Concept

The idea for this rendering came from my brother's upcoming wedding and the fact that most of my work is focused on exterior scenes. I wanted to explore interior lighting and specifically the effect of bounced light within a room with minimal direct light from the outside. I wanted a scene that had subtle objects that complimented the lighting but were not the main focus. I had a rough idea of how the scene would be laid out (wedding reception with tables, chairs, centerpieces, etc.) but didn't sketch anything out since this was just a learning exercise.  I used reference material from the Internet for things like the cloth-covered chairs, the centerpieces, and the room layout (Fig.01).

Modelling

Most of the objects were modeled by starting with simple primitives and editing with the "edit poly” feature. For the plates I used a circle, poly edited, then used inset, extrude, shell and turbo smooth to get a nice smooth rounded feel (Fig.02).


For the chairs I used more of the edit poly feature and turbo smooth together. I started with a box primitive around the base of the chair in order to keep dimensions in check. I added an edit poly modifier and then started sculpting the flow of the material. I then added a turbo smooth modifier to see how the creases would smooth out. I routinely switched between the edit poly modifier and the turbo smooth modifier in order to see the results. This was an iterative process; adding and moving vertices in order to get the look I wanted. Since this was a learning exercise I only created one chair. I made sure that the mesh on the chair was not symmetrical, as I was only using one chair that would be instanced around each of the tables (Fig.03).



The napkins, roses, centerpieces, wine glasses, and tables all used the same principles. For some of the non-flowing objects I used rendered splines and lathe modifiers (Fig.04 – Fig.07).