Nemo's Salon

Way back when I began the Nautilus I thought about a complete interior and cutaway views, but construction has dragged on so long that seems less and less likely. There is something of an interior now, invisible under the skin. Each of the three hatches has an attached room, although none with any detail. I want views with a hatch open to make sense, so for example, there is the spiral staircase from the main hatch. Each of the rooms with a window also exists. The pilothouse is outfitted but Nemo's cabin has only a tiny porthole, so its interior is just to control lighting. Recently I've been furnishing the salon interior that will be visible through its large windows. These low-resolution renderings give an impression of its final appearance.

The text mentions thirty works of arts, listing artists and subjects. I used this list to find real candidate works that Verne might have seen. The works hanging here are (mostly) by the artists mentioned, with fitting subjects. Where I know the size they are also correctly scaled. Although the text describes the paintings as uniformly framed, I've used a number of ornate frame styles, as in the original Riou illustration. 

Salon, looking forward

The view at left is looking forward. The furnishings are not yet complete. There is only one panoply, one sculpture, and only a single specimen case, visible in front of the statue. The large shell and the sofas are stock RayDream objects and the red chair is from Zygote.

The curvature of the wall near the ceiling and floor (more pronounced at this end because of the tapering of the hull) results because a rectangular room of the described size just barely fits within the 8 m diameter hull cylinder. Aronnax mentions these rounded or canted corners, although they are interpreted differently in the various translations.

I used a painting of a Louvre gallery by Samuel Morse as a model for the salon. His painting shows the most famous art essentially wall to wall and nearly floor to ceiling in a single room. He positions statues in the corners of the room, just as Aronnax describes them. I have not had to pack the paintings because I have some small works, but I have used the same wallpaper. Like the paintings, the sculpture is real. The statue in the corner is the controversial Greek Kouros in the Getty Museum, modeled in Poser 3. I plan to use Getty sculptures for the other three statues as well. I found a web site with views from multiple angles that facilitate 3D modeling. The two metal doors go through a watertight bulkhead. The one on the right enters Nemo's cabin and the other goes to a corridor that leads to Aronnax's cabin. The swords and poleax are stock objects.

The view below is a more detailed rendering of a slightly later version. There is more furniture and the specimen cases have multiplied. 

The cases illustrate the power of RayDream's shaders. Although the legs are relatively complex extruded objects, the case is simply a rectangular solid and its contents a flat rectangle. The glass, frame and specimens are all bitmaps in the color, bump and transparency channels. 

More detailed view of the foward end

The higher resolution and/or the angle seem to give the specimens a flat appearance however.
 

Salon, looking aft

The view at left shows the opposite end of the salon, looking aft from just in front of the Kouros. The wooden (non-watertight) doors lead to the library and a passage aft. The statuary is still missing from the corners. The dark panel behind the chairs and table will house the Nautilus' navigation instruments, copies of those in the pilothouse. The organ began as a stock RayDream object but I've modified it extensively. I'm thinking about other changes to this end of the salon.

  

Site Map

Top

Return to My Nautilus

Home

Updated 21 Jan 99. This page and its content © Copyright 1999 Michael & Karen Crisafulli