Tables

Every bar needs somewhere to put and drink, therefore this should be one of the last elements to make the internal part of this visual.

The tables were a three part design:

1. Shallow tube with quite a large radius.
2. Open ended tube with a large radius at the bottom and a smaller one at the top. Creating a shallow cone shape.
3. Finally a long tube to connect both of these elements together.

All of these have a wood material placed on them.

I add 6 of these tables in total and placed them around the room.

More added detail

A few more elements needed to be added to the bar, again, to give it a more ‘live’ feel. I did this by creating a few bar mats.

These were created with rectangular objects with a ‘fur’ added and then coloured to green. This texture was given so that it looked more like a towling mat. I created some wording to be on the beer mats, and then made this fut as well so that it could  be overlaid onto the green fur and it would blend in as part of the mat.

The second element that I added was some glasses scattered around the bar. These were open ended tubes placed on a shallow closed ended tube. Both of these then had a clear glass material added to it.

Flooring

To create more realism the bar really needed some kind of flooring in place.

The floor is a ‘grid’ with a material connected. Finding the correct material was an experimental process. The floor needs to be non-distracting from the main room. On first view I thought that the ‘hair’ material wouldn’t be a practical option:

Leopard print was not exactly the look I was going for.

However, on closer inspection of the settings and options I managed to change the track map and the colourings in order to give a more solid appearance:

Another gateway

After deciding to have doorways into the open sky I felt that having a fireplace would be an interesting portal into the outside. I wanted to give the fireplace something that would make it stand out so I decided to use a different material to give it a boldness.

The main frame was made from layers of thick geometry posts. To add some simple decoration and sculpture to the fireplace I used circular geometry merged together to create something different. All of this has a ‘stone’ material placed apon it, but, in order to be in keeping with a slightly warm feeling to the bar the stone has a yellowish tint to it.

It fits well underneath the mirror.

Opening the doors

As my final visual is falling into place I have developed an idea that hopefully will fulfill the need for this piece to have depth (landscape). This idea is that the bar will be floating, therefore a sky will need to be sculpted around the bar itself. This outside view will be seen through doors and a centre fireplace.

The first step to creating this is therefore, creating some doorways. There will be two doorways one at the front side of the bar and another further down.

1. I created a frame for the door, I wanted them to be thick and heavy doors so the geometry for this was solid. To add the to heavy feel a wood texture was added in order to give the right effect.
2. In the lower half of the door I have added a less thick piece of ‘wood’, as would have been found on other bar doors.
3. On the upper half of the door I created a piece of glass with the name of the pub etched into it, this I created in the same way as on the mirror.
4. Once the core door was created I was able to replucate this another 3 times over and place each door in the scene where appropriate.

Shuffling things up

To give a “live” feeling to the bar I wanted to start added in objects that were slightly more ‘active’. To achieve this I have first decided to add some playing cards and chips to the bars surface.

I first created a singular card a simple cube with a short depth. To get a ‘card’ design onto the geometry I used the same principle as the texture on the fruit machine. I created a DTS_Material of an image of the ace of spades and connected that to the geometry via a UV_Texture.

This process I replicated another three times each with a different texture (Ace of Hearts, Ace of Diamonds and Ace of Clubs).

I didn’t want to have a simple piled up look to the cards, I wanted to create something that looked “mid game” so to speak. So with the use of ‘rotation’ and ‘transformation’ I was able to create this feel.

The chips are shallow, end capped tubes, that have been coloured accordingly. For the chips that have their surface viewable, white coloured circles have been placed on top in order to make the tubes look more like poker chips.

The Bar

The bar was a relitively plain element to build. The reasoning behind this was because, due to the fact of still not really knowing what the bigger picture is going to be I wanted to create a bar that could be easily manipulated at a later date if necessary.

The bar is made up of two long surfaces, one slightly smaller than the other. On top of both of these is a large surface area covering the connections beneath. At the point of the right angle I made a endeed tube. this serves two purposes, the first being that it gives the bar just a little bit of extra detail and secondly if some manipulation needs to be done on the pannels then there is some leg room to extend or retreact the sides.

I added a wooden finish to this so that it matches the rest of the wooden objects in the room.

Mirrors and Frames

Every pub has a customised mirror so I feel it was only appropriate to create one for myself. After researching pub mirrors the key things that seemed to reappear was wood or golden frame, large and bar name etched into the glass, so this is the formula I followed.

The frame is build up of small, medium and large cubes laid together. Each with differing widths with makes the frame just slightly more ornate than a plain frame. A wood material was added to this.

The mirror is a glass material with a slightly grey tint in it so that it isnt completely see through but still has a reflection to it.

The etching is a ‘font’ placed slightly on the glass, with a white colouring to it.

Finally to get a warmer feel and possibly be more adaptable to the “gold” feel I have added spot lighting with a golden tint, just to highlight the object better.

The final outcome looking like this:

Time for a gamble?

Because I don’t really know which direction I am going in, in terms of a complete vision of an idea I thought the next best thing to do was to expand on what I already had. So my next thought was to create another text book item found in a bar, this being a fruit machine.

Again, the first step is to look at the object and break it down into smaller geometry. There are seven elements that I brought together in order to create the structure.

1. A lare cube is used to create the base of the machine.
2. A smaller more rectangular element is used for the upper part of the machine.
3. Rounding the top off the make it a little more realistic.
4. Piping was also added along some of the panels in order to give it a smoother feel.
5. And finally a rotated piece of geometry was used to create the panel.
6. All of these have a black chrome effect placed on it.

Although this has the shape of a fruit machine I needed to add some more texture to make it look real. To do this I had an image of a fruit machine panel which I converted to a material using a DTS_Material. In order for the image to show up properly on the object a UV_Texture needed to be connected in between the geometry nd the material.

A tweek for later is to add a material on the upper element.

Not knowing where to start

The idea that I am trying to create is to sculpt a 3D bar, complete with pool table, fruit machine etc. The long distance part to this I am still trying to get clear in my mind.

After looking at some Houdini creations online I knew the kind of feel that I wanted to aim for but still wasn’t too sure where to start. This is where some experimentation came in… I’m a great believer in, the best way to gaining knowledge is to just give things a go.

I took the pool table as my starting point. I started with sketching the pool table in broken down bits. I had to take a pool table and look, in-depth, at the shapes that come together in order to create thetable as a whole. After I had this broken down form I tried to create it in Houndini.

1. Used a curve and revolve to create the table legs.
2. I used cubes to create the sides.
3. Both of these had ‘wood’ material placed onto them.
4. To make the surface of the table I laid down a flat box (in order to get the shape). From this I added fur and amended the height so that it was was not too over powering. the final element to this was changing the fur colour to a green.
5. The balls were spheres with different colour attachments.
6. The cue was a close ended tube with the radius larger at one end than the other. Another wood material was added onto this.

I found that the outcome of this was, suprisingly, a lot better than I had expected, however the key here was that there needed to be some lighting.

I didn’t want to just create a broad light in this case as it wouldn’t have felt as real to me as it could be. When I think of pool tables I always visualise them with spotlights over them with glass shades.

1. I created 3 spotlights and lined them up above the table. I didn’t want to have a brilliantly bright light so I changed the colouring to a more golden colour.
2. To create the lamp shades I used an open ended tube with radius on one end slightly smaller than the other.
3. The tube then had to have a “glass” material added to it. I then made the base colour a deep green.
4. Finally, I made sure that the shades where lined up with where the shoplights where placed.

(Clearly an enviroment light is needed)

I added chains to hang the lights from. These where circular rings which I added a “copy’ to in order to get a longer chain.