Hope everyone is staying safe at the moment given the current state of the world!
I’m currently in self-isolation and decided to use the time productively. I’ve started work on a medieval style castle, not sure yet how big it will be! or what the overall setting will be for the scene.
Any feedback or critique along the way is massively appreciated!
UPDATED 1ST POST WITH MOST RECENT:
It’s looking nice so far. I love the medieval type of structures more than modern ones.
If you don’t mind me asking, what object are you using? Because I would also like to build one myself in Blender, to an animated series I’m thinking of at the moment.
Besides that, I’m looking forward to more of your construction of the castle.
Thanks, I agree that much prefer medieval architecture - I love all the stone and block work.
Not sure what you mean by what object I’m using? The actual geometry is pretty simple. Wire-frame below.
I meant by what object, such as a plane or cube. Sorry to have you a little confused there.
Ah, you’re using the Wireframe system. Nice. I may try that when I have time to do it on my own castle.
Keep up the good work, by the way!
Added central tower and gate. Not sure yet on layout though, and may have this as a side gate entrance and build something more elaborate for the front.
I’m not sure you understand how 3d graphics works.
Let me try to explain it.
All objects regardless of it’s shape and method they were added are made of vertices placed in 3d space connected to each other with edges and faces. It’s not just they way it is in Blender. All software that uses 3d graphics work this way including games and even google earth.
There is no such a thing as wireframe system. Wireframe is just a preview of vertices and edges, so a display option and not a method or a workflow.
I hope it will clear things up for you 
Ah. I see. Thanks for the explanation. I’ve only started to learn Blender, since four months ago. I’ll get better in the software by doing my own projects.
Interior tower element. I’m trying to build this in a very modular way, such that I can play around with layouts and designs quite easily.
Made the back wall bigger, a larger gate and added walkways between the turrets. I’m thinking this element will be side-gates, and going to build a larger front-piece.
Also decided to play around with a few HDR options.
First layout for the full Castle. Will probably look at a large Keep/Courtyard in the centre.
Not sure on lighting and composition for final images yet. I may do a series of shots from different angles.
Any thoughts on whether people prefer the sunset or sunrise look would be greatly appreciated.
Nice work you did here 8-D
I like it very much !
What is it intended for ?
A game maybe ? Realtime rendering ? ( IMHO it’s low-poly enough for this 
)
Some ages ago i modeled this kind of modular castle parts and it was very handy for ‘generic’ castle building.
Unfortunately, medieval castle builders used to build walls and towers all different 
The main reason is that castles were built/partly destroyed/rebuilt/partly redestroyed/etc…
This is the reason why for Carcassonne 3D medieval city i rebuilt each wall/tower/inner room in a separate .blend…
This requires a big amount of time but it is the price for fidelity to reality.
Anyway, your models are really nice !
If you allow me 2 remarks though:
The 2-colors towers and walls make the models less realistic
In old days, castles were built with all the same stone blocks often all coming from the same dig.
—> the reason why carcassonne is built with really different kind of stones is that it was almost entirely rebuilt from ruins in 1876
You should dirty your walls.
for this you can use a secondary UV map that you’ll blend with your diffuse map.
The dirtmap i use is this one: ( it’s a JPG one. i use TGA format as it’s a lossless format )…
Here’s for giving you an idea the result in Knightsbury ( a modular realtime render walls/towers/gates i made years ago with Manorial ): Knightsbury XIV - A Walk Through a Medieval Town (Blender + Unity3d)
Answering your question, i use to prefer sunset
Now I can’t wait for your next work 
Happy blending !
EDIT: at last but not least, i think it would be interresting to introduce some irregularities in your models.
This would make them not clones of one-another.
For this, and though am not sure of what could be done ( I lack of time for doing tryouts ), the SORCAR procedural addon might be of some help…
What can be seen in this topic seems extremely interresting. However i got no idea for the how-to-make-castle-parts-different 
@pitibonom Thanks for the advice!
I’m planning this to be a series of high quality renders, rather than a game model.
My plan initially was to build things in a modular fashion so that I could quickly work out a proper layout of the castle, then go back and “spruce up” each element.
I’ve already got a very basic grunge texture build into the shader, but you’re definitely right that it needs more dirt and grime. You also make a good point about the two-tone colours, I’ll have a play around with the shaders and textures.
Maybe you could consider texture arrays so that you can easily change textures without the UV wraping trouble ( that i use to have )
Texture splatting is also kinda must have so that you can easily draw stones irregularities/differences on the walls. I implemented this in blender in unity for Carcassonne 3D but it became a no-go for realtime rendering on low-end android mobile devices
But if you don’t plan to real-time render your meshes on low-end devices this really gives a great visual enhancement ^^
Just because castle walls suffered from time and armies attacks…
I guess it could even be randomly set up procedurally with a noise texture and building heights with a simple rule: The higher is a building the more probable it fell and was rebuilt
as an illustration here’s one wall from carcassonne you can see on google street view
Okay for the ‘spruce up’ it’s a really good method ( i’d say it is IMHO the best one ) when you don’t need to model inside rooms and corridors. Care not to fall in the trap i fell: scene from models lib where finally each model was different x))
I don’t know what will be your final renderer, but if it’s intended to be kinda realtime, you should also consider AO global map.
For still pics, AO is natively rendered by Cycles, then all is okay. But in realtime, AO is extremely GPU stressing. What i do for carcassonne 3D is huge maps of 8K where i store my walls/towers AO bake ( and dirt ). This way the final rendering GPU only have one diffuse map and one dirt/AO map to blend and render. Wich is pretty fast to render even on slower GPUs.
happy blending !
Updated all the shaders to make the walls and towers more uniform, and added grunge/dirt maps. Although I do think I may need to add more as it’s not as dirty yet as I’d possibly like.
I’ve played around with the layout a couple times and I think I’ve settled on this now, although I’m not ruling out changing it further down the line. I don’t want to start poking holes in the mesh for the doorways to towers etc until I’m definitely happy with this.
I’ve also added adaptive subdivision and micro-displacement which I think has drastically improved the look. As always any thoughts or comments appreciated.
Interior view from the battlements. I realised as it was rendering that a few of my UVs are squashed, and that some of the geometry could definitely do with some bevels.
Might just be me, but the human looks a bit small in comparison to the brick texture. Could be wrong. Otherwise, it’s looking great so far. 
Added a central Keep and put in a very basic environment so that I could play around with a few camera angles.
I’m liking the idea of this being a harbour port in a cove.
