The scope of this project just keeps growing. That is what happens when you do not start out with a clear and specific plan. That’s ok because that allows for freedom of creativity and happy accidents. Or the realization that you really need something else to make the
scene look more complete and less awkward. As is the case with this scene.
Since I decided to create a dinner table scene set for two people, the person who lives in the space and company, I realized that I need some thing for these people to sit on, at the table. Thus a need for a chair or two. So time to create a chair. I suppose I could do something fairly basic and not very exciting. Yeah, I don’t ever do things that way.
I decided to go with one of those chairs with the hoop back and the round legs. Only, I didn’t want just the basic round legs, I wanted something a little more decorative and fancy.
For this I started with the spanner type area that goes between the legs to stabilize them. I made the middle one and then the two side ones. The biggest trick here was figuring out how to get the ends to taper nicely and how to get the bulbous areas to adjust smoothly.
Enter the Soft Selection tool. This little jewel lets you select something and then set how far out changes will be impacting and to what extent. So you select one end and set the falloff and then, as example, you scale the part you selected, instead of having a dramatic change, you get a more gradual change.
So when selecting the edges to scale down to get the detailing on the spindles I used the Soft Selection tool and was able to get some very nice transitions. I was able to select both of the ends at the same time so I could scale them the same amount and it worked quite nicely.
As you can see, I pretty much took a bottom up approach to creating the chair. I started with the inner spanner/bracers and then added the legs. I did one, on the front, and got it the way I wanted it, including setting it at an angle, and then copied it. This worked really well for the second leg on the front. Setting it at the angle before I copied it complicated the copy for the back legs. However, by it really just required some basic rotation and then I already had them at the correct angle to match the front ones so that they weren’t too straight or too far angled out.
I didn’t do a lot to the seat. I know I could have done a bit more too it. I just wasn’t feeling it. So I rounded the corners and softened the edges. Of course this required strategic placement of edge loops. Some closer to the original edges to maintain volume and shape and some a little farther away to get that rounded corner look. Then I scaled the back side so it wasn’t quite as wide as the front.
Time for the seat back. I had already decided I wanted the hoop look and so I knew I was going to need spindles or dowels in the middle. I just needed to choose which one. I chose the spindles that were sculpted. I wanted to continue some of the design already in use instead of create something new. So I copied one of the side spanners. I rotated it, and then scaled it up to make it longer and down to make it skinnier. I put one in the middle of the back of the chair seat so I had some idea of the height I wanted the hoop.
For the hoop for the seat back I used a torus only I did not make it a 360 degree torus. I used the option that allowed me to create only part of it. I think it went around about 230 degrees, maybe not quite that far. I still had to rotate it a little because of where it took the origin from. Still this was much easier than creating a complete torus and then deleting the segments that I didn’t want. I used the soft selection tool again on the ends. I wanted to make the sides more vertical instead of rounded so I needed to rotate a little and move the ends out. The soft selection tool let me do that. I spent a lot less time fiddling with it than if I had tried moving each set of edges on their own.
Once I got the hoop created it was time to add the rest of the spindles. So I copied the first one to create the rest. They each required some scaling and placement adjustment so that the ends weren’t sticking out the top of the hoop. So this was looking pretty good except that the back was very short and squatty compared to the rest of the chair. So I scaled the entire back up so that it was skinnier and that fixed that issue. From this point there were two things I considered for making the seat back look better. I could angle it back a bit so that it looked more at the correct angle, and I could round it a little bit so it looked a little more contoured. The contouring part was a little more than I was feeling up to at that point so I did the angling part and skipped the contour option.
I found a nice wood material for the Seat and the seat back spindels and then a nice paint for the other parts. And even for the things that I know I didn’t do that I think could have added to the chair, I am really pleased with the way the chair turned out.