Brittany, Martin, and I will work to preserve and recreate the cultural history of Mudd Hall of Science before it is torn down this summer. We’re hoping to pull from our experience on the 3D Boston Massacre Project and use the Unity Engine to create a virtual narrative of Mudd with interaction points within the model that provide more detailed information. The recreation will potentially consist of:
- 3D recreation of Mudd either using CAD files borrowed from facilities or built by hand in Sketchup from photos and floor plans.
- Photographs from the digital archives that show how Mudd was used in years and how it has changed, and current photos of the unique aspects of the building today.
- An AV component in the style of Ken Burns which will include some of the photographs mentioned above, and potentially testimonials from those who use Mudd
- A guided tour through the building scripted in Twine
We can easily store all the components (images, audio, models, Unity scenes, etc.) in a simple database such as Google Drive and then publish our project via Unity Web Client.
The first step for us is to try and get a hold of the CAD files from facilities and to start looking for photographs in the Digital Archives. If we can’t get the CAD, then we will need to compile the references needed to build Mudd ourselves.
Team Mudd,
Repurposing knowledge from one class to another? Great idea! It would be excellent if you could use this as a small testbed for your Unity knowledge and make a nice interactive “time capsule” of Mudd.
The Harvey Game developed at UW Stout might be good to look at to see what worked and didn’t about their similar project.
Photogrammetry might be a good option for you to preserve some particularly unique artifacts associated with the building, and I would recommend you use this opportunity to explore Prairie’s Annotation capabilities for photos and narrative descriptions in game.
Can’t wait to see what you all come up with.