Virtual World Design

Learn How to Create Immersive Virtual Environments

Written by an award-winning designer with 20 years of experience designing virtual environments for television and online communities, Virtual World Design explores the intertwining disciplines of 2D graphics, 3D models, lighting, sound, and storytelling. It illustrates how these disciplines come together by design in the creation of an accessible virtual environment for teaching, research, and entertainment. The book gives anyone the tools and techniques to design virtual environments that support their message and are accessible by all.

With 200 illustrations and 12 step-by-step projects, the book delivers hours of creative challenges for people working in public virtual worlds or on private grids. Using the modular components available for download on the author’s website, readers learn by building such things as a virtual classroom, an “all-access” terrain, and a sound-based game.

This book can be the foundation for class work in distance learning, simulation, and other learning technologies that use virtual environments. It shows both novices and advanced users how 3D composition, color, lighting, and sound design are used in the creation of an immersive virtual environment.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtual Worlds and Designing for Them
Chapter 2: How to Use This Book and Start Doing Virtual World Design
Chapter 3: “Build It Once” : Optimizing Your Design Workflow
Chapter 4: Concepts in 3D Design for Virtual Environments
Chapter 5: Virtual Terrain and Designing Landscapes
Chapter 6: 3D Modeling, 2D Graphics, and Data Visualization
Chapter 7: Color, Particles, and Sensory Spaces
Chapter 8: Lighting in Virtual Environments : Second Life and OpenSim
Chapter 9: Cameras and Collaborative Spaces (the Ideagora)
Chapter 10: Virtual Goods and Design for Virtual Shopping Environments
Chapter 11: Sound Design for Virtual Spaces
Chapter 12: Avatars and Nonplayer Characters
Chapter 13: Prototyping the Real World in a Virtual Environment
Chapter 14: Scripting Basics for the Designer
Chapter 15: HUDs in Virtual Environments
Chapter 16: Machinima in Virtual Worlds
Chapter 17: The Future, Design, and Virtual Worlds