Finished Castle

After texturing my model and importing it into UDK, I finally reached the end of the studio project. Below are my final three renders, using a three-point light set up and a curved plane background to simulate sunrise, mid day, and sunset.

  

Also, with my model in UDK, I recorded a quick fly-around video showing off my model in the game engine. Unfortunately, the size of my screen limited the size the video could be, so it ended up being a little low resolution.

Texture Work

My most useful textures were taken during the Easter break, when I took a trip to Canterbury to photograph the castle and the high street. From the photographs taken there and those I took in Norwich, I made a few tile-able textures that I could use throughout my castle.

One aspect of my textures that I wanted to include was a hand-painted style, whilst making use of the textures I had collected from real places. In the end, I decided to go with a pseudo-Borderlands style, with black borders on the sharp edges and light overlays of painted layers.

After texturing the corner towers, I decided that the archways at the bottoms of them needed more details, and so I added a wooden trellis, as I had considered previously. I also added a similar model to the space in between the bridge duplicates.

With all of the textures completed, it's nearly time to export my model into UDK for rendering and walk around. There were some issued in these following screenshots with some faces appearing without their textures, but Lothar tells me that this is a result of the camera having to look too far, and that fortunately it shouldn't show up in the renders or in UDK.

Originally I had planned to use UDK to create my terrain, but after trying it and finding it difficult to pick up, I decided to just use Maya instead, seeing as I know the program much better. 

Castle WIPs

Moving onto making the final model for my castle, I started with the outer walls and towers. I decided to make the walls of the castle a trapezium shape instead of rectangular, but I still plan on splitting the back wall with a tower, as I did in my initial design. 

When creating the bridge, which I hadn't previously designed in Maya, I decided to make use of a lot of arches, as I hadn't used as many in my castle as I'd have liked, given their importance in Moroccan, Indian, and Tunisian architecture. The bridge itself is one part, mirrored twice (once horizontally and once vertically) so as to take up less texture space.

From inside, I feel like it might need some mode details, and I'm considering adding the small fence model I made to the sides of the bridge, and perhaps a trellis-like screen in the rectangular spaces.

When recreating the tower, I didn't want to make the lower walls complicated, as most of the tower will be obscured behind the outer walls and just be a waste of polys and texture space. On top of the tower are single planes, onto which I plan on texturing a facade with an alpha map, as the details will be so far away from the player that it would be pointless to model them completely.

The tower, like the other parts of the model, is very simple texture-wise, as aside from the dome, it is simply one wall repeated and rotated 6 times.

Adding the inner buildings, I decided on the second of my two options; to make buildings from only one or two sides, much like I did with my large towers. On top of that, I added a smaller duplicate of my hexagonal tower, to add more variety into the centre buildings.

On top of those buildings, I added larger details; these being the arches, whose designs are loosely based on the Red Fort, and the addition of more planes. These are duplicates of the ones of the top of the hexagonal towers, so they won't take up additional texture space.

The final product for now. I'm largely happy with the design, and so the only parts that I'm looking on chancing slightly is the bridge, which is a little lacklustre now the inner buildings have details on their rooves.

Castle Ideas

I began planning for my model with some sketches, trying out ideas and drawing concepts much quicker on paper than I could in Maya, so as to not waste time making models I couldn't use.

Moving on from those sketches, an in an effort to make as much as possible on my final castle modular, I made a few pieces designed to act as a facade to a building, adding detail without increasing the size of the textures a lot. To that effect, the first two are an ornate fence-like barrier, and a battlement idea, both of which could be repeated endlessly with only one set of textures.

My first layout featured a series of towers, and much like the small details, these would just be replicates of each other, scaled and rotated. 

Here, I looked at a larger idea, that of a more detailed wall section, based off of one of my previous sketches. Although some complex geometry is needed to add depth to the wall though, I think that the small indents in the wall are unnecessary, and can likely be achieved to similar effect with simple bump maps and good texturing.

Castle Layout

Beginning on ideas for my Moroccan Castle, I made a rough wall and tower design, practicing making the parts modular and compatible with all the other elements. Originally, I made a four-walled castle, but decided that it looks too boring and so split the back wall in two and added a tower farther back.

For the inside of the castle, I added a variety of buildings and towers, based on my research. One aspect of the inner buildings that I will need to asses in my final model is how modular they are, as in this plan, they are all unique, and whilst that would make for more a more interesting design, they will take up a lot of texture space.

The two possibilities I have for the centre buildings are to either use a similar method that I used on the towers and walls, and make a few models to scale and rotate, duplicating one or two buildings, or to make several unique buildings, with only one or two unique sides each. These sides could then be duplicated, rotated, and sewn together to make different buildings, with few original textures.

Castle Research

Beginning with ht efirst thought that came into my head, I started with a broad search of Medieval castles, before narrowing down to English castles. In particular I'm fond of those with a stronger geometry instead of castles deaturing a lot of curves, and so I moved onto looking at more exotic castles with strong corners and straight walls, particularly Morocco.

The design of the battlements of the Morrocan castles and the Red Fort in Delhi particularly interested me, as well as their use of mostly flat surfaces, decorated with different shades of bricks.

Continuing from the Red Fort, I searched for Indian Castles in general, instead of specifying the Red Fort. The Castle in the cliff particularly stood out to me, and made me consider the idea of using the terrain more creatively than I had originally thought. Having previously studied Angkor Wat's architecture, I returned to the ruin also. The use of large towers in the centre of the buildings, as opposed to the outer walls, is an aspect that could be explored further.

I briefly looked at Scandinavia for another different style of architecture, and noted a lot of foliage in the images I found, something that could be used to add detail to the walls of my design.

Looking into games with interesting Architecture I came across the concept art and some screenshots of the Assassin's Creed games, which feature several designs that I would like to include, such as the idea of using a tiered landscape to add a more natural verticality to my castle.

The Moroccan architecture is a theme that I very much would like to follow, and so I decided to further research their designs for walls and doors, discovering their penchant for grant interiors as well as exteriors, something that could be used to add more detail to my finished product. Tunisian designs also stood out to me, as they largely appear as similar to that of Morocco, instead with a wider range of colours used in the abundance of arches and square buildings.