This first venture I co-developed with Cinemar Corporation was technically challenging for the time. Our concept was to create and render a complete 3d virtual environment, to use as an interactive CDROM presentation tool. Like the hit game Myst, we were limited to 640x480 resolution, and rendered scenes that were logically navigable by clicking to the left, right, forward and back.
The environment was populated with 'media slots', such as wall posters, television screens, podium and presentation screens, kiosk screens, signage, and other methods of displaying content within the paradigm of a seminar building. Our programmers created an interface by which a customer who purchased the CD, could populate the environment with their own content and media files, including some seamless matting of 15fps 320x240 video, usually to add live people into the experience. The program would then generate an interactive version using the custom content.
I directed the project, working with artist Mike Virosteck using Specular Infini-D to model and render with. Given that we only had 80MHz processors, some scenes actually took hours to render. We taped the rest of our team in various positions and clothing, hand-masked them from video captures and retouched them and some plants into the scene afterwards, to assist with realism.
We rolled out Presentation World with a default set of content. The first customer to populate the environment with real material was Stephen Covey, a well-known motivational author.
