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.
Perfect you guys. I will have to watch those cuz I don't remember how we set all that stuff up in the DOG project.
Yeah Yukino, since we don't have much of a preproduction design, we're going to have to go by our instincts as to a global feel of the interior scene.
I imagine we produce as much sorts of assets as we can, so we can later play with them and put together a comfy house. Much as you do with Lego's toys or The Sims game were you have at your disposal a large variety stuff and you place them to your hearts content.
That is looking good already Lady Mito. Remember though, I think @theluthier wants us to go low poly for this project. We'll have to clear it with him but I imagine no Subdivision Surface Modifier for this project.
I can totally see Melvin doing "science" experiments. Plus having in your house a whale who's captain of a boat in a small river is not cheap, Melvin needs the extra dough.
Man I hope we can pull all of this off, having all this assets will enrich everything to a very high level. I'd love to see a pet owl, the whale needs someone to talk to.
I imagine the house model will have to be a reality in 3D before we can know for sure, but it's a start.
Ok I'm all set with the Google Drive and syncing is A-ok.
First is the general folders, the DOG and the House:
You go into SPICE VENDORS there's 3 folders.
In SCENES folder there's the .blend where all the linking will take place and our Work In Progress (WIP).
In IMAGES there's folders with references and images for scales of real life objects measurements.
In TEXTURES is were our textures will go.
If you go into IMAGES:
In REF is where our image references live.
SCENES folder.
MODELS is the folder where we'll put all our stuff. Naming convention is House_Assets_[ your CG Cookie name].blend
In the file, in the outliner, there are collection with the assets so they can be linked into the main file:
so if i work on a part of a interior (example : chair) ill name it Chair_House_Assets _Yukino_Hatake.blend? and put it in the folder models?
and then if its completed we get the object into youre File called House_Assets_OMAR_DOSTOVE.blend ? (one big file with all finished models ?
or do i get it wrong ?
would be great. And Melvin is damn cute , and since its Melvin perhaps we can also have sheeps then ?
Yeah no, that's not it. Ok here's how it is:
You have your blend file "HOUSE_ASSETS_YUKINO.blend" (which will live in SPICE-VENDORS-HOUSE -> SCENES -> MODELS -> WIP -> "HOUSE_ASSETS_YUKINO.blend") This will contain all the assets you work on in collections. Say you model a table, you put your table in your Table Collection, you make a bed you put it in your Bed Collection, you make a plate you put it in your Plate Collection and so on and so forth.
When Kent is in the main .blend, which is this one:
He will pull assets into this .blend from all our .blends. Hence the name ASSEMBLY.
So for example Kent needs a bed, he will link one from "HOUSE_ASSETS_YUKINO.blend", he'll browse through all your collections and get your bed because you made a cool bed or say he wants a table, he will link one from "HOUSE_ASSETS_DOSTOVEL.blend". because I made a cool table that will now be on the main house. He'll just go into all our .blends and start linking stuff to assemble the house interior.
It would be better if we try and avoid repeating too much stuff so there aren't way too much beds and tables.
Hmmmm.....it will change a lot. In my mind, Melvin doesn't live in a complex house with fine antique furnishings; he's a 9-5 working-monster doing what working-monsters do, and his preferred home style is much more utilitarian.
Got it , it sometimes takes some time before i understand everything clearly. but not it makes sense.
One more question. i sometimes model in wrong ways or clumsy ways so this will be a good way to learn even more.
As for my chair i trying the most basic and simple one but wonder if the setup is good or wrong (especially how i know i have a good size (height) and at the top where the part where you lay onto with youre back (the 3 vertical need to be connected to the one horizontal wooden piece.
I am wondering before i go further if the setup i used now is good or bad ?
i stored it in the folder :)
jakeblended what kind of style is utilitarian ?
sorry for my bad english ^^'
You uploaded your .blend1 backup file, try having your normal .blend in the folder. Also in Edit -> Preferences, under Save & Load, I put "Save Version" to zero (0), so we don't have the .blend1 and .blend2 cluttering up everything.
Also you forgot to pack in the texture, at least it was like that in the .blend1. But I don't know if that was what you were going for.
In the IMAGES folder there's an OBJECTS MEASUREMENTS folder. There you'll find some images with real objects dimension that should guide us for working with good scale. I imagine with time that folder will grow.
I hope it's starting to look like something that belongs in that house.
Very simple and fit for purpose, but not fancy.
I always envisioned Melvin's house being very Flintstones-like, with Stone furniture and appliances, haha.
gonna make the changes, as for the dimensions of cm i guess it still can varry slightly but not extremely then ?
ill check out again how to see those sizes so i dont end up with a chair of 10 meters xD (otherwise the scene could be called Melvin in wonderland )
for packing a texture how i do that ? still have trouble with that :s
Thanks 
spikeyxxx that's a nice way to add alot of variation very quickly to the scene.