■ KNOT SPECS: Fireplace: 4 land impact | on/off by touch or local chat: “fire on” or “fire off” (without quotation marks) with access menu | Figures & Branch: 1 land impact each | PBR & Legacy Materials | CM
■ THE MEANING Knot (English) A complex interlacing of parts that creates a single, unbreakable point of tension and unity.
■ ABOUT: Knot functions as the visual bridge between the heavy brutal/industrial permanence of the chimney, the vertical rhythm of the human figures and the outward reaching Manzanita branch. This is the intersection where geometry meets the human spirit.
Read on for some behind the scenes …
Before defining the hearth, I felt there was something missing in that the chimney held “movement” and the base fell flat. Cue the myriad of tests:
This was “okay” but didn’t solve the flatness.
This was “okay” too, but felt farther than where I wanted to go.
Adding some edge detailing made it too hard.
And so I gave up on the hearth, and defined the pocket underneath… Which ended up solving the hearth! And so it was closer, but not quite. To add more depth and interest to the pocket I decided to detach it from the underside of the concrete. From the position of your avatar’s eyes, this will work as a secondary highlight.
So here it is in SL with the pocket detached from the concrete. After applying diffuse textures (no materials yet), I realised the movement needn’t come from the hearth itself, and so I first thought of some abstract silhouettes of humans.
It was cute! But looked too random. So I set it aside and took a break. The idea of a long, moving branch came to me while I was in the garden, and so I tried it out.
As I was building it, I wanted it to twist! And so a secondary branch was born…
And twist it did! This side profile made me very happy about the twisting. Upon rendering I thought what might happen if I dragged the people back in (thankfully did not delete them!).
And there she was for the first time looking complete. ♥
