Y3 Week 4: Tea Import
Another project done and dusted and we set course onto the next one. This time I am creating a stylised environment. The brief asks us to design and create a stylised shop front, as well as part of the interior.
To start off this project I struggled once again to come up with an idea. I created a list of different genres/themes and a list of different types of shops and tried to randomly pick some combinations, however after picking a few and no ideas jumping straight into my head I sat and thought for a bit. Talking to some people later on, the idea to create a simple teapot developed into creating a teapot shaped tea-shop. I then decided to use my previously randomly picked theme 'Oriental' and the idea was there. I then made up a blockout using some reference (which can be found here and here) and put it into photoshop to create a bit of a paintover/photobash to visualise my idea. Here is the result of that:
As you can see I originally started out with a slightly different design for the roof and I spent a bit of time painting in some detail into it, however as I went on with creating the actual model I soon realised that it didn't look as good as I wanted it to be, so I changed it by simply photobashing on a different roof. It suited the shop much better and the overall silhouette was more interesting.
So, after creating the concept I went straight into modelling. The hardest part was the roof, as I just mentioned. I also thought a lot about the underside of the roof. The buddhist temple roof that I am using as an example has a very interesting shape and I was wondering how it was actually being held up. I did a bit more research to find out and created a quick moodboard:
It was surprisingly hard to find pictures of the underside of these temple roofs, but I had enough reference to create the roof in the end. For the base of the shop I created a teapot from scratch, rather than using the teapot object within 3ds max, simply since this allowed me to have more control over my topology/shape and also easily allowed me to create the inside walls of the shop.
After the main body and the roof was done I started creating some smaller assets to accompany my design. These included the chinese lantern, as well as some interior assets, like a fridge, table and a cupboard. For that I used another moodboard that I created quickly.
This is the stage I am at right now. Next week I plan on creating a model of a tea machine (similar to the one from my moodboard) as well as some outside assets, like a table and chairs. Finally I will create a proper ground plane and then go on to unwrap the whole thing and start texturing. I want to get the model and textures done as soon as possible, since I plan on spending some time working with unreal for this project to include some more technical stretch goals. More about that at a later date!
