The 8-bit project almost completed - A CG vision of my desktop at the age of 12.

Go outside and play in the sunshine?!  What?  When there are games to be played?!!

It all started back in the 1980's...  Like a lot of kids my age, I used to hide in a dark bedroom during the day and sit and code games in BASIC or Machine Code.  The home computing revolution had started, and kids everywhere would learn to program computers as its was just the way that it was back then.  No operating system - all machines had a programming ROM that meant when you turned it on, everything you did was a programming command.  Want to load a game?  You'd type in the load command, and then you'd start the cassette deck to begin the 2 to 10 minute wait as your game would screech and squeal from the audio cassette it was stored on.

In most cases, kids would type in the games from the many books and magazines available at the time.

It was a different era.  And if you wanted 3D? We were looking at simple wireframes, often programmed in by the user - not the desktop application with user interface and 1000+ hours of free video training on the internet everybody has the luxury of these days...

Hey - there wasn't any internet anyway...

Pfft!  Ok - so that's my 5 seconds of nostalgia out of the way...

As you would have seen throughout this blog over the last couple of months - all that 80's style modeling - well, along with a few more items, I've finally put a composition together (render that you saw at the top of this post).  A lot of the colour, grain and exposure have been done in Photoshop - and like most projects I could play with this forever.  At this stage, I'm just happy to get something rendered, tweaked and at least mostly done. (I'll very much come back to this again for more tweaking - its a compulsive thing)

But as I'd just mentioned, there a few more items involved along the way.  These were others that I didn't post up, but I think are worth sharing.

Load 'em up

You're probably aware that I've modeled cassettes and cases - and of course, I've also modeled cables.  What I also modeled was this cassette deck that is needed to load programs from.  This one is based on an actual object sitting here with the rest of my old gear - and its modeled to scale.

But didn't you already have a TV?

I had modeled an old style analogue screen a while back, but since then I've been through 4 variations on the same TV.  I finally decided on something with a little more digital edge.  Its still very much in the 80's as far as televisions go (yes, they did have digital channel changers back then, not just analogue).

Those all-essential set dressers...

A 3D scene is not just a simple model with textures rendered out to look pretty.  Its a scene, like in real life, where there can be all multitude of things jumbled about.  I created just a few very simple items that were fairly common.

Firstly - a classic old plastic Bic clic pen - the staple ball point in New Zealand at the time (actually manufactured in New Zealand for Bic - for over 40 years before the place was shut down just recently in 2013) also doubled as an emergency cassette rewinding tool.

1980's cassette rewinding tool

No computer room would be seen dead without some level of furniture.  In this case, I went for something a little more modern (but its a desk, of which very little would be seen close-up in shot).  Basing this off the state of the MDF desk I'm currently sitting at, I hand-painted up stain damage on a very flat generic MDF image.  The damage was painted through simplying using home-made grunge brushes and manually drawn rings with a simple overlay blended layer in Photoshop...

Well loved and stained MDF desk...  Just like the real one!

Glug! Glug! Glug!

And like any self-respecting nerd, there just had to be a coffee mug on the desk.  This particular model was based on one on my desk, including the colour - however the pigeon of doom (with its classic "typo" - honest, I spelt "pidgeon" wrong on purpose... ok, maybe... lol!) was a  photo I'd taken where a creepy pigeon was just staring straight back at the camera...

The staining inside the cup was another home made grunge brush.  Amazing just how versatile all those photo's of grimy concrete can be for texture mapping.

Looks hygienic enough to drink from... Honest.

Its all in the details...

The problem with most the models were that the textures were too clean.  After some mucking about, I managed to source a black image with dust and finger print smears - much like most self-respecting TV or monitor should have on them.

Using this texture on the glass of the old TV really worked out well.  Adding an occlusion shader around the edges of the screen also created the effect of dust build up...  Dust was always attracted by the magnetic attraction of the CRT, so it made sense to think about trying to recreate that obvious characteristic.

Don't touch the screen with those greasy fingers...

Like any realistic environment, like the textures, there had to be a little less cleanliness in the scene itself.  I ended up modeling a random collection of tiny hairs and very small rough-shaped crumbs.  Again, it helps to have a real location to reference...

While they're not seen close up like this, just the fact that they are present does help.  Its those small details we miss when they're not there, but don't notice when they are...

Nothing a wet sponge won't wipe away.

Location, location, location

The room was the easy part - essentially a box with a very retro 1980's style patterned wall paper (which reminded me a lot of my childhood home).  The curtains on the other hand needed a little work - modeled as flat geometry, UV mapped - I applied a cloth system and used an old technique of animating a morph to draw the curtains along the top...  This caused the cloth to fold nicely and produce realistic curtains.

The wrinkled cloth was exported as a mesh, and that was then used in this location.

Setting the mood.

This was something I had to really think about.  Originally I'd planned on a dimly lit room at night, with the soft orange glow of a standard bulb.  That kinda worked - when I tested this, I did have some stand-in textures as well (hence why the curtains look different).

But that wasn't quite the look.  It was ok, but it felt a little too simple...  I decided to also consider just no room light, and use the illuminated screen as the source of light.  A bit more interesting, and kinda where I wanted to go...

In the end, it came down to something more believable - and something closer to how I recall the days-gone-by...  That dark room during the day, with curtains closed as the bright sunlight cast shadows of the window onto the back of the curtains...

The back lit curtains are simply a translucent surface with a spotlight projecting a window frame gobo image.

Just to finish up, here's the last render I did.  This version is much brighter, though I'm not sure if I like it.  I figured I'd post this one nonetheless...

Yup...  Drawn curtains, dark rooms...  That's the way it used to be - in fact, its the way it still is...