Behind the Scenes

For house specs please see here.

Welcome to the first BTS of a Scafall home! While this doesn’t give away the whole technical process, to follow is the unpolished highlight reel of all the moments where House Zora locked in her shape.

The initial concept came through like water. So I was very adamant about getting the details right, and the first detail was the roof type. I had no idea at this point and had to try a few things.

I knew it wanted to be a sleek house, so I wanted to counter balance it with some movement. Wasn’t sure at this point, so I had to draft it in. Things very quickly changed after I defined the second most important area: the foyer.

After countless iterations of stair-turning and splitting, it became clear that a wall-framed door was not the right fit for this house. Thus came the first corner window.

With the new glazing language for the foyer, I very quickly realised I wanted to echo this through the whole house. And so this dictated the necessity for light, elegant roofing. And thus became her facade!

Here is the first time she had her silhouette, but at this point I wasn’t loving the foyer anymore (looks like some boutique store front not a house?) and was rather thanking it for the echoing glass corners of the main house. So – it was time to redesign her again! After several more iterations I realised the “arrival” I wanted to achieve into the main home would be better off as an ascent within the house itself.

Much better!

And a million manual loop cuts to really honour those fluted corners. Now to the courtyard and pool, the third most important area of the home ….

At this point the pool really needed to breathe.

Better!

When building the glass skybridge, I wanted it to float above nature, so it seemed like the courtyard needed a green strip so you can have foliage on both sides!

Better! Thus sparked the modern lines of the courtyard which extends to the dipping pool.

At this point she was complete in all her ways, and it was down to making sure she had the right doors, and textures that would provide the right amount of accent without distracting from the design. I’ll let you discover that in-world!

And the final touch in world, back where we started, but this time to make her sing the right note.

Better. ♥

You can find more photos on our Facebook page

■ 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. ♥