Scene Re-creation

[AJ Noiter]

Let me start by saying this is not a case discussion thread. Please leave discussion of the case to other threads.

Sue has given me permission to post an application I'm working on and share it with the community. What it is, is a virtual walk through of the scene. In its current state it's very primitive but in the coming days and weeks I plan to get it into a more refined state. That's where this thread comes in to play. This thread is specifically for aiding in recreating the scene in whatever way you can.

I have an image of the items I've done in my "rough draft" that will help us identify locations to one another. I will post the dimensions of each of the labeled items in my first reply as soon as this thread is created.

Here's what would help me right now:
- More definitive dimensions and headings of the labled buildings and items (road/sidewalks).
- Locations of trees*
- Locations of "special locations" such as witness locations (NO NAMES PLEASE), etc.
- If you have a knack for 3d modelling your assistance would be greatly appreciated as I do not - I taught myself the basics over the last few days for this project.

* - I use a right hand coordinate system where 0,0,0 is the northwestern pixel of the Club House (noted as CH in the image).

CH - Club House
A - Mailbox "kiosk"
B-M - Houses
a - Road
b - Sidewalk going east
c - Sidewalk going south

When the project is complete this is what I hope to accomplish:
- Allow sleuths to roam freely in the virtual scene to get a better idea of the layout, since many people aren't confident in maps alone.
- Allow sleuths to walk, "walk fast", jog, run or sprint through the scene.
- Allow sleuths to change the lighting conditions to:

• Daylight (Sun is 30° above horizon)
• Civil Twilight (Sun is 6° below horizon)
• Nautical Twilight (Sun is 12° below horizon)
• Astronomical Twilight (Sun is 18° below horizon, no "Night" lighting because with the overcast sky it's the same as Astronomical Twilight).

- Allow sleuths to change the precipitation to:

• Raining
• Light Rain
• Mist
• Light Mist
• No Precipitation

If you have anything else you'd like to see discuss it below! The more assistance I get with this the faster it'll be complete!

 

[AJ Noiter]

Here's the dimensions/headings I have in my "rough draft":
all of my dimensions are in inches
0° is North

CH: 999.66, 1276.55, 0.070°
A: 237.65, 214.32, 1.270°
B: 1420.59, 600.0, 90.44°
C: 1417.81, 600.0, 89.45°
D: 1419.76, 600.0, 88.5°
E: 1674.52, 600.0, 90.0°
F: 1660.87, 600.0, 357.86°
G: 1406.41, 600.0, 359.07°
H: 1406.41, 600.0, 358.52°
I: 1656.96, 600.0, 358.35°
J: 1666.63, 600.0, 358.82°
K: 1663.91, 600.0, 359.08°
L: 1667.39, 600.0, 359.16°
M: 1405.54, 600.0, 357.55°

I don't have the dimensions/headings for a,b or c anymore. It seems that sheet of paper has disappeared and I've already combined the polygons.

Edit: Most of the distances between buildings I have marked down as 200 inches.

 

[AJ Noiter]

Thanks to Concerned Papa for the URL, in it the floor plans can be found for the various housing structures - very beneficial for modeling them.

http://www.407re.com/RetreatatTwinLakes

 

[AJ Noiter]

Just wanted to give a little better idea of what exactly I'm doing, and I've come to a point to where I might be able to do just that. I've set the rough draft aside and I'm starting to build models of the houses based on the floor plans. There are some kinks to work out, such as the floor plans say the back patio should be 3'4" for the model I've been working on ("Cancun"), but I think it's more like 5ft, and I also need to start working on placement and sizes of windows and doors.

However, I do have a preview of the Cancun house, so let me point out a few things then show you some screen shots.
- I will not be doing meshes as I don't have the resources to properly do them. In "layman's terms" what this means is that I'll be using just a color for the walls of the houses - you'll see what I mean in the images below.
- The buildings are made of 3-4 houses, the image below is one of the center houses - the houses on the ends of each building have a balcony.
- The "sky" is not what you'll be seeing in the final product, it's just the default "cornflower blue" color that is drawn.
- You can see a line running along the side of the model where some polygons aren't properly aligned. It's 4am and I'm not gonna fix that little detail for a screen shot (sorry!), but it will be fixed in the final product.
- The pillars on the back patio do not have a size on the floor plan, I made a quick guestimate that they're 1ft, I'm way off but it shows that a 3'4" back patio doesn't look large enough so I left it for this demonstration.
- There lighting is set to "default" so you will see some variation between the different sides of the house, but because there is no ground you will not see any shadows.
- The images are cropped and scaled down by 50%, this is not the size that you'll be seeing when running the application.
- I want to reiterate that I am not a 3d graphics guy, what I know is what I have learned over the last 2-3 days so please go easy on the quality of the models!

With that out of the way, here's a preview of the "Cancun" house. One is from the front of the house, you'll be looking at the garage door and the front door, the other is from the rear of the house where you can see the back patio.


Front

Back

So.. almost one down, a lot of work left to do!

 

[Reader]

I can't see any of your pictures....

 

[AJ Noiter]

I can't see any of your pictures....

I'll be replacing those with some slightly updated ones with "windows" and "doors."* If you're behind a proxy or firewall it could be that either of those are blocking you from reaching postimage.org, try going to that domain and see if you can get through. If you can't then it probably is proxy/firewall related.

* - If I can edit that post when I have the model complete, not gonna make new posts to bump this thread when it's not really new

Edit: I can't edit that post, so if I can edit this post I'll put them here.

 

[Omachka]

I can't see any of your pictures....

I can't see them on the page either but if I right click and select view image in a new tab (or new window) it works for me. I am on a mac using safari as my browser. Hope that might help.