History

1.0 Introduction

web.alive is a revolutionary web based communication application that allows users to interact within a virtual environment – an environment which is not hard coded into web.alive, but rather defined by the owner of the web.alive server and displayed by web.alive. The creation of these environments, the objects and interactions within them (the content of web.alive) are the focus of this guide.

Definition: web.alive environment

A virtual place constructed using the web.alive editor. 
web.alive environments may look like a real world place or fantasy location.
Environments can be interactive (for example, contain buttons that perform
actions such as summoning an elevator).

Internally web.alive renders environments using an enhanced version of Epic’s Unreal Engine 2.5. The Unreal Engine is very popular with extensive documentation, videos, online communities, and published books.

To get you started with learning about the Unreal Engine you should check out the following resources:

Unreal wiki
3D Buzz
Unreal Developer Network
Unreal Technology
eat3D

This guide does not attempt to cover everything about the Unreal Engine, but rather gives you a brief overview with lots of references on where to get more information and then focuses in on the things that make web.alive special from a content creator’s perspective.

Definition: web.alive content

web.alive content consists of objects, textures, and entire environments – 
essentially data that drives the end user experience that is not built into web.alive.
web.alive content can be modified by customers and is automatically deployed to the end user.

1.1 Content Creation Pipeline

Creating content for web.alive follows a series of steps we call the content creation pipeline. In a large organization, each of these steps may be performed by specialists.

1.2 Concept Creation

Concept creation for a web.alive environment can use any tools and process desired. The objective is to define the layout, appearance, and behavior of the environment (the concepts). Brainstorming, hand sketching, and even quick rendering using tools like Google’s Sketchup are appropriate in this step.

An important output of the concept creation step is a list of assets that need to be created in the next step.

1.3 Asset Creation

Asset creation is where 3D objects and 2D materials are created. These are the raw materials that get used to build up a web.alive environment. Asset creation is also one of the most challenging aspects of developing content. Fortunately, it is also possible to find and re-use existing assets that others have created (there are tones of great 2D and 3D assets available on the web, many are free).

To find existing assets for web.alive we recommend that you start with one of the web.alive/unreal engine community sites listed here:

To create your own assets you will need to be familiar with industry standard 2D and 3D asset creation tools and techniques. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Computer_graphics

As web.alive is based on Epic’s Unreal Engine (version 2.5), you will also need to be aware of some additional details related to the web.alive’s extended version of the Unreal Editor and Unreal Runtime Engine.

This document will point out areas where you should leverage knowledge of Unreal and where there are specific differences with web.alive.

A few notes about packages:

web.alive stores collections of assets in a special binary file format called a package. This format is optimized for rapid loading of assets for client use, but also supports grouping assets for easy management and rapidly determining if two packages are the same so that web.alive can efficiently cache packages – even across servers.

By convention, separate packages are used for each type of asset (textures, meshes, etc.) and a different file extension is used for each type: .utx for textures, .usx for static meshes, .csm for maps and so on.

1.3.1 2D Material Creation

2D materials are the images that wrap and decorate 3D objects. The most common and easy to understand material is a texture. A texture is an image that is then displayed on a 3D object’s surfaces (“mapped” onto the 3D object). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping

Excellent tools for creating textures include:

  • Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Elements
  • Paint.NET
  • GIMP

Import and manage your textures in web.alive through the texture browser (accessed through the view menu or by clicking on the texture browser icon in the toolbar). Use the texture browser’s File->Import menu to bring in new textures. File->Open and File->Save are used to open and save entire packages of textures.

Some important notes about regular textures for the Unreal Engine and web.alive:

  • Materials/Textures must be a power of 2 in size along each dimension (e.g. 512x256 or 1024x1024 are valid sizes, but 200x200 is not)
  • Maximum material/texture size is 2048x2048
  • Textures are typically the largest resource consumers in an environment (both in terms of download size and memory consumption), so use the smallest textures possible
  • Compress textures using the various types of DXT compression whenever possible (DXT1 is 8:1 compression, but only 1 bit alpha; DXT3/5 are 4:1 with alpha). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Texture_Compression for more information.
  • Very large textures increase the size of your environment download dramatically. Consider using image insertions (described later in the document) if a large texture is required as these special textures can use .jpg compression and deferred downloading to improve performance.
You can find more information about texturing here:

2D materials can be more than just flat textures. Materials combine textures and various dynamic affects to produce results that can look like shiny metal, a spinning fan, or even flickering flames. The web.alive editor includes a special editor dialog that lets you assemble your material from various component parts: textures, shaders, modifiers, combiners, and blends.

You can find more information about materials here: http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/MaterialTutorial.html

1.3.2 3D Object Creation

3D objects can be created in the web.alive editor, however, they are typically created using more powerful 3D tools such as:

  • Autodesk 3DSMax
  • Autodesk Maya
  • Autodesk Softimage
  • Blender
  • Google Sketchup

Import and manage your 3D objects in web.alive using the static mesh browser (accessible from the view menu or by clicking on the static mesh browser icon in the toolbar). Use the texture browser’s File->Import menu to bring in new textures. File->Open and File->Save are used to open and save entire packages of static meshes.

web.alive can import 3D objects in special versions of the .ase and .iwo formats – so 3D objects in other formats will have to be converted (usually by loading into Maya or Max and exporting as .ase using the ActorX plugin).

You can download tools to export 3D assets to web.alive here: The process of creating a 3D object involves several steps:

1.4 Placement, Lighting, and Scripting

In the object placement, lighting, and scripting step you will need to use the web.alive editor.

The web.alive editor is an extension of the Unreal Editor shipped with Unreal Engine 2.5 (available to consumers with games such as Unreal Tournament 2004). In general, you will need to understand the unreal editor to use the web.alive editor. If you’re new to Unreal Editor two excellent links to learn from are:

  • 3D Buzz – UnrealEd Video Tutorials
  • Unreal Developer Network – UnrealEd Manual

web.alive adds several important capabilities to the unreal editor:

  • Support for dynamic & user controlled textures (image insertions, document insertions, movie insertions, and web textures)
  • New triggers that often eliminate the need for unreal script (e.g. look and use trigger, animation trigger, javascript trigger)
  • New types of volumes that control access and audio properties
  • Ability to import textures from modern file formats (.jpg, .png)
  • Project management and .wae files for importing and exporting environments

You can find out more about each of these capabilities later in this document.

1.5 Testing and Deployment

The final step in web.alive environment development is testing and deployment. You can test your environment standalone directly from the web.alive editor by pressing the “Play Map” button. In standalone mode you can walk through the environment and ensure that everything looks right, that there are no places where users get stuck, and that the basic interactive elements work.

This is very useful as a first pass; however, full testing should be done in conjunction with other users on a server. This will require you to export your environment as a .wae (web.alive environment) file and upload it to a server.