City Laundromat

My first work in progress thread, in case anyone finds that information crucial. The scene is a laundromat in a fairly large city. I’m going for a warm, friendly, comfortable atmosphere. Expect more warm tones and a better color palette.

Update 0:


Things to add/change/improve:

  • Replace tile floor with large tile linoleum.
  • Finish up all of the washing machine materials.
  • Skew the rotation and translation of a few washing machines; Add some subtle dents.
  • Add some ventilation tubes.
  • Add two floor drains.
  • Add a wall outlet.
  • Texture wall and ceiling.
  • Work on color palette (Floor might be a warm color).
  • Create city background (I’m going for a somewhat old-timey Bronx type look).
  • Work on image scale.
  • Lighting, compositing, composition, etc.

are you gonna add people?

I try to stray away from human characters. Or, at least I will at the moment until I perfect human modeling. Adding organic models to inorganic scenes is very difficult.

Maybe add like cloths, i mean have a human doing he’s laundry, now erase the human, and all u got is floating cloths with the shape of a man, it is easy, interesting and mysterious at the same time, it would look cool for me if there were like floating cloths in shape of a man washing cloths… like the invisible man, and maybe make the floating cloths with warm colors and the washed cloths with a tint blue, it would make them feel as if they were dead, and the floating cloths are alive, like kind of metaphor of something… oh wow i said a lot here didn’t i? just giving suggestions

I get what you mean by staying away from humans, if you don’t know how to make them(like me), adding them to the scene can make it look worse. What I would try and do is add laundry baskets. Also, there are generally washers in the middle as well, but since your room is small, maybe you dont need it, but I would definitely try to put some in the back. Laundromats try and put as many in a room to make money, the owners don’t really care about comfort-levels, especially in a large city. Are you going to make the windows just show a picture? or are you going to add some skyscrapers?

I’m planning on adding detergent dispensers, baskets, hangers, etc. Also, you can only invest in so many washing machines. I’m going to keep the main composition, as it’s the most important part of the image. The background is going to be modeled and rendered like the current portion.

all the laundomat machines i have used, the door on the macines are a lot bigger.

The doors do look a little small that was the first thing I noticed.

Mendel’s idea is great about the floating cloths washing clothes. Or even just a few articles of clothing draped over one of the washing machines.

I wouldn’t add more washing machines, because the composition looks great as is. You don’t need to make it realistic to the point of ruining composition. And anyway, it wouldn’t be cost effective to add more washing machines than you will likely need, so it would depend on how big the customer base is.

If you’re going for warm and friendly, maybe widen the room and have some kind of bench with chairs along the middle? Sitting down and having an extra surface to sort your laundry can be comfortable. Just a thought.

For warm lighting, try mixing slightly yellow light from light-bulbs in the ceiling with slightly blue light (daylight) from outside.