Rian MacBride - Project 1: Castle

 Concept:

The Scarlet Keep - Destiny 2

In-game screenshot - Central Bridge 

    My inspiration for my castle is the Scarlett Keep, a huge space-wizard castle from the video game Destiny 2. I chose this because, at its core, the Keep is composed of one large tower, and a drawbridge leading up to the entrance. The Scarlett Keep is located on the Moon, which I thought would be a cool location to play on, and there is a large amount of detail on the tower and surrounding structures that would help me learn some more detail-orientated tools in Rhino. Plus, it's from a video game. So I got to play a video game for my project research. Win-win.

Process:

Wireframe

Ghosted

Rendered

    When I opened Rhino, I had no idea where to start. So I did what I was suggested and started to draw. I embedded a reference image and started to draw on top of it. I drew and extruded the bridge archways, then started to work on the central tower. Starting with a truncated cone, I started to build up the tower. There are some really cool spikes protruding from the main tower into the ground, acting as anchors for the tower. I drew and extruded one, then used the array curve tool to copy it around the central tower. I did the same thing for the triangular bits on the tower as well. I used the chamfer tool a lot on these spikes, trying to get them to a point, and I think they turned out well. I could have and should have done the same to the spikes extending from the tower's apex. I did a similar thing with these as the ground anchors, drawing them from the reference image, and using the arraycrv tool to copy them around. To finish out the tower, I created a circular ledge using a half sphere, and the boolean difference tool to create a series of archways on this ledge from some extruded curves. The final bit was the bridge and rock structures. The bridge was simply a rectangle with the blend surface tool on the edges to create a rounded edge. I created a small spike on the bridge and array linered them along the edges. The rock structures don't look as natural as I would have liked them to look, but they serve their purpose. 

Materials:

Arial/Birds eye

Perspective

Pedestrian

Tower Entrance

Tower Apex

        The material in-game is bone and rock-like material, so I used mostly rock textures for this. Bearing the name in mind, I went with a dark red color scheme across the board. The central tower is a Scarlett color, and I put a rock surface on it with a crackle bump map. This gave the tower a sort of old and cracked appearance which I really liked. The spikes, anchors, and triangular plating all use a brushed and scratched metal texture. I put a brushed titanium material on it, with a very scratched overlay as a bump map. The bridge arches use a similar material to the tower, with a rock overlay and cracked bump map. The only difference is a slightly lighter red hue. I again used the chamfer tool on the outer edges to make the points sharper, and I also played with the fillet edge tool on the inner arches. Makes them rounded over and more accurate to the in-game archways. The bridge uses a light marble material, with bright red highlights along its width. The bridge spikes are also a bright red metal material, but with a scratched overlay. The ground uses a moon texture I found online. I tried to get a background of the moon, but I couldn't get anything that I thought looked good, so I left it as studio light. Because of this though, the shadow quality is very poor, I could have spent more time making the shadows look better.