In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hey there, My name is Happs. I am very pleased to show you my process of creating the Kitchen Test scene.
As simple as the name, this project started out with intentions to explore Blender Cycles and Sketchfab. I found this kitchen photo while I was doing research online and the red refrigerator immediately got my attention. I like the simplicity of this photo, its composition and a good focus point. There’s also room for me to include my own ideas in this scene.
Blockout
I began by using basic meshes to block out the scene. For a realistic scene, it is important to get the proportions as close as the life-size version. So I tried to match the measurements with the photo reference, and also researched online to get the actual dimensions of the other objects.
Detailing
After the basic scene was set up, I added more details to each object, starting with the bigger ones such as the cabinets, doors, windows etc. At this stage, I deleted the faces that would not be seen to reduce polycount. Next, I UV unwrapped all the objects before moving over to Cycles to set up lightings, material nodes and textures baking.
Baking
Using Cycles to create textures is something new to me. What I like about Cycles is the rendered viewport shading where I could get a live preview of how my final scene looked like as I worked, and this helped me to do changes easily.
I spent the next few days playing around with the lighting, setting up shader nodes and test baked to get the result I wanted. I chose “combined bake” so that the rendered diffuse maps will contain the cycles light data.
Most of the objects nodes in my scene are simple nodes. For basic materials, I mixed a diffuse, with/without a glossy shader and adjusted the facing value for every material.
Issues
Areas where I struggled most were those fireflies/noises occurred in my rendered textures, and my impatience in waiting for Cycles to complete the high sampling rendering.
I managed to reduce the fireflies with the help of this article from Blender Guru.
In the end, I settled with sampling size of 2000 to maintain an acceptable visual quality and within my tolerance of waiting.
Materials naming
Before I upload my scene to Sketchfab, I usually give my materials meaningful unique names instead of material01, material02… etc.. If there are lots of materials of the same names, it can get quite confusing and prevent me from setting up the materials quickly in Sketchfab.
Sketchfab features
Once I’ve uploaded my scene to Sketchfab, it’s time to play!
Some of the features which I used to increase the look and feel of my scene:
a) Post processing filters: These effects are great for creating interesting result. For my kitchen, I added vignette, bloom and chromatic effects to create a slight dreamy distorted look. I also checked how these effects will influence the performance of my model viewing on my mobile phone.
b) Annotations: Useful for adding information to a specific model. Also help to direct viewers’ eyes to areas where you want them to see.
c) Camera Field of View: Adjusting orthographic (1 degree) or perspective view based on your preference.
And that’s about it!
This project was a fun one to work on and I am glad to learn more about Cycles and Sketchfab. Hope to create another new project soon, thanks everyone for reading!
Kitchen test
by happs
on Sketchfab
Thanks Happs!
See more of Happs’ work on her Sketchfab profile.
– Bart
About the author
Bart Veldhuizen
Community Lead at Sketchfab. 3D Scanning enthusiast and Blenderhead.
