COLLAB2021 - Los Habaneros - House Interior Team

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....


The Official/Unofficial Story


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. 

What to do?

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. 

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    It's turning out great. 

    I must really get used to not using all quads

    That has been too painful for me. First time I've done low poly and this is too heavy on the soul man, I need my fix of subsurf. I think though that low poly really shines when you do the lighting, shading and add more details through normal maps. Since right now I've only been focused on modeling, seeing low poly doesn't look as sexy as subdiving and smooth. It's great stylistically, but when you're used to high poly modeling it can be tough to adapt. I'm tempted to sink a lot of time on just one asset and do the whole pipeline, but then there are going to be too few assets to populate the scene and I'm thinking maybe it's better to develop the layout first. 

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied

    working onto some closeth (for placing television or decoration etc 

    is bevel allowed like this is should i get rid of it to keep it more low poly

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    Yeah I think Bevel modifier or beveling in general is allowed for it to count as low poly.

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    I was in my mother's house and I took a bunch of pictures for reference that might be useful. I put them in the reference folder in images.

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied

    awesome :) gonna try some extra this week :D

  • Wayne Dixon replied

    I think I'm a couple days late, but yes, I love bones.

    I haven't played around with geo nodes yet, but boy it's going to get exciting if rigging gets nodes.

    As for the cuckoo  clock mechanism....rigging it would be fun. There would a few different ways to rig it, but yes you would require a few more bones to rig it old school.


    Even if I rigged this with geo nodes, I would use an armature though.  You can hook up that animated value on you node to a bone control and make it part of the rig.  I'm assuming that the doors are going to open, yeah?

    All the moving parts should be connected to that one armature.  Otherwise you will need to animate the doors and the cuckoo as separate animations.

    I connect things to armatures all the time in production, like material colour, or even normal vectors for background elements.

    That way they can be animated by the animator  (or the lighting department is some cases haha)

  • adrian replied

    Jacques de Molay, aka Omar, aka dostovel, As the leader of this group of fearless secret warriors, I would like to join you and your order of knights on your quest to seek the truth of the interior of the spice vendors house. Are you able to grant me access to the realm of the Google Drive file as I have tried the magic link provided at the start of this thread and my efforts failed..... I fear that I may not be worthy for this quest.

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    I be but a humble followerth, @theluthier Kent be thy oneth and onlyth true king, he can grant thee access. I will put in a good word for you as long as you have silver to put in my pocketth.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    Me watching my email for Adrian's request access message: 

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied

    dostovel i fixed the origin (ill repost the blender file this week when i finish my new piece)
    Does anyone know what is causing this problem ?

    i checked all verticies and cant find any double one or a strange one that is causing this. i even deteted verticies and extruded once more but its still strange at both sides :'(

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    Adrian working on his email.

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    That looks like you have triangles in there. Maybe you can just select that face that is divided into 4 triangles and just hit F to fill it as a face. But if you want you can upload your file to the google drive folder and I can take a look.

  • Keith (beefkeef) replied

     Nice pictures dostovel! It would totally make sense to have different plants about the place, I mean a spice vendor would be growing lot's of fruits for grinding right?


  • adrian replied

    This is what I get when I click the link

  • adrian replied

    Ok got it ,  let me in....


    for some reason I was getting a strange web address on clicking

    copy and paste is the way to go.

  • adrian replied

    I solved the riddle of the Google Drive, onwards to the quest.

  • adrian replied

    And some Peiro bones for some potions.

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied

    i just uploaded the file (its in the blender file with closeth name in it. still looking to merge the mesh to my main file but i am struggling with it xD) 

    i hope to get it to work normal since i want to bevel with 4 or 6 cuts. so if i inrease the amount, it gets a bigger mess .

    really wonder what is causing this.

    meanwhile ill try to continue some glasses , mug's , teacups , spoons , pan ( for cooking stuff)...

  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    Very well Adrian, you've solved the magic riddle, now you are worthy.


  • Omar Domenech(dostovel) replied

    No Yukino, you don't need two files, it's not a file per asset, otherwise we would have too many files. Just have your assets in your House_Assets_Yukino_Hatake.blend, have them inside individual collections and we just link however many collections from your one file. Get it?