We'll spend the first three weeks of this course working with QuicktimeVRŞ, a technology that (among other things) produces continuous panoramas from a series of photos. You'll learn how to shoot photographs for panoramas, how to process the images with QuicktimeVR Authoring Studio, and how to link hot spots in your panorama to Web pages. We'll handle this work in three steps:

Step 1 (due September 12):

• Identify a location that can serve as a spatial index of your character, personality,or identity. This might be your livingroom, kitchen, basement, garage; or maybe it's a tavern, church, art gallery, or shopping mall. The space you choose should have many (10-15) clearly identifiable objects, or areas where such objects can be inserted. Try not to go for the obvious choices, and let's avoid the bedroom. Outdoor locations may serve as well as indoor. Very small spaces won't work (e.g., closets, cars); likewise large spaces full of moving people also pose problems (e.g., BWI, Penn Station). You'll need relatively undisturbed access to your location for 30-45 minutes to do the photography.

• Begin to plan a document base or set of Web pages that could be linked to items in your panorama. The least interesting solution here is the traditional home site (my interests, my friends, my résumé, my cats); try to come up with something that goes beyond the ordinary or the merely personal. The document base must consist of more than 10 HTML pages, so try to find content that can be appropriately scaled.

• Start organizing equipment and people. You may work alone or in pairs, so find a partner now if you wish. You'll need some kind of camera, either traditional or digital. You can use any camera with a tripod mount, though nothing beats a good 35mm SLR. You'll also need a tripod. Communications Design has several for student use; sign up early if you need one. You'll also need a Zip disk with about 15 MB free space for file storage.

• For class on September 12, write a 1-2 page summary of your project. Make enough copies for the entire class (18). Be prepared to discuss it with the group.

Step 2 (due September 19):

• Shoot a series of fixed focus images of your chosen location, rotating through 360 degrees (I recommend 10 shots at 36-degree intervals).

• Scan your photos (if you didn't use a digital camera) and save them as JPEG. (Every machine in the Graphics Lab now has a scanner.)

• Using QTVR Authoring Studio in the Graphics Lab, stitch your photos into a panorama.

• Begin working on your document base.

Step 3 (due September 26):

• Finish your document base (10 or more Web pages).
• Using Photoshop or some other image-processing tool, modify the PICT version of your panorama as necessary (i.e., to insert link cues).
• Using QTVR Authoring Studio, create links from your panorama to pages in your document base.