Castle at the foot of mountain - First project on my own

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#1

Hello everyone,

I would like to show you my first own project, which I took after completing Dino section of Complete Blender course. This project was finished in 2 weeks of late afternoon. night work on it, sometimes even up to 2AM, when I was in the zone and totally forgot about time :smiley: . My inspiration for this theme was topic from another user. So, I would like to thank and also curse you @Piwek :smiley: with your Castello. It all started with plan to make some walls and tower, but as I progressed, the ideas were flowing and scope of the project was getting bigger and bigger. It started to be a problem, when week 1 of my work was coming to the end, I had to thank myself for all the great ideas and made a deal to not add a single idea, unless I am done with everything that is on my table at that moment.

I have to make an apology to @Grant_Abbitt for skipping the Castle part of your course, I could not help myself, I promise I will get there, but my motivation for this was stronger :upside_down_face:

Within last two weeks I also mentioned working on this and hooked few community members, so I am tagging you to not miss it @Destiny , @theFlameGame, @mfortunato

Everyone is very greeted for any feedback given, so do not be shame and express your thoughts about my project :slight_smile:

Most of the pictures here will be in the night set up, to show the lightning I spent lot of time with. So this first picture is little exception :slight_smile: .

Castle_whole_day
Castle_whole_day1920Ă—1080 367 KB

Night pictures coming:

Castle_whole_night
Castle_whole_night1920Ă—1080 217 KB

Down view to the Castle from hill:

From_hill_night
From_hill_night1920Ă—1080 285 KB

Side_view_night
Side_view_night1920Ă—1080 341 KB

The Gate:

Gate_front_night
Gate_front_night1920Ă—1080 227 KB

Interior views:

Towern_view_night
Towern_view_night1920Ă—1080 193 KB

Training_ground_night_3
Training_ground_night_31920Ă—1080 231 KB

Center_night
Center_night1920Ă—1080 228 KB

Bakery_night2
Bakery_night21920Ă—1080 282 KB

Baskets_storage_night
Baskets_storage_night1920Ă—1080 211 KB

Blacksmith_night
Blacksmith_night1920Ă—1080 236 KB

Torch detail:

Torch_detail
Torch_detail1920Ă—1080 78.3 KB

13 Likes
WIKI - Interesting forum topics, problem solving issues
#2

Wow, you put a good deal of stuff into this one - nice dense forest, elaborate torches, medieval amenities and more! Great job!

There is a castle project at the beginning of the Blender Environments course; were you doing that, or did you just coincidentally want to make your own castle? It sort of sounds like the latter, and I’m just curious =)

2 Likes
#3

I do have Blender environments course, as mentioning in the begginning text, too long, I know :smiley:
I am participating in Complete blender creator and saw post of another user here with Castle…that is what drove my inspiration and focus towards this standalone project.

Thinking about making a Castle defense game with this model…not sure if that is wise :smiley:

Any advice or constructive critic what should I do differently?

2 Likes
#4

Whoops - totally missed that somehow!

That can certainly be done, it’s just that there are some additional things to think about when it comes to model preparation for engine use. At this level (low-poly hard surface modelling), you shouldn’t run into any major issues if your model is clean (no z-fighting, etc.), unless you try to use procedural materials like what the dino section briefly introduces. That won’t work by default, and you would need to look into how to bake materials to textures. You might also need to recreate or reconfigure the Blender lights you’ve placed around the torches (I work with Godot, so I’m not sure how Unity will handle this).

In terms of actually making a castle defense game with this, you’ll need to know a bit about animation, nav meshes, and probably state machines as well depending on how sophisticated you want the enemies to be. If your controls would involve the mouse, you might need some raycasting knowledge as well so that you can make things in the 3D space interactive. I don’t know the Unity courses very well, but from a quick look through the Complete Unity 3D course, the final two sections (Realm Rush and Zombie Runner) seem to cover most of what you would need.

In short, go for it, but take your time with learning all the necessary bits and pieces before diving headfirst into it =)

4 Likes
#5

Great job, I like it! :+1: Really looks like a lot of work where I’m standing ^^

One thing I remember from my last course a while back (the Blender Environment course) was the option to add grass in a relatively easy fashion. Because the contrast between the detailed castle and the relatively drab ground caught my eye right away. Have a look at About 'Particle System Basics'! - #24 by bmartin to see what I mean.

3 Likes
#6

Wow this is just another universe of creativity, just incredible. I appreciate the dedication that you put into it as well.

3 Likes
#7

@CoreyKnecht I actually have more experience in Unity than Blender, but yes all those 3D things are new to me, so I will finish my blender course, make more models for this scene and give it a try…so there might be a game within next year. Enjoyed every moment of creating this!

@bmartin 2 weeks of work on one project add up and here we have the result, but yes, it was a lot of work and I am proud about the result. As I mention in the first post, I had to scrap all the ideas I had, otherwise I would not finish this project in this year :smiley: and finishing, sharing a getting feedback is more important to me. Will check the particle system for grass. Thanks for the TIP

@Destiny when I was creating this, I had a lot of TABS in the Opera open with different pictures of towers, walls, torches, etc…getting my inspiration and I can tell you, I would not get here without it. When creating the gate I had idea issues how to model it, so it can blend with walls easily, that was terrible :smiley: Thank you for your kind words and appreciation, the feedback is very important for me. If I may, you can take it as a challenge if you want, to make a castle on your own, could be low poly, very simple, nothing like this :wink:

3 Likes
#8

In order to avoid this, I have been using PureRef, a handy tool to grab images from Internet, organize them and keep them at sight, with options to export them to be able to use them as reference images inside Blender when you wish. I think it was a suggestion by Grant Abbit in one of the courses I did recently and I have not stopped using it for my projects. Maybe you can give it a try. :smiley:

3 Likes
#9

@Gaaster Seconding the recommendation for PureRef. It’s free, lightweight, and much, MUCH more useful for reference images than a bunch of open tabs would be ^v^

Indeed it was. I can’t remember where, but he probably recommends it in several courses actually.

4 Likes
#10

Okay, I will give it a try :slight_smile: thank for the recommendation.

3 Likes
#11

Excellent castle much improved on Grant’s. Proper walkways for the walls and a full gatehouse too. Lots of extra bits an pieces as well.
Substantial moat should hold off most enemy!

4 Likes
#12

Thanks for your kind words. Do not know how Grant’s castle looks like, I just went with the inspiration from one of the topics here and lots of pictures on the internet.

Any advice for improvement, what to the next time better?

Woow, thank you very much!! @FedPete I would not tell that my first own project, with such a low skill set I have right now would make it into the Inspirational and exceptional section in you WIKI, I am honored.

3 Likes
#13

That’s because you put a lot of work into this project, just using basic Blender knowledge.
This created a beautiful scenic environment. It’s a great example of what you can do and an example for others starting with Blender.

3 Likes
#14

Ah the ones you will have seen were students following the GameDev beginner’s course. One section makes a very simple castle.

It is great as it is, I miss a central keep though. Which would be more usual to have.
Next step in Blender would be to start using pbr textures probably.

1 Like
#15

Central keep is there, under the construction :slight_smile: you can see the big wooden structure there without roof and walls but with some building materials on the base. I wanted to have a partialy built structure and decided for the keep.

Yes, that would add more realism, I agree. Cant it be achieved also with material nodes? I have that course bought and would like to go through after I finish the beginner course.

#16

Yes it can be done with material nodes. Personally I dislike them as a method though always default to image based. But it can depend on the style of the end result wanted.

1 Like
#17

Wow dude, this looks amazing, this is the level of creativity i want to achieve, i can tell a lot of work and effort is put into this, i love the lighting and ambiance, also did you color every tile manually? I couldn’t see any repeating pattern, awesome work

2 Likes
#18

Would like to hear more about it, what could be good use cases for the material nodes vs. pbr textures? In which scenario it is better to use one of those methods?

#19

Thank youvery much for your kind words :slight_smile: I think that you are also very creative! Love your Dungeon scene with added characters, your simple revolver model and your last…weaponized T-Rex?? It is totally great idea, I would not think about it at all.

Yes, I put a lot of time into this and also learnt a lot during the creation. Tiles on walls and towers were picked manually. But I will show you something :slight_smile:

Here I have some prefabs for building the actual castle, the long wall was the only wall I created, all the others are disected and tiles at the edges prepared so it can blend together without noticing. Painting the darker tiles was more work, but it did not take much time as you would tell.

Walls_and_tower_prefabs
Walls_and_tower_prefabs1920Ă—1080 116 KB

4 Likes
#20

I have worked with both PBR and material nodes and am currently following a course about those nodes. In my relatively short experience, using PBR textures is usually faster, and it leads to great results with surfaces like the ones in that castle, for a fraction of the effort/experimentation/computer power. I would say that working with nodes after having tried for some time with various PBR textures (which can/must be combined with some node manipulation, because it does not have to be either A or B), and seeing what you can do with them and how, is more profitable and a gradual ramp to learn to use material nodes. But you are clearly working hard to learn, so you can try :smiley:

2 Likes

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