Trying to do the most possible in Blender, just to see how far it can be pushed while retaining some practical use. I’ll be asking for your help quite frequently ; to distinguish those questions I have I’ll put them in cyan . C&Cs, though as can be, are required.
Another cabinet maker failed to deliver on that project that I now have to finish in his place. Drawings were made which determined the positioning of all the wiring and fixtures during the construction of the wall : unfortunately, I have no access whatsoever to those plans and I have to adapt an entirely new design to the constraints that those set positions have become.
I went at the customers home an took some notes.
OK, it is quite messy but enough, if added to the floor dimensions, for me to start.
If I had enough symbols (CAD parlance) pre-made I could have used my notebook. So now I made some :
They are not fully realistic, just cute enough to sell the illusion. The sizes are the most common for North America but not too many details (like ground holes, threads on cable connectors…) so it could apply to a range of different projects just by changing one material here and there.
If you look at the .blend you’ll notice that for the fixture symbols (on layer 3) I had to use subsurf : otherwise the smoothing obtained by Set Smooth was quite ugly. I can’t find the reason for that : any ideas yourselves ?
I also made some plumbing and a typical wire.
Applied to the walls, those symbols tell me what I can and can’t do, unless I would choose to change their position but it is all submitted to the customer’s budget and time constraints.
The .blend is available here for the curious minded.
To get rid of the ugly artefacts, you can either turn “SubSurf” off and “Auto Smooth” on or you can keep “SubSurf” on and use creases (Shift+E) after selecting the edges you like to sharpen. Just set the Edge Sharpness to 1 to get harder edges.
It is a bit hard for me to understand the link between that older project and this one… :-? Could you explain ?
For the kitchen, if I were not to build it I’d get sued, but it wouldn’t matter since I would have died from starvation before the end of the trial.
the similarity is only that the muffin project also set out to make a complete and realistic kitchen. I did not mean to imply that it was modelled after the same kitchen or something.
I wasn’t getting paranoïd : I just didn’t see any relationship (I haven’t the time to read everything here and I regret it) but now I see.
The aim here may be more modest (or not).
I firstly need working drawing for whoever will actually build this kitchen (me in this case).
Then I need sales arguments that require less work that full scale models and muck ups. What degree of realism does this implies ? Well, I guess that it is one of the things that I’m out to find out.
The second stage is obviously to lay out the masses so everything will be in its place if possible… and not too ugly, to the extent one can judge at this early stage.
A new scene (full copy) with materials semi-transparent to check out for collisions. This presentation, less technical than the next one, is more comfortable for the clients. The red wire to the left isn’t in its place and will have to be moved for lighting inside the module to its left, which will get a glass door of some kind.
One more scene (full copy too) where all meshes of the cabinets are joined so I could use the edit mode to check out for collisions in the 3D view using the natural semi-transparency of ‘Draw Faces’. Good for me.
A second .blend is available here for the curious minded. This one is fairly big though (900 Kb). The next ones won’t.
Yes, it goes fairly fast and I guess that it will become much faster once I won’t have to model every symbol and that a routine is established, templates drawn.
For the moment, explanations are postponed : I’m really in a rush and construction starts today ! This is really a WIP where hopefully people with ideas will post.
I intend to push this as far as it will go, even after the completion of the project itself. I already know that super-realistic images are a trap : one never gets it totally right (the lighting is especially difficult to model accurately) and it can become a problem when the client is lead to believe that the image presented are exactly what he can expect. So I’m likely to keep my distances : this works fine for ink and paper presentations which are never photo-realistic.
But I will give it a try and possibly make a tutorial with all necessary explanations.
Worked some more ; the masses are more balanced and the main lines flow with more ease.
Understand that I never pretended to be an artist, just an artisan.
View from the front entrance : every box without a face will receive a glass door, except the hole for the micro-wave over the breakfast counter.
View fron the back entrance : notice that I had to move the dish washer under the breakfast counter to be able to make the furniture on the wall flow better.
(I’m tired and loosing my English)
A new .blend where I’ll try different door arrangements : the faces of the ‘volume boxes’ are removed to keep them out of the way when rendering.
Met with the client one last time for approval of the shape. Changes from the last version are subtle : the dish washer is centered under the breakfast counter and the end of that same counter is tapered off somewhat.
The sides of the stove fan (‘hut’ ? What’s a proper name in English ?) were angled a bit too, although I still have to see how it will square off with the actual appliance.
So here’s how it looks.
Getting the client to understand that these preliminary steps were necessary prior to adding any ornament, since no bell nor whistle can fix an unbalanced shape, was a bit of a trial but I succeeded by bringing him at a renovation center and using the kitchens in display there as examples (sometimes counter examples) : good thing that I live in a big city and that I can change renovations centers from time to time or someone would end up remembering “the guy who never buys nothing, ever!”
This kitchen will be made of knotted pine, with a fair amount of moldings, some ceramic inserts, ceramic counters and backdrop (different but complementary colors both) fluted square columns here and there and a bit of sculpture on top of that. Seems like much but this is quite a big little kitchen 20’ x 10’ (8 meters by 3) and there’s enough place so it won’t look cluttered.
Anayway I’ll model all of that when time comes.
Got my first account : 3 000$. Yes : blending does pay !
Here’s the most recent .blend (around 440 Kb). I removed the symbols to make it lighter but there are two scenes, one with full faced volumes and the other one with all faces removed where doors go.
Thank you : hopefully I’ll get the time to add some more detail that will evoque some more enthousiasm from the pure CG point of view. Building it takes much of my time and energy for the moment.
Have you choose the lights and their type and which are they.
I know I am too curious.
No you’re not. I confess that lighting will be decided in a totally empirical fashion. I will leave an empty space at the bottom of every cabinet (translation for ‘double fond’ ?) that is hung over a counter and use flush halogen lamps. How strong, flood or spot ? That’ll all depend on the effective use the familly will do of that kitchen (they have two full equipped kitchens, don’t ask why), at what time of the day and what will be the effect of the introduction of the cabinets themselves.
I can only tell you that to the left in front view there’s a patio door, 2 meters by 2. The only other window is on the opposite wall being 60 cm high and 2.4 m large, hung at 1.5 m over the floor. The whole room is 10 meters long (along front view) and 3.5 large…
But like Dani and Jeanluc I ll try to a realitc render and a technical draw render.
and light are important for this .
Arnaud.B
Keep in touch and ask any question you need : they just may very well help me refine the concept itself and I’ll let you know.
Lighting test for IamInnocent(s file: went fast because the geometry is simple and built correctly.
The mandatory .blend file and a picture that illustrates results that can be obtained:
OK, I’ve solved the picture problem. It was caused by an “error 123: incompetent user”. For the picture I had posted watch IamInnocent’s message.
As usual, lights are in a layer alone so modification can be made simply by copying them and sending the copy in another layer. :Z
I’ve used 3 area lights, AO and AA. For AO the sampling is at 8.
Area lights have a sampling that increase as we get closer to the camera:
1 for the farthest and 8 for the closest.
If you want to render a test of this picture kill AA and reduce sampling for area lights and AO. You can also try with an Intel optimised version from Antares or switch to Linux which results in day and night when using AO.
: I just didn’t see any relationship (I haven’t the time to read everything here and I regret it) but now I see.
