I felt the urge to make a medieval castle. I chose to base it on Conwy Castle in north Wales as I’ll be staying near there soon on holiday. I hope to photograph the walls for use as a texture, so this one is maybe temporary.
Aim is for realism, if not photorealism, then a nice render.
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=431
C&C very welcome.
That looks very good. Are you only basing it on that castle? Are you using bp’s or refpics?
My comment is more on general outline. I haven’t been to Wales (nor have seen this castle that you’re basing your render on), but I have seen a medieval castle in Warwick, England. One thing that struck me the most was the spaciness of such a castle – the towers, connected by walls, span out such huge areas for the inner courtyard. The last thing one would feel would be claustrophobia, and I fear that if I were standing in your castle, I’d be dying from it. Once again, I’ve never seen the Wales castle, but my feeling is that it’s too cluttered. The towers should be moved further apart and the walls elongated to fix this issue.
However, if you want to model it exactly on the real thing, and the real thing is cluttered, by all means, do so! 
However, keep in mind that artistic flexibility often calls for doing what looks appealing and not strictly what the actual subject looks like 
Since you’ve never seen the castle it can be very high and because it’s not so wide create the illusion that it’s claustrofobic. Look at the door and compare it’s height with the overall height of the castle and you’ll see that it’s pretty high. %|
Nice start. It will look much better in an environment.
I’ve been to Conwy castle (and to Warwick castle, and Caernarfon and Windsor and the White Tower and a whole lot of other castles and ruins South of Scotland). That’s a very good castle in the style of Conwy. We stayed in a B&B that overlooked Conwy (we had great views from our room). Your castle looks a lot like something the same builder would have done on another site (it’s a little bigger with more towers). I hae some pictures of Conwy I could post on my website (good for scenery but probably not much use for textures).
If you get a chance, go to Warwick castle. It’s one of the very few that were never sieged so the entire thing is complete, including the wooden tower floors. Madame Tussaud’s has a waxwork exhibit there as well.
For a brief time I thought our visit to Warwick was also going to result in a vist to the Olde Bailey; from the inside! We got stopped at the entrance when trying to pass a forged 20 pound note (we’re Americans; how were we supposed to know that the watermark was supposed to be the same as the picture on the front?)!!! Fortunately they took it very easy on us (the obvious tourtists on our honeymoon). They even accepted the note and gave us our change (here in the states they take the note but then you still have to pay with legitimate cash). It did add a bit of unexpected excitement to our trip.
Pfft, It’s only a model
It’s good, but it’d be nice to see it in a proper setting, and not just on a plane.
Update !
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=432
What’s changed…
Angled all the pointy-battlement bits (crenallations ?). Need capstones on the sloping surface
Added lots of arrow-slits and windows.
Made the lighting slightly yellow.
Made the bricks smaller.
Added doors to allow access through towers to adjoining battlements, but door texture needs to be darker and more varied.
Added flags, these need some work though.
Now for replies…
wouteb : I’m trying to keep it close to Conwy (not exact though). I’m using this image for the basic outline :
And many, many reference pictures for the rest.
sno4wy : Well, different castles have different designs. Warwick is bigger I think, but Conwy isn’t exactly small - the walls, I read, are 75 feet high ! I very much doubt you’d get claustraphobia inside it. I suspect the portcullis/bricks are throwing off the scale , so I made the bricks smaller to help with this and added doors and windows. When I do an interior shot we’ll see if it looks claustraphobic ! 
Dstone : I haven’t been to Conwy (even though I live in Wales) but I have been to Warwick. It’s great to see something that’s more than a shell. I’ll probably use interior shots of Warwick for references when I make the interior parts.
Forged note ? Yeesh, that’s bad luck to get given one on a trip - I’ve never seen a counterfeit note. Very nice of them to accept it though !
anogarlr, PTDC : I’m deliberately avoiding making an environment yet, as this’ll distract me from modelling the castle.
no comments on the update, looks great
looking good Rhysy2. Textures are great. You seem to have a very distinctive and recognisable style. Some bits are looking a bit too angular for such an old building. Am puzzled why there are walls on one side of the ramparts and no walls on the other side.
:o Wow, that’s really good!
Update :
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=433
What’s changed :
Added capstones to the angled crenallations. Not sure about the texture on these.
Made the door texture better.
Added a different texture to the bit of the battlements people walk on.
Added arches around most of the doors.
Added soldiers created by plexersheep ! Couldn’t get them to cast shadows though, that needs fixing. An error with AO and only shadow material I think.Also lighting is unintentionally brighter than last time, apparently because I lowered the AO samples by 2. :-? This will be restored to its previous, slightly darker setting next time.
Most of the updates aren’t clearly visible (plexersheep’s soldiers in particular, which are really rather nice
), I’ll render a close up or two.
wouteb, R2Blend : Thanks ! It still needs much work though.
GCat : I have a style ?!? :o Egads ! Actually most of my stuff lately is looking like strategy game models - I’ve had two independent comparisions to this. So I shall try and avoid this as much as possible here.
If by angular you mean sharp edges, that’s because I haven’t bevelled anything yet - makes the file easier to work with. If you mean the building itself is angular - blame Edward I ! 
Their are walls only on one side because… umm… they ran out of stone… okay, I got lazy.
Crits desired !
Would just like to point out that of the 7 archers on the battelements, 5 have chosen to hang around in sections where there is a wall on each side. Also, of the 2 archers which seem happy with not having that extra wall, one is heading towards the door. Is this a conincidence or a message to the chief architect?
NEWSFLASH: archers refuse to fight on northern battelments cause of health and safety issues
GCat : 
How can I say no to that ?
Update :
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=434
What I did :
Here’s a closer look at one of the soldiers. I’ve also :
Added arches around every door.
Changed the texture for walkable surfaces (not visible).
Made a better bumpmap for the bricks texture.
Altered the material for the diagnonal support things on the turrets.
Put safety walls on all the battlements. Soldiers no longer risk falling to their deaths unless they’re pushed !Will change the flagpole to wood, don’t think they had fiberglass in the 13th century… anything else I ought to do ?
Oh and the poses of the soldiers are just temporary, eventually I want the castle to be under attack.
Hey, looking good Rhysy. It desparately needs an environment though. Keep it up.
Looking really good.
Again, I think your lighting is hurting the image. For WIP, it is fine, but I hope you change it for the final. If you need some help, let me know and I can see what I can do for you.
Also, you may want to play with a few cloud texture layers on the bricks to dirty them up some. Set the colour values to like 0.2 - 0.4 and vary each cloud layer to get varying colours of dirt.
BgDM
anogarlr : thanks, but no environment yet. I did have a brief mess around with Terragen but it will take a good few hours of tweaking to get anything decent.
BgDM : Dirt’s always a good idea, I’ll add some.
Lighting I did not think was a problem but I’d much appreciate any advice you have. My lighting setups are always ridiculously simple. In this case I have a very slightly yellow sun lamp as the main light, another sun just casting shadows, and a yellow hemi, all in the same direction. Also some plain coloured AO.
As I probably won’t have time to do anything else to this until I return from holiday, here is the bare beginnings of the great hall :
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=435
It still needs a door, gothic arches supporting the roof which it also needs, tables, chairs, tapestrys, suits of armour… etc, etc… and it should probably be a lot less yellow, too.
I’m back, with an update !
Removed four turrets. The internet would have me believe there were originally eight, but apparently this is a filthy lie.
Made the remaining turrets a bit taller. They should really be thinner and at the edges of the towers not the centres, but… ah well.
The level of the arrowloops now alternates, giving differing fields of fire.
Spiked the merlons.
Using authentic wall texture. I made a bump map for it as well, but the bumping effect is very weak, even though the bumpmap is black and white and the nor slider is set to maximum.I’ll resume the hall once I’ve made the remaining corrections to the main structure - for example. the outer barbicans are completely wrong and there’s a 91 foot deep well in the inner ward.
The internet rocks, but there’s no subsitute for going there !
And you can see all these updates if ye click ye olde linke belowe :
http://www.solarflarestudios.com/forum/download.php?id=438
Wow, that looks great. Make a hill in terragen and put that thing on it 