This section outlines the various things that were accomplished at each of the six Shad campuses using the Silicon Graphics machines and Alias software provided by this project.
Reports have not yet been received from all campuses.
Alice Cassidy received the Indy machine and Alias Studio software at Shad Valley UBC.
Tom Keenan was in charge of the SGI hardware and Alias software at Shad Valley Calgary.
For the first two weeks of the program, the equipment was made available on a drop-in basis in the residence computer room for interested Shads to use whenever they had time available. Later the machine was moved to the Faculty of Environmental Design. There, the Alias software was installed, and Alan Hawrylyshen used the system in seminar on computer animation.
The equipment also played a peripheral role in a seminar and project in urban planning. Alias Studio was also used to render a title image for the Shad Valley Calgary home page.
With Doug MacLeod's help, the system was set up and Alias was installed, but Tom Keenan reports that they "could have done more if [they] had the Alias software earlier and if [they] had technical help".
Juan Salinas received the copy of Alias Studio and the SGI Indy at Shad Valley Carleton.
Dean Kriellaars was in charge of the Indy machine and Alias software at the University of Manitoba.
Martin Brouillette was responsible for the Indy at Shad Valley Sherbrooke. During the program, Alias Studio was used on the Indy in two computer animation workshops, each lasting three afternoons and involving five Shad Valley students. Staff supervised as students took each other through the tutorials included with the software package, and then let their imaginations take flight on their own projects. Students took extra time to finish their projects during creative hours.
The final results were displayed on Open Day, together with demonstrations of the Indy's audio and video capabilities. Some animation and still images will soon be available on Shad Valley Sherbrooke WWW site.
According to Martin, the demand "was very strong for these workshops".
Paul McKone received the equipment at Waterloo, set it up, and installed the Alias software.
Bernie Roehl enthusiastically agreed to give a workshop at Shad on virtual reality, his main field of interest. For two weeks he led Shads through worlds of the imagination, exploring ways to describe, create, and render images of three-dimensional scenes for a variety of applications.
Using the Silicon Graphics Indy, students were able to explore not only documents but worlds on the Internet during Bernie's seminar using Webspace, a Silicon Graphics World-Wide Web browser that renders scenes in Virtual Reality Modelling Language.
Ka-Ping Yee visited for several sessions to demonstrate the Alias Studio software on the Indy, while explaining some of the concepts involved in surface representation, curvature, continuity, textures, and lighting. Together, the seminar participants modelled and rendered some scenes from their imaginations.
Later, a few Shads worked on a fully-rendered animation of flying text for an Open Day demonstration. After modellling for a day and leaving the Indy to render overnight, they produced an impressive movie of a flyby around the words "Shad Valley Waterloo 95" using a variety of reflective textures, light properties, and special effects.