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.
And here it is with some rough sculpting on the candle added.
I think might re-mesh the owl and base together to make one object, and keep the candle separate. Unless anyone else has better ideas?
— 2 Jun 2021, 10:55pm AEST
duerer No I haven't seen Kent livestream, but I will check out thank you.
7 June 2021, 11:36pm AEST
After much frustration here is my low poly mesh for baking down the owl sculpt.
It's hardly perfect, but it is better than any of my previous attempts.
Edit: The low poly contains 584 Triangles, for those who are interested.
Cool. Funny story about that owl candle, the spice vendor wacked a would be spice thief in the head with it, saving a whole year worth production. The owl used to appear happy and mustache-less, but the impact reconfigured the head, of both the owl and the thief.
🤣 Well that's certainly one way to explain it.
As frustrating as it can often be, I find laying out UVs rather enjoyable.
Like a Sudoku puzzle, but without the numbers.
8 June 2021, 2:44pm AEST
Okay, so yes I have re-laid the UVs and I am almost certainly going to have to do it a 3rd time.
My question is: do I UV the candle separate to the candlestick, or to I place them both on the same UV layout (and corresponding texture map)? dostovel duerer blanchsb splat21
The candle and stick are separate meshes, I'm just wondering what is the more preferable path/method.
Also, is 1048 the right texture/normal/colour map size I should be looking at?
Thanks.
Place them both on the same UV space and use just one texture for both items, that way you save up on resources.
It is better if you do a 2K even 4K texture for it, so you have enough resolution for if you want to show your asset separately in close ups and stuff. Then for the actual interior house scene you can down-res and create a 1080x1080 out of one of those high res, so we save up on memory.
Thank you Omar.
Also, is there any specific Interior naming convention to differentiate the Interior texture files from the Exterior files?
Currently my file is just named WIP_acc_owl-candlestick_(etc...), but I would like to know what to name my texture files before I actually start making them.
Hooray! We have lift off! 🚀
Now all that's left is to create a Color Map and possible tweak the material/s a bit and then it should be done.
9 June 2021, 2:20pm AEST
Colour Map complete! (Bar some green rust marks in certain crevices and such)
But I definitely need to make 2 versions of the current Shader Material so I can dial in the look of the candle better, without affecting the candlestick.
— 9 June 2021, 10:24pm AEST.
Well I think I'm finished. (Rendered in EEVEE, with Filmic Color Space)
I'll optimise the file for upload to the Google Drive tomorrow.
— 9 June 2021, 11:35pm AEST
I think that if I try to adjust this any more I might just go crazy. If I'm not already.
— 10 June 2021, 12:55pm AEST
Good job Vincent, it turned out great. First asset to be completed for the interior. 🤟🏼