Welcome! Welcome!
This here be Los Habanero House. Put on your sorting hat and be assigned to your seat.
Our Mission, should you choose to have any choice since you have already accepted it, is to make the interior of the Spice Vendor House.
It's a passion thing, for us who want to keep making cool stuff and get this project to the next level and get your skills to the next next next level or continue perfecting your skills if they already are in the next next level. We are just a bunch of guys and gals wanting to see those doors open and reveal an interior that feels like someone really lives in it.
So the official story is grounded in reality. The Spice Vendor goes out on adventures and comes back with rare spices which he prepares in his house. It is set in the real world. Yet we in the forums continuously joked around and kept making a ridiculous background story which people grew attached to. Sadly that story is not the focus of the Spice Vendor project.
But that doesn't mean we have to discard them, our crazy talks can appear on the house as easter eggs. For example statues or lamps on a counter can take the form of some of the things we've been creating through conversation. So it all goes as follows....
Melvin lives in this house or at least the house is his responsibility.
It's not his house, he has no money to own such a big place and money and ownership is for earthly people anyways. The house is the spice vendor's house, things inside are made for regular people, plus you look at Melvin and he looks more like he likes living in a cave.
The name of the busyness is Vadimspice Merchantile Homestead “Delights in Spice”
He is to the spice vendor what Alfred is to Bruce Wayne, a loyal faithful helper that very much likes to keep things tidy up. He is a master of spices and keeps the property functioning to its fullest potential, makes all sorts of arrangements, knows all and has immense talents in spices and its mixtures, everyone in town knows him and likes him, the owner of the house trusts him very much, he travels a lot so Melvin is the primary caretaker of the property.
Legend has it that the spice vendor ordered a package on Amazon and when it arrived they charged him a fortune in shipping weight, and he was like what is this heavy box? this isn't what I ordered, and when he opened it Melvin was inside and that's how he came to live in the house. How did he ended up in there? no one knows.
We kinda know where he comes from since somewhere in the house there is secret entrance that goes to his world, you exit the same house but in a different place for sure..
Turns out Melvin is secretly is a Wizard, with his wizard robes and everything, when he feels like wearing them. Kinda of like Batman, when its called for.
In his world he can grow the most exotics of spices, that is where he gets them and baffles his spice vendor master.
Melvin has a pet whale is his world...
The whale lives free and swims up river to the house when called for. Its name is Willem Alfred Whalfred DaWhale. Melvin sets up all his bags on the back and off they go, traveling to all towns, trading in spice. The whale may or may not have her own room in the spice vendor's house.
In the woods not far from the house there lives an owl.
The owl rolls around in an unicycle and carries a cement umbrella. He rides the unicycle because he can't fly and he doesn't realize he can't fly because the cement umbrella is too heavy. The cement umbrella was given to him by someone very dear to him and he doesn't want to let it go not even for a second. Plus he doesn't understand the physics of mass and gravity and you know he gets confuse, it happens to the best of us. He tries to fly but he can't do it anymore, "what in the world is happening?" he thinks to himself. His past is hindering his future.
So Melvin has a life here, he likes it. Though his noble heart sometimes gets him in trouble.
Melvin has a record for "Illegal Potions and Spells Lab Underground Operation".
But it was not his fault, he was tricked by No Mouth, All Action Red Nelb.
Melvin had no idea Red Nelb wasn't just ordering potions for his dying grandmother, Melvin thought he was saving a life, Mr. Nelb here was re-selling them and making a huge profit, cornering the market and Nelb blamed it all on poor Melvin. And now Melvin is trying to put his life back together, using his potions for the betterment of all creatures. But since people have two grandma's, Nelb tricked using his other grandma as an excuse and Melvin fell for it again. Luckily people don't have more than two grandma's.
But that is not the only life challenge.
Melvin has a bunch of merry friends, they are all good, each with their own personalities, except for the blue last one, he is totally a bully. Every protagonist has an antagonist, he even has the W, like Mario and Wario, Melvin and Welvin. More there of, blue is even the opposite of orange in the color wheel, destined to turn to the darkside.
Welvin liked to put some magical extra something something on the spices and got in trouble. Melvin was like "We are not that kind of store Welvin! No Mouth, All Action Red Nelb tricked me with his grandma, twice!" A fight like in the tower with Gandalf and Saruman broke between them on the third floor of the house. It was not pretty.
Just what we already have been doing on the collab. It's the chance to make your own stuff with the skills we already learned. For now we don't have a direction of how the interior is going to be. Kent is working with Vadim to give is a north to follow. We'll wait for that but in the mean time we can start working on generic things that will be in a house no matter what. Pick an asset and say you want to do it and have a go at it.
I call dibs on this one. I'm interested in the normal maps practice that is going to be making this as low poly and detailed as it can be. I'll get on it right away.
Damn, sorry guys, we must all be thinking about the same things! 😃 "great minds think alike" don't they say?
Hey Omar please go ahead and model that one you like - I'd love to see what you do with it!
And to be honest, I'd only done a very quick block out of that stove last night after I was looking at some kettles!
Blueprints.
We need a secret door to the secret "science" lab.
EDIT: Corrected
I am making some progress! Any suggestions on making chains? Would I use the Array modifier?
Usually an Array and Curve combination, but in this case with those simple straight chains, just an Array with Object Offset like:
Looking great!
If you move the whole thing down in Edit Mode, so that the top is at the World Origin, then it will be easier to hang from the ceiling when linked in.
I think that on the first floor, where you put the entrance and lounge, there must be a spice store. And a lounge is not necessary. The kitchen is enough by itself. I don't see how a couple of sofas and a TV fit in the decoration we are doing. XD
On the third floor a library would be better. On the second floor on the left the bedroom. And the secret trap door from the kitchen or from the mill mechanism.
Dangs its you're right Lady Mito, this is a Spice Vendor House / Store and the owner is a Melvin with a magical robe. Let me fix the blueprints and start blocking out the interior with fundamental shapes of where things should be.
Looking great. There's a tutorial exactly about this.
https://cgcookie.com/tutorial/creating-procedural-chain-links-in-blender
Could we make the third floor on the right a pet's room? Maybe this guy's room? He climbs up there, his entrance is on the back which can't be seen in the concept art. It's like an all CG Cookie theme this is.
I just learned that Melvin's tone of orange is called Merigold.
So you know, like Wizard Melvin Merigold, The Spice Vendor's pet. Melvin's own Shadowfax.
Melvin Ochrehame, from the Woodland Real, The Ochre Rider, The Merigold Pilgrim and his faithful creature.
Cool! These plans really help to visualise the layout. I suppose the waterwheel mechanism could stretch in to multiple floors if we wanted - I guess it depends how complex it should be.
Here's a couple of kettles so Melvin can at least have a brew when he moves in!
I'm guessing all the crazy ideas will settle into yes's or no's the day of the stream by Kent. Because you know, if you let us just riff this house would already have turbines that lift it off the ground.
Very nice Keith. You can tell by the distortion of the lens that it's to scale.
Melvin is going to open soon enough.
I think we might need to start planning a layout. Things are beginning to take shape to keep it blindly.
@createtaiwan I don't know why put the chandelier has some weird streaks coming out of it. Maybe splines left unhidden or something like that. Also maybe it could be bigger, feels a bit small in comparison to the whole room.
I will look into the streak issue today (and make it about 180% bigger).
