DOMESTIC AT A DINNER PA R T Y M O D U L E 01 - A D I G I TA L ST I L L L I F E Thomas Martiniello, 834 955
DOMESTIC AT A DINNER PARTY THE NARRATIVE A sophisticated dinner party filled with celebration and small talk is the last place you would imagine to find what happens next...
Wine spills out of the oversized rims floating through the air as if all time is now in slow motion. Drops land on and around you as it falls and begins to pool.
Warm lighting dimly illuminates the room creating the mood for the evening, with the abundance of red and white wines enticing the guests.
As the table cloth nears the end of the table a scene of destruction has been left in its wake.
A heavy timber dining chair scrapes back across the floor - the head of the table is suddenly up. Right in front of your eyes the silky beige table cloth, draped softly over the rose wood table is aggressively being ripped up. Peeking up from your recoiled position under the table, you watch as what was only seconds ago placed meticulously on the table - glasses, fruit, plates, knives, forks - moving through the air in front of you.
What happens next is the question on everyones mind as the sounds of shattering glasses and plates come to a stop.
THE DRINK A CELEBRATION
Large Red Wine Glass
Red Wine Glass
Champagne Flute
White Wine Glass
Bottle Cap
Wine Bottles
Removing the top polygon of the glass and shelling it to create the glass thickness.
Wine Glasses Using a base spline and turning on beizier curves for the wine glass and bottle profiles.
Iterations of glasses developed by changing the base spline under the other modifiers.
Adding detail to the glass such as the braille and ridges on the base of the bottle.
The wine glasses and wine bottle were developed using the spline and lathe modifiers. A reference image was placed onto a plane as a bitmap which was then traced. Points on the line were then turned into beizier curves to be manipulated creating fluid curves. The bottom curves of the glass were created using the filleting tool. The core of the lathe was welded and the shell modifier was added to give the glass thickness. Finally a rim was created using polygon selection and then extruding and beveling. Due to 3DS Max’s editing work flow I used the edit poly modifier under the drop down instead of turning the object into an editable poly, which meant I could go back to the base line and adjust, creating the different types of glasses with ease. The detail on the wine bottle was then added by using the swift loop tool to then create tighter polygons to then extrude. Finally the modifier turbo smooth was used to clean up and smooth all of the objects.
Wine Bottle Detailing the cap by increasing the polygon count and extruding sections inwards and outwards.
Adding detached drops of liquid to make it more realistic.
Wine Liquid The spilling liquid object for the wine glasses were created by manipulating a sphere.
Creating the spill for the white wine from the base geometry of a rectangular cube.
To create the liquid falling out of the wine glasses I began modeling the object with a base sphere for one and a rectangle for the other. Both methods were just as effective for the final result however the rectangle was easier for manipulating height by extruding faces straight up. Tools such as soft selection were utilised to manipulate the shapes as well as swift loop to add more polygons. Finally the geometries were turbo smoothed and the relax modifier was also used to even out some of the sharp edges. Liquid was also created for the wine bottle by selecting the inner polygons of the shell, detaching the face as a copy and capping it as it’s own object to then apply the liquid material to. The boolean modifier was also used to create liquid in glasses that were slightly tipping or not spilling out at all, as they had a flat surface.
THE MENU A FRUITFUL EVENING
Orange
Banana
Pear
A key element in the banana was replicating the geometry in the stem. Face selection was used to do so and then turbo smooth.
Banana Initially I attempted to make the banana from a cylinder, manipulating the mesh and then applying a bend modifier.
Pear
Using an image to reference the pear against for modeling natural imperfections.
To create the fruits, key modifiers and tools used were soft selection, swift loop and turbo smooth. I began by placing a reference image onto a plane and then creating a base geometry to suit, before manipulating it using the edit poly modifier. The banana was created using a 5 sided rectangular prism. I then used edit poly to manipulate the bends and minor details in the main body. Scaling was used to pull in the stem before adding a bend modifier to the overall form. The pear was created from a cylinder, using the edge selection to scale up and down portions of it. I then extruded the top to create the stem, relaxing any areas which were too sharp. For the orange a sphere was used as the base object with vertex selection being the main tool for modifying. Soft selection was turned on to create smooth indents in the fruit. The top of the orange was modeled as separate geometries and then attached together. Orange
Rosewood Dining Chair
THE SETTING ROSE WOOD AND LINEN
Rosewood Dining Table
Linen Table Cloth
Table Cloth
Dining Table
Testing how to drape the table cloth using the cloth modifier.
Tapering and beveling the table legs then using the mirror tool to place them at all four corners.
Modeling the chair in components and in halves which were then mirrored and attached to form the final chair.
To model the table cloth I explored using the cloth modifier. Initially it was just draped nicely over the table but then I looked at developing how I could add motion to the cloth. By adding more collision geometries I was able to manipulate the cloth to appear as if it had been pulled. I then edited the base plane by using the shell and turbo smooth modifiers to give it a more realistic fabric look. The table and chairs were both modeled from basic cubic geometries with the chamfer tool giving each piece of timber its more realistic look. The bend modifier and edit poly were used in the back of the chair to get the appropriate curve and angle. The objects in the chair that were the same on either side or front and back were copied as instances so that I was able to efficiently make uniform changes. Dining Chair Modeling the chair in components and in halves which were then mirrored and attached to form the final chair.
Detailing the timber connections to make them more realistic with the chamfer tool.
THE TABLEWARE CERAMICS AND METALICS
Ceramic Side Plate
Ceramic Dinner Plates
Stainless Steel Knife
Stainless Steel Fork
Dinner Plate Testing different types of dinner plates by (1) creating a cylinder and (2) using a spline.
Knife
Getting the bend in the fork using soft selection.
The dinner plate was created using the spline and lathe modifiers just like the wine glasses. For the corners I used the fillet tool ensuring an even curve. I modeled a few different types of plates testing varying levels of dips, bevels and styles, expanding on the level of detail in each. The knife was created by tracing a reference image and then extruding that outline. The capping modifier was then used to close the object and chamfers were applied. The edit poly modifier was then used for finer detailing on the knife blade before applying turbo smooth. For the fork I initially undertook the same process as the knife but ran into issues with some of the more detailed modeling such as the bend required. I then tried again starting with a rectangular prism, using the extrude tool and edit poly modifier. Fork Comparing the 2 methods of creating the fork.
Pear
THE PALETTE SETTING THE MOOD
Timber
Linen
Ceramic
Glass
Testing vray 2 sided materials to add transparency to the table cloth.
Transparent Materials
Blended Materials
Lipstick Marks
The final table cloth material was given transparency by adding a vray colour map to the opacity and adjusting the material refraction.
Creating hairline cracks on the dinner plates by blending 2 materials: the original ceramic material and another vray material with the scratches laid out on the UV map and then imported as the diffuse.
Adding a red lipstick mark to one of the wine glasses by importing a diffuse and opacity map of the lips and then blending them onto the glass material.
Using the fog colour to create the desired wine colour whilst still enabling the overall material to be transparent and liquid like.
To texture and add materials to the geometries I used the modifier unwrap UV. Additional textures such as the wine bottle label were created by firstly creating a plane (selecting faces and then detaching them from the bottle) and then creating a UV map to align the image in Photoshop. Blended materials were useful for things such as marking the timber with imperfections such as the cup mark to give the render a more realistic look. To unwrap the pear the pelt and relax tools were used to create a flat map to lay my texture onto. For other objects such as the orange, I created seams at the top and bottom to then cut the map into 3 pieces (top, bottom and middle band). I mainly explored 2 sided, blended, normal and subsurface scattering materials in vray to create the materials for my final render. Unwrapping + Texturing Creating normal and bump maps in Photoshop for the textures to give them more depth in 3DS Max when rendered.
Liquid Materials
THE UNWANTED GUESTS WHO WERE NOT SEEN
Wine Decanters
ProCutter
Cloth Modifier Limitations
Garment Maker Modifier
Attempting to ‘smash’ a plate by using the procutter tool however as it was no longer a simple geometry the tool did not work.
Attempting to create a fold in a cloth to make a napkin over a pole, however it would not fold instead it continued to fall.
Attempting to create a fold in a cloth to make a napkin using the garment maker modifier.
Testing modeling wine decanters however the proportions and overall look did not add enough value to make it into the final render.
Along the way I experimented with a few additional tools and objects which did not make it into my final render. I tested folding a plane to make a napkin for the table through folding a plane, the cloth modifier and through the garment maker modifier. All of which failed to give me a result that I was happy with. They either did not fold flat enough or were too sharp and even after additional modifiers such as relax, I was still not able to get the desired result I was after. Other modifiers I experimented with include ProCutter which I could only get to work on simple geometries such as a cube. Despite converting my plate onto a single mesh it seemed to still not allow for the multiple planes to cut through it. Folding a Plane
Fork Creation Experimenting with methods of creating the fork, from an outline which was turned into a plane to a solid cube extruded to create the desired shape.
ALL IS IN THE DETAIL TEXTURE DETAILS
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hairline cracks in the ceramic texture for some of the plates
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chamfering harsh sharp edges on the dining table to make it more realistic
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adding a label and detailing to the glass of the wine bottles
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adding lipstick marks on the spilling red wine glass
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marking of timber surface with imperfections such as cup marks
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adding a slight amount of depth to the timber grain on the table
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adding the sticker to the pear and blemishes/ bruises
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droplets of wine braking away from the splashes and dripping off the table
Lighting behind the wall to glow through implying rooms beyond
THE BIGGER PICTURE COMPOSING THE SCENE
The scene was composed as if the head of the table had flung him/herself up off their chair and pulled the tablecloth out from the table. Objects such as chairs, plates and glasses that were sitting on the table were placed in mid air as if time had been frozen. The scene was lit from the center of the table implying that there was a pendant light sitting above the table. This light was then diffused across the scene keeping it low and moody. There was also an additional light used in the background behind the walls to create shadow in the opening. The angle of my main render was taken from the point of view of someone who had ducked down under the table as the comoition occred.
The back portion of the scene arranged so that some elements could be seen through the slight transparency in the table cloth
Considering point of view of someone who is dining at the table sitting here
Camera + Composition Iterations
Throughout the continuous development and creation of my narrative and subsequent scene I tested numerous camera angles and compositions. In the end I took the angle from the point of view of someone looking up from under the table. The objects were then arranged as if they had been dragged from in front of the viewer to the other end of the table. The composition consists of elements in the foreground, mid and background. The white wine glass is closest to the front of the scene which is blurred. The eye then moves through past the wine bottle and pear to the mid ground of the plate and spilling wine glass and bottle. Finally the background elements are what are just showing or suggested behind the table cloth. For my final composition I chose to crop the A3 slightly making it a narrower image. The image is reflective of a cinematic camera shot adding to the notion of the narrative playing out in the scene.
REFLECTION Lessons Learned Through this module I was challenged to reconsider and rethink how I approach: 1. modeling (as 3DS Max is geometry based) 2. composing elements 3. how light affects and creates realism The greatest achievement from this module was learning how to use 3DS Max and vray as I have never used either softwares before. I also learned a lot about mapping an image onto an object and making it more realistic through texture mapping etc. Sore Points The limitations of processing power was something that I struggled with a great deal. Many times I had 3DS Max crash or fail to render due to lack of processing power on both desktop and laptop computers. The nature of composing a scene using 3D software meant that a large amount of time was taken up slightly changing an element, ie. lighting, rendering and then repeating until I was satisfied with the result. Due to the delay and time taken to render this process was quite frustrating.
Considerations For me the stand out consideration was the lighting for the scene, followed by it’s composition. It was challenging yet important to ensure the shadows and lighting were realistic, making the scene feel as if it were an actual environment. This meant hours of minor changes and fiddling until I got it to a point that I was happy with. Also finding the correct camera angle and arranging the objects in such a way to best showcase them was something I considered a great amount. Revisited Edits After applying materials to my objects I found some had unwanted bumps and divots. Something that was quite prominent were curves in the wine glasses that weren’t quite smooth - as the light and glass material emphasised the unnatural deviation. Moving Forward Looking past the stressful moments and countless crash reports, I can defiantly take skills in material development and my now growing library of objects forward into the next module. I would like to push my development further in the smaller details which make the scene more realistic.
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