Castle-reconstruction - need serious, focused criticism

I am doing a reconstruction of a local Danish castle, only ruins remains left today.

I have come up with this model, but I am not quite satisfied with the result, although I can’t figure out what is wrong with it either.

As it may eventually be displayed in a museum (but I don’t know yet), I need you to throw all the criticism (or questions) against this model, but most importantly, tell me what can be improved.

The general shape is done, the gate apparently did look like this.

MAJOR UPDATE: Just got some new information about the castle:


I think it looks good already. Perhaps use a bevel-modifier on the objects to give them more realistic corners. The grass is too uniform, it would be different towards the corner to the wall and the transition to the bottom. The texture of the horizontal beams of the bridge look a bit too large in scale, and you may want to add some imperfections on the straight lines of the building (the bevel will partly improve this already). That’s all I can think of.

Hope it helps.

The image gives a really good first impression. I agree about the bridge and I would like to add that the textures on the walls seem a little flat. You might need to change the angle of the sun so that it casts more interesting shadows and brings out the texture more. It could be you need to increase the bump/displacement of your texture or just add a just a little reflectivity/gloss to the stones but I cant really tell because the light is too uniform and its hard to guess from where it comes from.

Thanks for the feedback. I have updated the render. Please let me know what you think about it now!

Looks much better now. I’d still increase the bevel radius a bit, but it’s only because I missed it at the first place.

What I’m wondering now is if the grass is standing parallel to the surface normals, or if it follows the z-axis. On the left side, it looks like it’s normal. I’d change this to +z.

(sorry for being brutal)
Not that museums usually display thrilling historical pictures, this still needs quite some improvements to look a bit interesting.

  • the guy looks like an npc from an old game with his rigid pose and we don’t know what he’s doing
  • all the materials look very fake and some textures are pixelated
  • the sky and lighting are very boring
  • the vegetation looks very fake too and very uniform (apart from needing more diversity you need some bushes and trees at least in the far end)
  • it could also use some natural rocks
  • there’s pixel aliasing on the walls and grass
  • the edges have no bevel

Thanks for the feedback. What can I do to improve lighting?
What is an interesting sky?

Thanks for the tip, see my new update!

have you looked at some artistic reference ?

I have none. I am the first person in the entire world to have created such a reconstruction of this particular castle.

I am aware that there might exist a drawing made by an architect, but I haven’t seen it and it is not published. Aside from that, mine is the first (or at least one of the first) reconstruction attempts of this castle.

I have only written references and an old drawing from 1677 which contains very little details, to say the least.

Looks even better. Perhaps you should leave the old versions of the image online, such that we can see the progress more clearly!

You could still refine the line of transition between the rocky bottom and the vegetation on top of the barrow, it has a very harsh, straight cut now. The edges of the building are still too straight to be photorealistic. You would need to add some variatioin there to make it fully believeable. But I think that you already reached the level of most museum illustrations I have seen with this one.

Aside from the modeling, the picture would benefit from more contrast I think. The lighting doesn’t look boring to me, it’s the missing contrast that makes it a bit flat.

I was not talking about artistic reference for this particular castle but any artwork with a castle that you like and could take inspiration from. You never make artwork with only your head, or else you will restart art history over and over.

Is this better?

(updated, see original post)

The grass line is great now. Have you tried to increase the number of grass particles? It’s a bit low in density, increasing it by a factor of 5 in the children section would improve it, I guess.

About the straight edges, I think you have to add variation in the same scale as the rocks that form the wall.

But all in all, I really like the picture.

Thanks. See the latest render, I think it is now finished.

I like it!

Well to me it’s not much better but, okay.

I simply can’t figure out what I am doing wrong here, since it is not photorealistic.

It looks… fake. There is not much else I can do, removing the character will not help much (and its there for a purpose, to show scale/proportions). There’s something about the lighting, and I tried removing the fog glow in compositor but that doesn’t help either.

I did give all the materials bump and glossiness.

Those super flat coloured building openings don’t help. The lighting is just too… lit, there is no real shading happening. Did you use an HDRI? Perhaps it is too intense? Using a camera with a shorter depth of field might help. That bridge is way too sharp and flat in comparison with everything else in the photo. What did you use to render it Cycles?

I used HDRI. Now when I come to think about it, I didn’t actually create any normal maps for my textures. I just connected the wall and wood texture directly into the height of the bump-node, and the bump to diffuse and gloss. I forgot to spend 2 minutes creating bump maps.