Mesh cooking experiences for the Multicultural Menu event

I've always liked sculpt food, then mesh food. It adds interest to tables, and it's something colorful that I like to have rezzed out. I feel that some spots are more inviting when there is food out. And until this event, is something I never did before, mesh-wise.

I think it was January when I heard about the Multicultural Menu. The idea behind the event, like the name suggests, is bringing food from all places in the world, in one spot. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to me, and so I applied.

Yes, when I applied, I knew that this event was going to push my boundaries and bring me out of my comfort zone. I've cammed close all the mesh food I have around, and I already knew that while creating the mesh itself could be simple, the task that would require the most time, and skills, is texturing. And if there's something I suck at, that is... Yes, texturing.

Again, I haven't had the time to create everything I wanted, and I confess that after seeing what the guys of bauwerk did, I nearly fainted (Their bakery is awesome. Waves to Paco and Manu). I don't have all the experience they have, I know this, but I felt like a newbie when comparing my work to theirs.

Why would I want to compare my work to what others do? Because if I think that my current set of skills is the best I can do, I will never improve them. I always look at what others do better than me, to set new goals. Whether what I do is good in itself, or not, the important to me is that I can always do better. And so I want to do better.

I've been slow, painfully slow, when creating my items. I have this bad habit of wanting to create everything as if I were to explain to someone else how to make it. It slows me down (and I end up not writing how I've done it anyway). On the good side, I've learned a bit about texturing food in Blender (and texture painting - lots of texture painting), and I've figured out some tricks to speed up the process of creating the medium and low LOD models of all the food. Like real cooking, creating mesh food takes time... and baking time! (Now that's a bad joke that you only get if you know that we bake textures in the 3D program, Blender in my case. My apologies. Maybe.)

One thing I've liked from this event, as a personal experience, is that I've felt a bit of pride, for once, of being Spanish. But just a bit: Enough as to want to bring some typical food from Spain, to SL. Keeping with the spirit of this event being multicultural, I haven't translated the food names. Also, I've cooked/prepared the food you will see in my mesh items. Yes, textures in the food come from actual food I eventually ate :-)

I know that many will not agree with me in this: Where we're born is an accident, we don't choose this. That's why normally I see no point in feeling proud because of the accident of having born at one place. It would be like feeling proud of your skin color or your hair color: It's something that is given to you at birth.

I'm also not particularly proud of this country, but the reasons are not for here (at least, not now.)

But if there's something we're good at... That is cooking! (At least until we're completely assimilated by fast food franchises). I love the food in my country, and I like cooking it. And although the event is now open and I've finished what I have for it, I've decided that I will continue bringing more Spanish flavour to SL. That's actually something that I know very well how it is, first hand :-)

I'm leaving it here. Check out what I've cooked (this time literally), grab the taxi to the event... And have a great day!

PHOTO CREDITS

Furniture, food, drinks: Black Tulip, out now at the Multicultural Menu event.
WL: Phototools- Got It Light