Virtual Environment Development

There are two parts in SiPadi which involved the development of virtual environment. They are the step by step organic paddy practice and the paddy farming game.

The prototype development began by gathering information. The steps involved in creating a virtual environment were adapted from Kalawsky (2000) and was modified by the researcher to suit the requirement (Othman & Muhammad, 2010).

5.5.4.1 Gathering Information

The design process began with studying the object and environment involved. In this stage, general and important information and pictures about the object and environment in the four selected paddy growing areas was collected.

5.5.4.2 Scene Definitions

Next, the scene definition includes a few processes, such as 3D object definition, texture definition, scene lighting description, definition of environment effects and definition of interaction between individual objects.

a) 3D Object definition

3D objects for virtual environment of SiPadi can be divided into five categories:

i. Paddy field environment which includes water, trees, land, hut, a straw man, and water path.

ii. Character objects such as farmer, rats, birds and paddy. iii. Texts.

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iv. Tools in paddy farming like weeder, tractor, spray tub and fertilizer tub. v. Avatar an object to represent user navigation.

b) Definition of Textures

Texturing is a technique performed in the rasterizing stage of graphics pipeline in order to modify the object model’s surface properties such as color, specular reflection or pixel

normal (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003).

c) Scene Lighting Description and Definition of Environment Effects.

From the observation, the researcher decided that the suitable paddy field environment is bright, quiet and calm. However, there were sounds of birds singing, burning straw, traditional song, cheering voice, and booing voice. All of the audio used is in a wav. format file.

d) Definition of Interaction between Individual Objects

Users are free to walkthrough and explore in the virtual paddy field. In some cases, the user needs to choose the play button in games to interaction. After the scene was definite, 3D modeling objects were developed.

5.5.4.3 Three Dimensional (3D) Object Modeling

The 3D object was developed starting with land surface, cloud, paddy field land and objects in the paddy field. 3D models are needed to create the virtual environment. The 3D models are created using 3D Studio Max 8, and 3D Studio Max 2009. The modeling technique for

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this courseware is not the same with modeling for photorealistic or animation because the 3D models are used for virtual environment where the number of polygon count is matter.

Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. Usually triangular, polygons arise when an object's surface is modeled, vertices are selected, and the object is rendered in a wire frame model. This is quicker to display than a shaded model; thus the polygons are a stage in computer animation. The polygon count refers to the number of polygons being rendered per frame.

Because the virtual environment uses real-time rendering, so to avoid too much rendering time, the models need to create with as low as possible polygon which affect the quality of models (not too smooth or not too realistic). The polygon reduction for 3D model was done at 3D Studio Max through Polychop command.

After finishing the 3D modeling, the texture mapping and material process needed to complete the object as a realistic view.

Texture mapping is a process in which textures in real world was applied on 3D object surfaces to enable it to look as realistic as in the actual environment. This texture channel in Quest3D is able to load an image from others format and use it as texture channel group (Figure 5.10).

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Figure 5.10: The Texture Process

5.5.4.4 Optional Database Conversion

3D objects that were exported in 3DS file format will be imported in Quest3D. Imported objects will then be displayed in the channel graph as shown in Figure 5.11 as a tree channel with parents above, followed by children.

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Figure 5.11: Channel Graph

5.5.4.5 Virtual Environment Authoring

The first thing to develop is the user interface using head-up display camera. Heads-up displays are elements of the graphical user interface in personal computing systems. They allow for the transmission of information concerning the current task in a running desktop application in a separate window that is designed so as to not to distract from the current task.

The second part is user control because virtual environment must be controlled by its user or else the view will be static. For SiPadi virtual environment users can use the mouse and keyboard.

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The scoring technique is proceed directly when a user makes the choice from user interface for the next scene condition and looped until all of the stages are finished. The 3D environments are prepared for some conditions, but the environment that will be displayed is the one that the user chooses. For each stage, two virtual environments are prepared.

In authoring, there are several simulations and animations involved. The programming script, involve controlling user scores. Several animations were developed in 3D max, for example, a farmer engaged in farming such as weeding, paddy planting and spraying fertilizer. Some animations like burning straw and water condition was done in Quest 3D.

After the development system was completed, this virtual environment needs to be tested for its performance, optimization and user interface.