Castle Model (Part 1)

Castle Structure Model Stage

Coming up with idea:   

     
     For the first semester of Animation, my job was to come up with an idea for a project which I would be working on for all of semester 1 and probably part of semester 2. I had about a week to come up with my idea and finalize what I wanted to do with my idea. I wanted my idea to be challenging but not too challenging, I also wanted to model and rigg later on in the year. I came up with the idea to model a building of the Prague castle. I met up with groups to talk about my ideas and get input and give out input. Originally, I had planned to model off of the Prague castle, but unfortunately, throughout the modeling process and after finishing the base of the structure, my file corrupted due to too much boolean. Booleaning is essentially combining and differencing polygons (shapes) to form a new shape. So with a unfixable corrupted file, I had to restart which was pretty frustrating but after restarting I realized that I was glad to have restarted. My reason being that the first castle I was creating wasn't original and was based off of an existing structure. After restarting I decided to come up with my own castle and make it original instead of being based off of the Prague castle.

Beginning modeling process:

Front center piece of castle (starting point).

Front center piece of castle (wireframe view).

     
     With the idea of modeling an original castle which I do not yet know what I will call it, I could being remodeling. To start off, I created a simple rectangle polygon and continued to add castle features, such as arcs, fancy doors, windows and basically a lot of little details to make things pop when the castle model is finished, After finishing the simplistic front to my castle, I continued to add and build on that shape. When I say build on the shape, I mean keep adding larger polygons to that shape to make the castle much larger. Once the castle fit the size I wanted for the final front piece, I added balconies and railing to make the castle pop and appear taller (shown in the screenshot shown to the right). When satisfied with the front piece of the castle, I created more polygons, mainly simple shapes like rectangles and square shapes, to come off of the front piece. This would enlarge my castle and give me more room to add important components that you would see on any royal building like stain glass windows and roofing and pillars or columns.

Patterned borders.

     It took a lot of thought into the development of the castle, mainly because I haven't seen a castle in real life, but luckily I had a handy dandy computer and keyboard at my hands so I could easily go and search up images of a castle to pull out ideas. Many ideas pull out from other pictures include bordering around the castle and the patterned borders on top of the castle. The patterned borders gave my structure the classic castle look at least to me because one of the first things I recognize when I see a castle is the patterned borders running across the top of the castle.

Roofing 3D texture on roof of castle.

     After looking at my castle from that point, there was something that bothered me and that was the roofing of the castle, I HAD NO ROOFS! So I created roofs on the castle, having a really hard time trying o determine what I wanted my roofs to look like. I decided to combine the typical house roof style with a diagonal surface going down across the front and back of the roof and a flat surface for the top of the roof instead of a pointed roof. After adding the big roof, I added more roofs all around the castle in places I thought would make the castle appear to have more than one level and much larger interior wise. I created roofing to fit on the roofs and give the roofs a pattern and 3D like texture instead of just painting it on. 

     Finally, after finishing the body of the castle, I added flags and other fun details to my castle. I then started on creating the landscape for my castle. I wanted to create some sort of mote around the castle and show the castle surrounded by water. I am working on creating the the path coming off of the castle and a bridge to go over the water. I then plan to add more hill details to landscape. The second part of my castle which will be worked on during second semester will be the texturing of the castle. 

Reflection:

     
     To reflect on my creation, I would say that it is turning out to be pretty awesome. I do feel like this model is taking longer than expected since I still have yet to finish landscape and texturing, as well as lighting which will definitely bring out the details on my castle. But who said animation was easy? I would say i accomplished a lot in the time I was given, although not finished, this is an experience to learn from and it's better to learn now than later.

What I have of the castle so far.

Wireframe/selected view of castle (better look at detail).