to simulate realistic lighting conditions in the space(s) NOTE: with the arrival of the LightStudio plugin, it is important to recognise that the split here is between the (Mental Ray) PHOTON MAPPING rendering approach and the (RADIANCE) BACKWARDS RAY TRACE approach. Thus the different renders are Global Illumination within the Mental Ray Renderer in Viz and Radiance with the Lightstudio renderer in Viz.
• Good
  All above, plus: use of AutoDesk Viz/Lightscape AND Rayfront/Radiance/LightStudio to simulate realistic lighting conditions in the space(s) with some additional images at night (say 6 daylight rendered with one program and 9 daylight with the other, plus 3-6 with artificial lighting); and all thumbnails link to larger minimum 1280x1024 images on your personal web site.
• Above Average
  All above, plus: association of the idea, concept or theme being communicated with a critical idea, concept or theme: e.g. analysis of relationship between this building and others by the same architect or others from same era; or analysis of natural lighting via sky and sunlighting; or examination of systems of circulation through buildings and demonstration of which system this building belongs to ....
• Very Good
  All above, plus: use of Autodesk Viz/Lightscape and Rayfront/Lightstudio for four of the views showing how the natural lighting models compare between the two rendering programs.
• Excellent
  All above, plus: ... you tell me (the possibilities are endless)?

I also noted that the software for hdrshop is available for use on the Course Information directory. This allows one to import a series of identical images of different exposure level and amalgamate them into ONE High Dynamic range Image. (i.e. to take a series of photographs of a sky and thus use it as a light source for ones scene as explained in this online tutorial)









hdrview is available on the same R:\esources directory if one wants to view the hdr image. There are plenty available online - just check FLICKR.

Also we examined the role of procedural materials in making more interesting images than can be achieved with materials which are merely pictures pasted onto surfaces... This work from Irena a couple of years ago is an illustration of a procedural texture in Radiance - the underlying render engine to Light Studio:













And finally, a couple of words of caution:

1. bringing files into Viz successfully is only part I of the render process. Make sure also that you can render in Light Studio and in Mental Ray. If your object names are very long because of the manner in which you have brought the model into Viz, then the Light Studio renderer will not work. You must fix this somehow by altering the layer / object names in the export process, or by importing the file into Deep Exploration and then re-exporting in the simpler form...
2. As noted at the beginning of the year, Light Studio only work in Viz - if you have exported to Max for mental ray, then be aware that you will be competing for a much smaller number of licenses than with Viz come crunch render time AND you will still have to export that model and read it back into Viz to use Light Studio
3. There is a major flaw in the Viz 'section' tool that stops it from producing sections that are orthogonal to the building - because sections are created by setting 'cutting planes' in Viz/Max camera definitions. The work around is that one can create the files in Viz and with the mental ray renderer run the 'render to texture' option. Then save the file out as a 3ds format - with named camera views. THEN within Deep Exploration (DE) one can set up the section plane (+X) rotated and placed where it shows off the interior best and from within DE... Witness this simple B&W model rendered with a cutting plane:

Footnote: link to hdr render and good caustics for water in same tutorial when compiling this blog.

lecture topic - May 15 2007 - narrative

More video watching - this time extracts from Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering's documentary about Jacques Derrida.

Specifically:

• you call this verite?
• Echo and Narcissus
• the sex lives of philosophers
• without even an ash

As a means of understanding narrative and film - try to get inside the mind of the authors (whom Derrida addresses often on the subject of whose story is being told by their editing decisions). Try to ask -

• when did the quotes get assembled? before or after the filming?
  
• why two cameras?
• what were the other people shown in the video at the end of the movie doing and why?
• would the narrative of the episodes we watched change if played in another order than the movie (ref Eisenstein etc)
  

lecture topic - May 8 2007

Favicon - How To Create A Favicon.ico | PhotoshopSupport.com

This is one of the topics we covered briefly in the lecture on Tuesday: how to create one of those favicons that appear in the navigation bar of IE7 and Firefox?

The explanation here is of using a Photoshop plugin to create an icon in the correct format - so far so good. But then, most usefully, there is a discussion of how to handle the html to make that icon appear in the place(s) it should...

Lecture 8 - Digital Craft Render Details

Concepts covered in class today:
Global Illumination and Final Gather in Mental Ray

• avoiding long render times for outdoor renders by enclosing the whole scene in a hemisphere
• making the hemsiphere normals face inward so it is visible
  
• using a map on the hemisphere as a background - improvement over an environment background
• Final Gather as a means of producing quick outdoor renders
• 10,000 minimum photons may produce blotchiness which may be 'solved' by FG but may not
• creating a light that ONLY shines on selected objects to illuminate the background sky...
  

HDR images

• what are they?
• Debevec and Ward websites as resources for their work on HDRI
• use of HDR as output that is flexible from LightStudio
• Use of HDR images as a source of light in a scene
• (as an aside - use of a map in a light definition in Viz as a means of cheaply creating shadows)
• requirement to include an HDR image in the final hand in
• 
  

Animation Class lecture - editing

Today we watched the end (New York onwards) of the magnificent 'Vision of light' DVD about Cinematography.

Then we discussed editing by contrasting the editing efforts in the car chase scenes of The Italian Job (1968), Bullitt (1969), The French Connection and Ronin.

Next week we will compare a scene from Luc Bresson's La Femme Nikita with the exact same scene from Assassin (Point of no return) by John Badham.

We concluded by examining how backburner can be of assistance in speeding up rendering.

Lecture 7 - Digital Craft Render to Texture / Blogging carefully / Details - details - details

Tuesday 24 April 2007

Notes to a lecture:
Significant time was devoted to working through the example of making the label cloud generator on the class blog work by solving the clues offered by the misbehaviour: the solution was to identify what were relative and absolute link web addresses for the label cloud generator program.

We also went through again, how the blogging process is meant to provide a structure from which to build a final hand in for assignment 2. I referred people to the web areas of the www.reasonate.co.nz projects from last year... Good examples of web pages can be found from the people who did the de Young Museum - Arles Archaeological Museum - Federation Square. Ultimately the process of reporting in one place what you have done and how you have organised yourselves ought to be no more than collecting together the folksonomy tags / labels you have generated.

We noted the importance, now the tag cloud is generating, of yusing and defining tags that make sense to your group for later use by you in reporting how YOU organised yourself in relation to the group.

We touched on the ABSOLUTE NEED to attribute your sources and to remember the concept of fair use and also to remember to attribute all sources on your web site in teh same manner as you would in an academic essay. NOTE: not all references need be electronic. It is entirely OK to publish the source as the name of a journal / book...

We also touched in some length on the output requirements in terms of rendered views of the building. Some will be in Light Studio; some in Mental Ray. Some will be interactive in the manner of the Quicktime VR output of the tutorial, but some will also be interactive using the type of technology that Right Hemisphere offer through the Deep Exploration / Deep Publish software we have in the school. The latter acts more like an interactive game engine built into the web browser allowing people to walk through your design... In this latter case, the Render to texture ('baked' textures) Viz render option will be the most useful.

Animation and Story Boards - Digital Craft - 26 March 2007

First activity - watch first seven sections of Visions of Light - a DVD on Cinematography from the Film Institute in the USA.

Second - review the voice over commentary of the start of Citizen Kane - the importance of light and shade, plus the use of the lighted window to link cuts / fades in the intro.

Third - the start sequence of Blade Runner

Fourth - reviewed the videos produced by the students in 2004 and 2005

Fifth - worked through several storyboard examples to understand how to document the planned video

Sixth - explored the nature of the type of presentation to be produced at the interim hand in stage after Easter when we will be presenting our ideas to the Music School's composition students.

Seventh - examined the role sound / soundscapes / music plays in movies - diagetic / non-diagetic - cut on action - sound as the means of transition between scenes...

Rendering - Lecture 5 - Digital Craft - 2007

Global Illumination - reviewing what it is and how to do it in Viz using Light Studio and Mental Ray was the pedagogical goal...

The reality?

We addressed the issue of Simulation, Simulacra, Reality and 'Hyper-reality' - more by reference to the issue of perception and the goals of communication via the image - than by a full review of Baudrillard (Wikipedia ref) or of the hyper-reality of Virtual Reality and High Resolution images.

The basic message was that the focus of image making in the course ought to be on communication of a story NOT merely on some highly detailed, high contrast, ray-traced-within-an-inch-of-its-life image. Contrasting images from Final Fantasy with images from Shrek is highly revealing of this. In the former, the focus and the hype of the original release was about the amount of time spent modelling Dr Aki Ross and the realism of the hair, skin and eyes. The truth is that the non-realistic rendering of the characters and the scenography in Shrek is far more involving of the audience, has far more character development pathis and humour. What is important in Shrek is a focus on the story - not the technology. The same should apply to every image produced in the course.

In addition, we reviewed again the tutorial 'Comparing Rendering Techniques' particularly the portion about the use in computer Graphics of bump, opacity and displacement maps. These can be used in normal scanline rendering in Viz. To produce realistic materials in Light Studio one cannot use these techniques - rather one must use special Light Studio materials with applied 'procedural' files that allow far faster rendering than the map approach.

The bulk of the lecture content was focused on the phenomenon of Global Illumination - a means of calculating light distribution in a space. Photon mapping, Backwards and Forwards Ray tracing and Radiosity were all described briefly.

At the end, the ability of the Deep Publish plug in within Powerpoint, Word and Excel to import 3D files so they remain interactive was demonstrated briefly.

The Digital Model - Lecture 4 - 2007

Information covered today:

First we checked out another cool example of a Web 2.0 mashup at twittermap and I fluffed around wondering what possible use it could be even though it was instantaneously showing the street addresses of the people who were using twitter.com to described what they were doing 'right now'

The lecture really began with with two presentations by 'guests' - videos from the web, illustrating the value of / potential of Web 2.0:

the first was a video about the importance of digital text - and its definition(s) - Prof Michael Wesch author - found here on his Digital Ethnography web site and here at youtube.

the second was a presentation in Lawrence Lessig style by Dick Hardt of Sxip on the nature of Identity - proof of identity - identity documentation / verification etc in the 'real' world (Identity 1.0) and in the digital world (Identity 2.0) - found here at youtube (NOTE: there is more on the Lessig style at Presentation Zen.

We finished the first hour on issues of quality control in web publishing - covering topics such as:

• absolute and relative links (again)
• how one writes space in a filename on the internet (%20) - to avoid confusion
• how to avoid this with underline characters
• making filenames informative but not too long
• making filenames have some symbolic easy to remember meaning
• file naming conventions
• digital rights / copyright on the web
• open source software as an inspiration for open drawing formats
• the use of the class blog to upload copies of all the material produced in the course
  
• using tags related to the group (e.g. delta, gamma, eta) to label all project related stuff
• using tags that relate to content type e.g. delta_model or delta_filename to allow sorting later
• using several tags on each item (this blog entry is listed under lecture and bbsc303)

In the second half of the lecture we went on to discuss modelling principles... A separate blog entry - yet to be written