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Main room structure: the walls are Bryce cubes, with windows and arches either negative booleans
or built of carefully-aligned individual cubes. The trim is also cubes, although I kept meaning to go
back and use actual 'mitred' angles - you can see a few spots where the cubes don't match up exactly.
The floor is a simple Bryce-standard texture; the colour is about right, but one of these days, I should
replace it with a better hardwood pattern, you'll notice the grain is a little off-kilter. You can't
see the stairs up to the second floor very well in this series, but the main posts were lathe objects in
Carrara, and the banister is also an extruded Carrara shape.
Having said that, to the left is a 'detail' showing the stairs ascending to the second floor. It is
immediately obvious that I haven't modelled the kitchen yet (at the rear of the house) or the rear wall
itself. I have, however, created the ceiling's pot lights. And one of my small Chinese rugs is
in place in the hallway.
Notes on individual items:
Chairs: The couch 'base' was built in Carrara, with the individual cushions modelled in Amapi.
The texture for the couch fabric is a tweaked Bryce preset - to my delight, it looks fairly realistic,
very similar to its real-world counterpart. The armchair (seen in following images from other vantage
points) is just a modified version of the same shapes - it only took a few minutes' work to make the
chair after finishing the couch.
Pictures: Art imitates life imitates art... yes, I actually have large framed versions of 2 of
my favourite Bryce pieces (from the 'Vacation in Paradise' series) in my living room! The frames and
mattes are pretty accurate. There are still other framed pictures to recreate...
Shelving: The cheap shelves you see near the arch are pure Bryce - a bunch of cubes; reflecting
the cheap shelving I originally had for my DVD collection. I've since replaced those shelves with
only-slightly-more-upmarket versions as my collection grew, and I need to replace these models - and
build the DVD cases as well!
Coffee Tables: Built in Carrara, consisting of a large coffee table, 2 end tables, and a taller
side table in the adjoining Dining Room. They look pretty much like their real-world counterparts, but
are missing their usual burden of books, magazines etc - oh, and I mean to model a telephone set for
the one by the armchair!
"Knick-knacks" Lots of these yet to do! I have started with the simple geometric aquamarine blocks
I picked up on a Mexican vacation several years ago (on the coffee table).
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Front window: The view is a photo plane, I took a digital photo looking out the window, applied
it to a 2D plane, and aligned it appropriately to recreate the actual viewing angle. As for the frame
itself, the details were built in Carrara.
Chimney: Unfortunately, although the chimney shaft is a feature of the house, it doesn't open up
into a functioning fireplace, either in my house or my adjoining neighbour's! On the plus side, one of
Jonathan Allen's Seriously real Materials, in this case from his stoneworks package, was almost a perfect
match for the texture!
Torchiere Standing Lamps: Fairly simple shapes, these were built in Carrara easily, although my
attempts to recreate the actual light they cast are, um, ongoing!
Lighting in general is a bit of a challenge. In the current renders, there are all sorts of strange
shadows, as you can see. I'll definitely need to tweak the lighting once the modelling is complete.
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Carpets: Some on the walls, some on the floor! We had a discussion on this subject a year
or so ago on the Bryce List, with me expressing a preference for the use of terrains to give some
realistic thickness to the carpets. For the hanging rug, the heightmap aspect of the terrain
increases the realism of the fringe hanging down from the top, while a transparency map helps the
fringe at the bottom.
Television: As mentioned above, I had originally modelled the TV I was using at the time.
It was an Amapi construct. As I was working however, it gave up the electronic ghost, so I had
to replace the charcoal-grey Hitachi with a new silvery-grey Sony. Of course, I had to replace
the virtual version as well. This current one was easier to model in Carrara. And Hey! What's
on the TV? For now it looks as if my Bryce creation has made it to broadcast!
TV Stand: When I replaced the TV, I retained the original stand, to avoid having to model
a new one... No, seriously, the Sony stand wouldn't fit in the corner, fortunately the new TV fit
on the old stand! What I haven't modelled yet is the contents of the stand, the various VCRs and
cable boxes that make their home there. As you can see, my main DVD player, a combination
DVD/CD/LaserDisc player, is too deep to fit in the stand, so it has to sit on the floor. Sigh!
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Dining Room: Well, the structure is here, including the tiny rear window and the larger
opening to the kitchen. Unfortunately, I haven't yet modelled any of the contents of the room,
except for the side table, built along with its living-room counterparts. I'd like to at least
get a start on that before the month is out. It's a choice between modelling increasingly small
aspects of the Living Room itself, or the more 'macro' aspects of the adjoining Dining Room.
Stay tuned to see which approach wins out!
There will be more updates over the next short while...
Oh, and in case anyone sees anything they would like for their own home -
I DO have a Home Security system!!!
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