Mountain-top Castle (2022)
This was the first large-scale personal project that I did. The design and architecture of the castle heavily reference the ohenzollern Castle in Germany, but I took some creative liberty in the layout of the buildings and the addition of other architectural elements, though it still closely resembles it. This project let me experiment with the creation of modular kits, terrains, and procedural texturing inside Renderman.
​
I learned a lot as I went with this project, to the point that I'd do things a bit different now, but I had lots of fun with it. Further development is being done to create a mountain forest terrain to go along
Scroll down to learn more!
​
Maya, Substance 3D Painter, Houdini, Renderman.
​
Project breakdown
References
I started by finding references of general castle layouts. My main objective for this project was to get some experience with modeling modular kits to be used in environments, so I settled for the design of the Hohenzollern castle for its distinct elements. I also liked that it was atop a mountain and felt attracted for the Gothic Revival architecture instead of the traditional Medieval castle.
​
I then gathered references of the specific castle from different angles and broke down the architectural elements that made it.
​
While this particular castle was my ain reference, I decided to take creative liberty with the creation of certain elements and the layout of the castle.
Elements
These are the main modular elements I modeled for the castle. They include different styles of windows, roofs and battlements that could be duplicated around depending on where on the castle they located, with the most ornamental ones in the main building.
​
Other elements include tradiitonal Gothic elements such as buttresses, pinnacles, and spires.
​
Assets were textured in Substance Painter. Materials for the cobblestone floor and windows from Substance's Share Library.
​
I also had a chance to explore Maya's Paint Effects tools to create the grass and vines near the castle gates.
​
I procedurally generated boulders in Houdini to create the base that would connect the base of the castle to the mountain terrain..These were also procedurally textured in Renderman for Maya.
​
I consider this an on-going project and I'm currently working on a terrain mountain forest in Houdini to elevate the scene and learn more about Houdini's terrain and environemt tools.