24 Aug 2018 – kitchens

I discovered that the columns on the perimeter of the Restaurant building were considerably too fat so I have shrunk them down from 30 cm square to 22 cm. I assumed they were the same as the WRB’s perimeter columns but the Restaurant columns have far less weight to support so they can be sleeker. The four columns at the corner of the dome are much fatter, either 15 inches or 18 inches.

I have given some attention to the stair lobby, the existing stairs imported from the old model were incorrect and the balustrades quite primitive. I have already prefabricated a much more detailed model of one floor of a set of stairs and detailed curved balustrade, as they appear to be much the same across the site. So I am importing these, positioning them correctly and that has saved me some time.

I am still consolidating the materials across the various buildings and components to reduce duplication as the stairs had four separate ones, some of which are essentially the same as the existing ones and created the following:

  • Navy blue matt emulsion (for the columns as that appears to be the colour they were painted).
  • White gloss painted metal/wood (balustrade railings). This is a variant of the paint finish for the metal windows frames but I want a separate one for those as I am not sure of the colour.
  • Polished concrete (for the stairs)
  • I have reused the flat plaster ceiling from the previous update for the underside of the stairs.
  • The tiles on the stair treads needs a dedicated texture, the previous one was incorrect.
  • Looking for a good breeze block wall texture for the internal walls of the toilet cistern cupboards and unfinished kitchen walls.
  • Black shiny plastic material for the top surface of the stair handrails.
  • I still need to create the texture for the Common Room and stair lobby floors.
  • The kitchen has a white tiled floor but there are random coloured tiles dotted around. I think this will need some artistic licence.
  • The various metal materials I have been using up to now have been cobbled together by myself and looked OK but then I am not an expert in making metals and Blender’s Cycles material editing node system is very complex. I was trying to make a brushed metal type of thing for the door handles and was struggling so I thought I’d have a look on Blend Swap, a website that has free Blender assets, mainly models, but I found a set of around 12 metal materials and it was in the public domain so I will be using that for standard metals.

Other changes:

  • Tidied up the ground terrain to make the setting more realistic, just with bare dirt for now but will be landscaped at a much later point; part of this was creating a temporary plinth to hide the underground components of the WRB that were exposed in the background.
  • Changing the layer that components are allocated to match those used for the main buildings (each floor has its own layer and there are a few spare ones for furniture/M&E stuff/lights/cameras/temporary guides etc). A new version of Blender is imminent and this has an improved layer system, which I am awaiting with great interest as the current system is rather clunky.
Staff Restaurant, 16 Aug 2018 showing the slimmer columns and new materials.

I have now started work on the kitchen internal walls, of which there are many! There are a quite a few smaller rooms around the edges of the main open kitchen.

Rear of the kitchen area showing nearly all the walls in place although the materials/textures are by no means finished. The gaps are where there will be internal doors/wndows. 23 Aug 2018

The white tiled walls of the kitchens are a nightmare for texturing as the tiles have to exactly match up (horizontally) on each piece and the correct square aspect ratio needs to be preserved.

Also:

  • Added skirting boards to all the internal walls, not just in the kitchens.
  • Changed the skirting board colour from navy blue to black as appears to be correct.
  • Amending the concrete foundation slab to add the underfloor ducts but these are NOT necessarily correct – the same goes for the slab edges that protrude from the building. These will need checking at some point.
  • Resized the kitchen columns as they were also too fat (should all be 9 inches square).

There’s not a lot to see from much of this work, which is a little frustrating but nearly finished. The next priorities are:

  • Adding the internal doors and windows in the kitchens.
  • Amending the kitchen roof, which needs a lot of work.
  • Kitchen floor texture.
Facing SE inside the kitchen area. Ignore the area to the left, something off going on with the lighting.

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