This resource is the complete project directory for the Collab2021 "Spice Vendor's House" environment! Based on the art of Vadim Zaitsev, it was created by the CG Cookie Community in a little less than a year. We aimed to build a comprehensive chunk of this stylized, fantasy world which includes over 200+ models and 600+ textures.

Our hope is that you will enjoy taking a virtual walk through this world and possible create something unique with it. Use it to stage an animation, add your own assets of similar style for practice, or work the scene into different season. Omar Domenech has shown us how it can be lit for a spooky night time vibe:

License

These source files and/or any other included material, unless otherwise stated, is meant for personal and educational use only. You may not distribute or use these files for commercial use without prior permission.

Any questions please contact us at [email protected]

Documentation

Unzipping

These downloads aren't your average .zip archives. They're "split archives" as denoted by their .zip.XXX extension. Split archives are ideal for preserving the unzipped file structure which is crucial for large blender projects like this where .blends depend on specific file paths and file names relative to itself. When unzipped correctly you should experience zero broken links when opening these .blends!

To successfully unzip these split archives ALL .zip.XXX's need to be fully downloaded and in the same directory. To ensure your downloads are in fact fully downloaded:

• SPICE-VENDORS-HOUSE.zip.001 should be 1 GB
• SPICE-VENDORS-HOUSE.zip.002 should be 1 GB
• SPICE-VENDORS-HOUSE.zip.003 should be 1 GB
• SPICE-VENDORS-HOUSE.zip.004 should be 280 MB

Once you have all zips downloaded at their full size and they're in the same directory, we recommend using 7zip to unzip them properly on Windows / Linux or Keka on Mac OS.

Directories

The project's folder and file names are important to maintain (leave alone) in order for the assembly .blend file to load properly. Here's an overview of the most important folders.

•  📁 SPICE-VENDOR-HOUSE: The root directory of the project. It contains the ASSETS and TEXTURES folders along with a license document.
  
  
  •  📁 ASSETS: Contains MODELS folder and the assembly .blend file. This is the primary file you want to open with Blender.
    •  📁 MODELS: Contains all the individual model .blends that the assembly sources. If you want to edit any models, these are the files to do so. They can't be edited from the assembly.
      
      
  •  📁 TEXTURES: This folder contains all textures files. If you want to edit any textures this is where to find them. But good luck, because the naming conventions are a mess.

Notes about the Assembly

Enable / Disable Collections wisely

The spice-venders-house_ASSEMBLY.blend file is organized pretty thoroughly and intuitively into Collections.

These  collections are great for enabling and disabling parts of the scene for faster navigation or optimized rendering (like disabling exterior nature when rendering inside and vice versa). By default the interior collection is disabled for this reason.

Though the assembly is quite fast in solid viewport shading, things can get very slow when viewport rendering with Eevee. I do not recommend enabling all collections at the same time.

Animation

All animation is intact however the scene slows to a painful crawl if you try and playback in the viewport, especially the more animated objects visible. I recommend avoiding animation playback in the viewport except when fewer collections are visible.

For example, the mill mechanism should playback in realtime if only the INTERIOR and MILLHOUSE collections are visible.

Start & End Clip

The start and end clip values can significantly effect rendering components with Eevee. They need to be within a proper range to avoid artifacts in shadows and alpha textures. The clouds especially show black artifacts if the start and end clip aren't set properly. The defaults should work well for exterior viewing/rendering:

View Properties (N panel) > View

• Clip Start: 1
• Clip End: 2000

For interior shots you may need to reduce the start value to 0.1 depending on how close your camera is to interior objects. Also if you disable the NATURE and ACCESSORIES collections you can reduce the end clip value.

NOTE: These values are relevant for both viewport and camera.

Best Interior Viewing / Rendering

Bloom is enabled for the scene which gives a nice soft glow to the Sun. However if you're viewing or rendering interior angles, I recommend you adjust the world intensity so the windows blow out a bit. To do this:

1.  Open the MASTER_SPICE-WORLD_adrian2301.blend file in the MODELS folder.
2.  It should load with the shader editor open and one of 2 background nodes selected (the bottom one). The second background node controls how bright the world is IN CAMERA.
3.  Set this strength  to 10 as a good starting place for adequate interior window bloom. Of course you can tweak to taste.
4. Save the file and reload the assembly to  see the changes.

More about this Project

For more about Collab2021 check out this blog article. You can also watch all recorded livestreams pertaining to the project: