Thessa Vu - Assignment 1 - Castle

Inspiration
My castle was inspired by the old castles and cathedrals of Europe. Along with the basic grouped together building look, I tried to incorporate parts of the architecture like the spires and the window placements. Although I incorporated the old stone look, I did give it more of a bright, fantasy-like appearance rather than the grand, historic appearance as in the references.

Castle Reference

Cathedral Reference

Process
For my model, I first started off by building the base and basic castle shape using the box, cylinder, and pyramid tools. After placing the shapes where I wanted them and being satisfied with the overall composition, I started to add the details. I created a small rectangle for the windows and used the linear array tool to multiply it. I then used the Boolean difference tool to cut out the rectangular shapes from the walls of the castle. For the smaller details like the flags, I used the line and shape tools to draw out the shapes. After, I trimmed the unnecessary parts, joined the open curves into one closed curve, then extruded it. I copied and pasted these parts and put them where they were needed until I finished the model.

Ghosted - Naked Edges

Ghosted - Layers

Materials
For my model, I used a total of seven materials. The walls of the castle are made of a white translucent ceramic material with the addition of a downloaded brick texture to give it the old European architecture feeling. For the roof, stairs, fountain, and outer walls of the castle, I used two multi-layer optics materials, one being the low-pass filter 500nm and the other the high-pass filter 750nm. Because there were no leaf related materials, I used the sponge material for the foliage and colored it green, and the dirt underneath the foliage is made of old wood planks. For the base of the whole castle, I applied the champagne fizz paint material and finished it off by using a white leather material for the flags. Overall, I tried to give my castle an aesthetic design rather than a realistic one. I applied mostly blue lighting around the model and added tints of pink and yellow for a bright and happy tone for the piece.

Ghosted

Bird's Eye View

Pedestrian View