Rhino Practice - Castle

There wasn't any particular inspiration for this castle design. I was likely influenced by my recent binge of Game of Thrones which featured many exotic and massive castles of vast scales as well as unique locations. Ultimately my primary focus was around a central geological structure, which all castles are erected upon. Seeing the almost impossible nature of some of these castles in the show towering above on these cliffsides was very interesting and quite marvelous, although I am unsure of how sound the architecture of these structures they do seem to serve for great inspiration. 

My design process was simple, although when looking back I feel I could replicate the castle in no more than an hour or two I spent plenty of time focused on the base of the castle. I started off with the island or mountain that the castle in built upon and I created those with the polyline tool just to create a basic 2D shape. Then extruded the face, after extrusion I scaled the duplicated face so that I was able to get that natural and organic looking slope of the cliffside. I then continued that process layering each mountain section on top another, creating steps for the eventual castle to reside upon.

After spending lots of time perfecting the look of the mountain itself I then added the castle walls. Initially I had created individual rectangle/box shapes to duplicate and place side by side like Lego, but I found it to be challenging to get the desired smooth formation around the mountain without hard corners. Afterward I opted for the polyline tool once again but after outlining my desired shape I used the offset command followed by extrude. Due to no-longer being in individual pieces I found it challenging to add the jagged parts on the tops of the walls and to achieve an effect within my skillset. Using the Boolean difference tool along with a negative model I stamped and carved out the form on top the wall. I used the same technique to create all the windows and doorways    within the walls, castle, and tower.

The arch bridge was created entirely in 2D, this was so I could easily get my desired arch without having to line up any Boolean. I drew out the shape with polyline, then extruded the shape and used the Boolean difference tool to cut out the walkway on top. My little boat below the arch bridge was created using the loft tool and I added rectangles for little seats within for added detail. For the main castle itself it was just simple polygon shapes along with plenty of extruding, duplications, scaling, and rotation. About both the amin castle and tower I reused many shapes I had already created to my advantage, just changing the size to create variety in form.

In the end I am very proud of the castle I created, and looking back I definitely spent far too much time on it, well exceeding mandatory 4.5 hours but that is okay because I was enjoying the process. 

Reflecting upon the whole process I believe I was ultimately successful on what I sought out to do, there weren't many situations where I encountered a challenge. Of course my skills currently are limited so I did find issues when creating the castle wall. Although moderately effective, the Boolean technique wasn't the prettiest option and I found the troubleshooting of that issue to be certainly a challenge but one that I value from the overall experience. I also found playing around with how textures with the materials to be interesting to get a desired look, but realistically we have yet to really delve into that area as of yet in class so that challenge wasn't unexpected.