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Cushing Village Team
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The Cushing Village Team would like thank all of those who were involved with the 3D Second Life® model! As promised, the video is now available for viewing and sharing to your heart's content!
Despite this being work for all of us, this was truly a great time and a labor of love. It was Chris Starr who initially came up with this idea of taking Cushing Village to the virtual level, and getting everyone on board with this concept was a challenge at times!
We began by approaching a few SL builders for bids, and then finally decided on famed SL builder, Barnesworth Anubis (Adam Adler of Colorado). We then rented a full sim or island to begin laying out the boundaries of Cushing Square.
As Barnes worked day and night for the past couple of months, we followed along, watching the build take shape. It was hard to see how things were going to come together, but we were in great hands. Barnes has proven his professional reputation well, and stuck to the architectural drawings for each inch to create a build that was as true to scale as possible.
At times, the team was "in-world" to select appropriate textures....
At other times, we were called in to assist with road and sidewalk detailing....
And for many hours we were busy picking landscaping plants and trees to mimic the designs of the landscape drawings.....and you have no idea how hard that can be!
At one point, finding the right bushes and best representation for the green roofs on top of the Pomona took the good part of an afternoon!
Next came benches and patio furniture to add a touch of livability....
Once things looked complete, Barnes added a few renditions of the neighboring homes, complete with landscaping and trees.
And then came the Machinima or filming of Cushing Village and the surrounding neighborhood! That process alone took almost a week and involved adding cars to the streets and sizing avatars to the correct height of real people and adding animations to make the activity appear lifelike - which is another challenge specific to SL! Special thanks to Moo Money for her Machinima talents!
But in the end, we all had a great time! Some of the Second Life community is buzzing about this momentous design by Barnesworth Anubis - another triumph for a great talent! We all hope it helps the Town of Belmont in their decision-making process!
Posted by
Cushing Village Team
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11:37 PM
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After several years of planning, modifying and even heading back to the drawing board, the Cushing Village Team has come up with a new design that excels in both form and function. The new Cushing Village distributes the building mass in a pleasing manner and has such an architecturally and visually rich character that the buildings appear to have organically grown from the neighborhood over the years and decades. However, as beautiful as the new design is, we feel our new vision for Cushing Village cannot be truly appreciated until residents can experience the finished product in-person. While Belmont residents cannot walk through a project that does not exist, we can offer the next best thing - a 3D model, in Second Life® (SL) - a popular virtual world, that allows visitors, in the form of avatars (your representation in the virtual world), to walk the streets of Cushing Square and experience our vision for Cushing Village first-hand.
For the past couple of months, the CV team has been working with famed SL modeler ("builder") Barnesworth Anubis (a.k.a. Adam Adler of Colorado), to create a full scale replica of Cushing Village. Within the 3D virtual model, buildings are to scale and modeled with "materials" that are true to life in color and texture. When avatars visit this parcel of virtual land that contains the 3D, full color, replica, they will not only see Cushing Village, but they will experience it, in its context and massing. The roads, grounds and sidewalks will be there, complete with realistic topographical features and landscaping. Even some of the surrounding neighborhood will be there, accurate to scale.
During the next Planning Board meeting this Tuesday, March 13th, the Second Life model will be unveiled in the form of a short film that will provide a virtual tour of the outside of the development as well as the eye-view from the surrounding neighborhoods. As promised in our newsletter, scroll below to see some still shots from the 3D project as it looked earlier today!
