The SFM Honey Toast Challenge!

Somebody once noticed that the map designer who made Kong King created a bench using two benches instead of making a separate model. A few people thought it was lazy; others recognized it as a creative use of repurposing models and using what you have to make what you need rather than model it and take up more memory or time. 

I don’t know how to model, so I do that a lot in Source Filmmaker: I stare at a model meant for a hat, and I ask myself: “can I use this as something other than a hat?” This makes for elaborate outfits and models, often with a little bit of reskinning as well as some VMT/VTF tricks. I want you guys to try it too. The SFM Honey Toast Challenge will be my challenge to you for practicing rebuilding props that you have or can find around, without having to be forced to model something just to get what you need.

Shibuya Honey/Brick Toast is a popular dessert from Japan that’s become popular in parts of Korea and Taiwan. It’s usually made out of brioche bread with the inside cut up into cubes, buttered and toasted, and then layered with honey, then garnished with fruits, sauces, ice cream and whatever fulfills one’s desires. This is a stack of bread, but with cheating angles as well as models, you can make something that looks good. I’ve made mine with honey, green tea ice cream, chocolate pirouline wafer straws, some strawberries and oranges and a dollop of whipped cream.

In actuality other than the fruit models, I used:

• A rigged and reskinned Triboniophorus Tyrannus for ice cream + honey drip from the SFM Workshop
  
• A reskinned cupcake model clipping into the toast for whipped cream from an MLP prop pack
  
• Reskinned blood pools for the flat honey on the toast and plate from the SFM Beta files
  
• Reskinned soda straws as the pirouline straws from somewhere on the GMod workshop
  

Let’s see how you make your honey toast, and how well you can think outside the box! I want you to dress up these three slices of toast with whatever props you can find, whether TF2 or third-party. You can use food props or reskin things into food, but ultimately you wanna try to work with things that you might not even consider food. You’re encouraged to learn how to use override materials, how to reskin VTFs, how to edit the VMTs with strings like $envmap and $phongboost, while asking yourself these questions:

• If I colour or change the material values of this item, how will it look?
• If I take these jigglebones and stretch/shrink them, will it make this shape?
• Can I take this and use it in a completely different way if I use this part/angle of it?

Here's two I made from reference photos as an example. The first seems to be a strawberry cream mix (I used a coin recoloured with brown for a chocolate disc), the second is a chocolate Reese cups medley (I used resized rock piles for the chocolate and chopped nuts).

If you guys wanna try it out and post it up, let me know! Tag your exercises as honeytoastchallenge on deviantArt or tag me in your upload, and I’ll come take a look at what confectioner craving you’ve created, as well as if you learned anything new from it or if it was good practice! 

DMX File Download is HERE! You will have camera1 as your main angle, two lights, and the bread models ready since they’re TF2 files. You will need to put a plate/tray under the toast yourself. Feel free to use additional angles or lights!