Modelling the steps

To model the steps was pretty simple.
First model a step from a cube and keep it on the origin, preferably keeping to simple whole numbers. This is so we can work out the specific details when entering the data into the 'duplicate special' controls for which axis for rotation or height of the step.


Creating spiral steps














Creating straight steps













For this we do the same but take off the rotation value we entered and keep it at zero.


Applying non-linear bend deformer













Once i had the steps i then laid them out onto the castle plane in the right position and then selected both the castle wall and steps to apply a non linear bend deformer, so when i bend the castle the steps curve at the same degree with the castle which was a problem i was faced with before knowing i can apply a deformer to more than one object.

Arches and Archways

I just thought it's a good idea to see the types of arches.

I thought best to get on with modelling a rough arch, and from the Rochester Castle Pictures i have been working from that shape and design.















I began with taking the square base of the structure, the cylindrical columns and round arch.







































From the drawing i made i need patterns on the arch, so as an experiment i added edge loops then just played with extruding and moving around faces on the arch -































So i thought to look into some existing patterns, maybe Tudor or Norman design















Taking note of the different layer depth




















This arch doesn't have too much in depth design, but it has a cool focus at the top centre of the arch,

The final story

The final plot is that we are creating an environment for King Arthur. We are showing the famous scene where he claims Excalibur but instead of Lady of the Lake being in the water we have her on a ruined castle island.
First we are show a painting or picture of the castle which is in 2d, then we go to the 3d environment we have modelled. Arthur comes in on his boat through the arch which is coming out from the water. We could have the shot of the castle as he looks up giving a nice perspective shot. He has a lantern on the boat but he then takes a torch from the wall and lights it from his lantern which is done after the mooring of the boat. Arthur then continues into the first room to see the tapestry detailing the origins of Excalibur or his prophecy about the sword and what he will become. This idea could be on stone where the last part of the prophecy is broken off or if it is on the cloth maybe part has been burnt and illegible so Arthur then has to fulfill the destiny without knowing. This tells the viewer what this quest is and continues on to up the stairs into the main castle.

After the journey up the stairs of the castle there could be history continued so that we don't have the whole story, so we then enter this little room before entering the centre of the castle..

Rest to be finalized and discussed with the group. But mainly i have talked us through the start which is where i am modelling.

We cannot decide whether to have the castle all ruined until Arthur takes the sword from the Lady of the Lake statue and then the castle returns to perfect, which would show that he has done something good. Or the other would be to have the castle ruined and then the castle submerges under water once he takes the sword, then left seeing Arthur sail away.

I prefer the last one where the castle is then submerged but i shall see what the group thinks.

Lighting
I need to research and try some different moonlighting tutorials to see what works best for our mood and setting, if we want the statur to be hit by strong moonlight then the moon will be either directly above or beaming through the castle window arches. Which the placement will effect the shots and what needs to be modelled to look amazing and what does not.

Contact with Rochester Cathedral

I contacted Rochester Cathedral last week asking about whether they would be interested in us making a 3d version of the Cathedral in its glory day showing the stages of the different building process as the Cathedral has a variety of architects work over time.

------------

Hello there,

My name is Lydia Fabian and i am currently a student of Ravensbourne College University.

I am a second year animation student and my current project involves modeling a 3d environment on whatever i choose. I have been to look at Rochester Cathedral and it took my breath away.

I am writing to ask of you if it would be possible to model the
Rochester Cathedral with how it looked through the different building sections as it was being built over time.
Please contact me on the email address l.fabian@rave.ac.uk

or my mobile number is 07596 078 089

Hope to hear from you soon as i'm keen to get started.

Best Wishes

Lydia Fabian


-----------
Reply
-----------

Dear Lydia

Thank you for your enquiry via the website.
This sounds like an interesting project, happy to talk further!
Have you looked at the panoramic tour we have just put on the website?

http://www.rochestercathedral.org/pano/

If you are able to produce something to looks at how it has changed we
may even be able to make use of it.

Do give me a call

Regards

Edwina

--------------

Dr Edwina Bell

Director of Operations

Rochester Cathedral, The Chapter Office, Garth House, The Precinct,
Rochester, ME1 1SX

Direct Dial: 01634 810060 Mobile: 07766 857752


We have decided as a team to continue with what we originally had planned, we have worked on our purpose and i will write it clearly in the next post. I would have liked to have worked on something live with a client. So maybe that could be a personal project over the summer with a few friends.

Castle History

To summarize i was thinking to my self, why are we designing a round castle? where did the round castle come from? what other types of castle were there? who's idea was it to build such a thing and what were castle's used for?

Then i understand that many castles were then modified in some way after its initial reason was no longer needed. Then i moved on to think what type of people lived here or owned these castles? What did a castle mean?

Castles were brought into England by Duke William of Normandy (William the Conqueror) as an advance tactic for the Invasion of the throne of England.

Motte and Bailey
The first castle was a Motte and Bailey. The Motte was an earth mound which had a wooden tower (later to be built with stone) on the top which was used by the Lord residence and observation post. Along side the Motte was the Bailey which was a larger shorter mound where the main activities of the castle went on.

Motte and Bailey castle's were quick, efficient and easily built up and down the land of Britain in 1066 during the Norman Invasion. England had no castles so the invasion was successful.














Norman Stone Square Castle Keeps
After the invasion of England the Motte and Bailey castles were not easy to defend from attackers, as they could easily be set on fire and the wood was rotting in the earth.
This lead the Normans to build stone square keeps which were easy to build but easy to batter down or collapse in battle. However 'splayed plinths' were added when working the construction to support the tower.


Rochester Castle













Round Stone Castle Keeps
So the reason for having a round tower was because even though they were more difficult and complex to build, the round shape would cause arrows and later cannon balls to bounce off without causing a great deal of damage. Round were not subjected to undermining when being attacked, which is when the enemy would mine underneath a towers structure and take the earth away and replace the earth to support the structure with wooden beams. The miners would then set the beams on fire leaving no support for the square tower which would then lead the tower to collapse.
One of the earliest round keep castles know in England was at New Buckingham Castle built 1150.


Clifford's Tower - York Castle














Round and Shell Stone Castle Keeps
This involved having a huge thick circular wall surrounding the inner keep, this was because the mound of earth could not hold the weight of the stone. The walls of the inner keep were usually hollow in effect of the weight bared. trouble with this design is that there wasn't a great defense going on here.

Restormel Castle - Cornwall














Concentric Castles
Concentric castles were huge, they did not house one keep but many keeps, they had more than one outer wall, one lower than the inner wall so that archers could fire over the first wall of defense. The walls surrounded the new towns built around the castle, built by King Edward the 1st to subjugate the Welsh, King Edward the 1st had bankrupted England as they were so costly to make. Although kings later would make good use of these Castles.


Caernarfon Castle Conway Harlech - Wales





















Here's some figures of the variations in designing a keep

• Castle Rising Castle: 50 feet high with walls 7 feet thick.
• Dover Castle: 83 feet high with walls 12 feet thick.
• Newcastle Castle: 75 feet high with walls 18 feet thick.
• Norham Castle: 90 feet high with walls 15 feet thick.
• Kenilworth Castle: 80 feet high with walls 14 feet thick.

In my next post i will be looking at the different areas in medieval styles of castle architecture, between 1066 - 1603. Romanesque of the Normans, Edwardian of the concentric castles, Gothic style in favor by the Plantagenets and then the coastal forts and palaces of the Tudors during the Renaissance. From fortification to practical use and comfort.

Concept Update

Ok so after a long day of talking and trying to come up with a final concept we hope to eventually move onto modeling the basic structure so everyone can crack on.

The four of us were also talking about reforming a new layout, and after much development we ended up refining our design for something that works, for each section isn't just there for the sake of it.

Also Matt came in with some really cool concept ideas such as a castle hand or a castle boat, i would have loved to have gone and explored these concepts. Although i personally felt a bit nervous about how much time there is left to change majority of our planning now.

I'm not sure if i have mentioned also that matt is doing 2d character animation on top of our 3d environment, this idea came on when i came across this video before Matt joined our group.

http://www.iaingardner.co.uk/call_for_help.html

We first began with a rough model of three tiers before reaching the inside of the castle. The three tiers are ;
tier 1 - a dock boat area for where the character will enter the environment.
tier 2 - fountain and tree before reaching castle ruins
tier 3 - castle ruins

The tiers are linked by winding crumbled stairs which i will be modeling as well as the first tier (the dock area).

This is a really rough model of the three tiers to help the team visualize what's where (modeled by Sam)











































My voiced issue to the group about having three tiers was that with our timescale is it too much for only 6 weeks left. So we thought about just having two tiers.
Tier 1 - dock
Tier 2 - Castle ruins/tree/fountain


























We have moved the fountain and tree into the centre of the castle, making it the attraction for the character in the environment and our viewing audience.

This idea for the two tiers got us thinking about what is important in our environment, so we sourced advice from Dan Dalli. Dan was saying how you shouldn't just have something in the environment for no reason, also that we needed to decide whether our character was discovering the environment, and how he/she interacts with the environment. Dan also said how everyone does basic fly-through of their environment for submission.


Story - orb and character.. leads us to top

NIGHT moon



So after much deliberating we ended up with a floor plan like this..


































We kept two tiers on being the dock, which leads up a stair case round the castle outside walls, we enter a little room before entering the main castle ruin. This will work up some suspense for whats inside.. the glowing orbs around this tree/fountain.

I took the initiative to work on this floor plan just tweaking bits as i would like them.












I gave the staircase a jagged look and also like a little platform before entering the door into the room before the main of the castle.













Also i un-evened out the top of the castle ruin












And from the inside view the stairs wind down but don't remain touching the floor.

The rough plot is that some one is exploring the ruins as they are attracted to this glow coming from inside the ruin walls (the tree and fountain). He/she wanders around, crouching and peeping round corners to interact with the environment.
Not forgetting the use of SOUND to draw our attention, and also the use of lighting.
The character is in aura of this place which give's us chance to work out some camera shots showing off the environment.

Star Wars - Clone Wars Series

Thinking ahead for texturing purposes i read about how the textures were created and how the man in charge used to work on the photo-realistic ILM films.

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/07/25/designing-the-clone-wars/

"We’re about 80 percent of the detail [of the live action], relying on painterly brushstrokes for surface details."

I painted, like a painting in Photoshop, with streaky lines and beautiful wispy ethereal formations of color, resembling what would happen if you squirt milk into water.

"I painted a whole bunch of small little textures with my stylized way of drawing to kind of make it look like art. A real quick kind of gouache, goopy paint look, which is kind of the look of the show."

The rooster tail effect can be seen behind and under the speeder bikes from the episode "Trespass"












The two images below show the nice textures painted on their characters from Clone Wars series. I will be needing to keep an eye out and experimenting with more brushes to get the feel of what i want for the brick arches.