Evolution of a Project - Belgium Pavilion on ReactionGrid

On January 26, 2010 we "broke ground" and started the Belgium Pavilion in ReactionGrid on 39FairHQ. For those of you who don't know, there are 2 regions (sims) that have been set aside as an introductory area to the Fair, not the Fair itself but a smattering of what was at the Fair in 1939.

With a floor-plan and some photos of the pavilion from the Fair in hand (or rather in the computer), work was begun.

Images in the computer are cropped and sized, and then uploaded to the Grid where they are saved as textures and placed on prims (geometric objects: cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc.). The first texture was the floor plan. The floor-plan scale was in feet and had to be converted into meters. A cube prim was rezed (created) and stretched to about 70M x 47M, set on the ground and building commenced.

As you can see, the basic building material is plywood. The few walls you see in the photo consist of cubes that have been sized, and 1 cylinder which has been sized and hollowed out to form the curved corner.

A texture for the red-tile walls was created from editing a photo of the Belgium Pavilion found on the Bells For Peace web site.

The day ended with a few more walls and the beginning of the bell tower in place.

Bear in mind, work was being done from a rather crude drawing and not a set of blueprints. And, as I have said before, due to the difference between the virtual world and the real world, even if we had accurate dimensions, we could not follow them.

It's true that we take many liberties with the buildings and while our original intent was to recreate the Fair exactly, I am afraid that reality set in and our mission now is to capture the essence of the Fair and pass along as much information as possible.

Over the next few weeks, I'll try to catch this blog up with real time so you can see where we really are.

Till next time ... Cheers