Cgtuts+ Workshop #34 Castle
tuts workshop

Cgtuts+ Workshop #34 Castle

on Oct 31st 2012 with 4 comments

We’re back with another entry in our weekly community project, where we post a render or animation created by a member of the Cgtuts+ community, and ask you to provide feedback and constructive criticism on their work. It’s a great way to learn more about the intricacies of computer graphics, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued by your fellow artists!

Quick Ground Rules

  • Be nice! We’ve deliberately chosen work that isn’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
  • Feel free to offer any type of advice on – Modeling, Texturing, Materials, Lighting, Rendering, Composition, etc.
  • You can also link to another render that you feel offers a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

So let’s take a look, here’s this week’s entry created by Ostap Babskyy!

Castle

Cgtuts+ Castle artist Render critique

A Little Background

I’m modeling this castle for a school project. It actually once existed and stood near my city (Lviv, Ukraine.) In the creation process I tried to keep the polygons to a minimum, and create the beauty with nice texture maps, the whole castle has about 100,000 polygons (there’s also a lot of stuff inside the castle).

The whole castle is UV mapped, I’ve also added some ivy on the walls (a neat plugin from guruware). The lighting is a simple V-Ray sun. I need some advice on how to make the walls and rooftops more vivid and crisp. Thanks!

Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently? Any thoughts on how it could be improved or taken to the next level. Chime in below!

The most constructive and helpful comments will be featured on the site. Interested in submitting your own video or 3D render? You can do so here! and have your work featured in a future Cgtuts+ Workshop!

 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

A long time Cgtuts+ author, Chris has recently moved into the role of co-editor at Cgtuts+. Chris has nearly a decade of experience working with 3D studio Max and has authored many in depth tutorials for Cgtuts+ as well as other websites. A generalist by definition, Chris spends most of his time modeling, but has many years of experience in the area's of UVMapping, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering. On rare occasions when he's not wasting away in front of his computer, Chris enjoys playing hockey, skateboarding, watching movies and playing games. You can find more of his work over at christateonline.com.  

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  • Chris C.

    Looks very nice! And Clean.

    Though, the texture at the “base” of the two big towers could use some improvements. The brick texture seems off or mis-aligned—It’s not too bad, but it can use some tweaking…

  • John

    I personally like it a lot. I do agree that the base of the big towers should be worked on. Sometimes just setting the UV Map to box and all 3 areas are set to the same number works. If you want to make your castle more vivid and you’re depending more on textures than anything else, try using a program called “Crazy Bump”. That might do the trick!

    Also, the windows in the towers look incredibly HUGE. Usually they only have those slit windows that you can shoot arrows through. Not bay kitchen windows. Not good security there.

    Some of the other parts of the castle look out of proportion. When you start modeling, make sure your units are set correctly and don’t eye ball anything. Model new parts in conjunction with the building itself so you know it looks right. Then if you have too, export things individually. If you have to export. Aside from this, you’re well on your way to doing great things. I love the poly count. Would love more screen shots.

  • Ostap Babskyy

    Hey John! Thanks for your feedback. I was still in the process of making the castle when i posted it here. I agree the proportions are way off, but, first of all the castle doesn’t exist anymore so I had to work with murals and old archive drawings for references, it was kind of diffcult to keep everything in the same size, in the final model(which i post below) i did resize the windows, but in reality they did actually look kind of big.) This was a very early stage of texturing so i was still experimenting with various maps. In the final render you’ll see that i took away most of the mossiness on the walls and changed the bump maps to normal maps. Enjoy the final renders, guys!

  • Vik

    The brick textures on the roof are very repetitve and those cone shapes are also too boring. try varying the textures and improving the silhoutte.