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.
There is still a lot to do, but I have the basic colors down. I also realized I'm missing an appendage. Woops!
I decided I'm just going to be an artist and not give it the fins it rightfully deserves.
I don't know how to do the eye and I'm taking suggestions for what to put on the plaque.
That is looking great. Maybe a critique is to play with the chain link size a little? I'm thinking almost 150% size increase may be in order? Just thinking out loud.
Stylized look to the chains may look cool IMHO.
I'm thinking why stop with the mad scientist room from the water wheel? What if there is a rope pully that goes under or above the house inside the ceiling or similar and Melvin uses mechanisms all over the home?
I'm thinking Wallace and Gromit style
Just now I was trying to fix the chain and I must have hit a keystroke that applied some weird shading to one of the chain links... I could not go back far enough in my undos. Anyone know how I can toggle this back to normal shading?
@createtaiwan
That is one of the craziest things I have ever seen and I have absolutely no idea what is causing it.
I do know how to fix it (maybe not the best way, but it works):
Delete the culprit. Select an Edge on another link and create a Custom Transformation with it by clicking on the +
select the whole link with L, SHIFT+D, Y to move it into place:
Found it!
You have Custom Split Normals on that one chain. Simply remove them here:
Wow. Yep. I figured it happened when I was selecting linked items. I think I thought using the ALT key would let me select linked items in a row or something. Thanks for finding this!
I made the fix... I think I solved the streaking issue. I tried removing any stray vertices and edges, then flipped some of my normals that were inside out. I don't see any of the streaks in the master file, so I guess it's okay?
It looks great Dough. I'm still a bit scared of texture painting. It feels like you have to know how to draw.
For the eyes Kent has a livestream where he taught how to do them procedurally. You can watch that.
Or maybe you can leave the fish with no eye and the plaque will read "How do you call a fish with no eye..... a Fsh"
So I googled "Spice Vendor" since I didn't really know what it was. Now I know what it is, it's like the tasty powders you put on food. So the theme of the concept art it's clearer in my mind, also now I see to the left there's like a small stall with some spices. If you only see it from the outside you'd think man this merchant really needs to up their spice game, but wait till the camera gets inside, that stall is just like the quick access delivery option.
Yes, everything is ok now. Thanks Dave.
And thanks Spikey. If Kent is Aragorn, then Spikey would be like the wise Gandalf that's always full of knowledge.
I found this online. I didn't know Melvin had some merry friends with him. Except for the blue last one, he looks one bully away from becoming the dude who used to be the protagonist friend. Look, 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. That dude is destined to turn to the darkside.
Maybe he 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.
Those are all counterparts from the MelvinVerse Omar.
The bottom left one works in Monsters Inc. and is a 2-eyed cousin to Mike Wazousky.
I made some test layout of the space in the kitchen with the stairs added. The stair is very wide because Melvin. I'm not entirely sure if it works, I think maybe there should be space for the spice stands. I'm not sure. Maybe tables and chairs shouldn't be there or maybe the stairs should be one of those spirals one so it doesn't take too much space.
I like those stairs Omar. But I am having these crazy ideas that what if Melvin uses elevator platforms that are operated by the windmill mechanisms? A platform would take up less space and look more in line when Melvin has his mouth full of Jars/barrels not trying to fumble up the steps.
Something along these lines, except I am thinking ropes would be better for the hoisting of the elevator/platform.
