Although some might think this is a fairly childish enterprise, it is not.
This is not only about the dreams we had of castles from the story books we read
from our childhood but also how to convey and interpret them with the means of our 3D applications in a way
that can render or interpret them as accurately and as vivid as the imagination itself can convey.
....Despite the fact that we are also somewhat limited by the boundaries
and glitches of our applications which are not....fairy tales!

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

Stem,

I just added 2 basement windows in the front....I hope it is not too late.

Hi Uguel,
You can add whatever you like, whenever you want to. It is very easy to add to a model. It is only after you apply textures, if, for example, cutouts are then made to the model, then the UV mapping can be corrupted (and it is you who does the texture mapping). So keep on drawing additions if you wish.
I will be making a start on the model today.

Regards,
Stem

Thank you!

''It is only after you apply textures, if, for example, cutouts are then made to the model,
then the UV mapping can be corrupted (and it is you who does the texture mapping).
So keep on drawing additions if you wish.''

Right, it is hard to do the mapping after. I will try to do my own trees to go with the castle.
I have an idea how to do them and I only hope to be able to achieve it.

Hello Uguel,

I have made the base model, I still have some editing, but wanted to see if this is close to what you want. If there are any changes you want, then please just say.



Model (at the moment uploaded as) Bryce5 scene.

http://rapidshare.com/files/22114185/castle01.zip.html

This is pretty much like it Stem. Thank you! :thumbup:
The castle drawing I sent was not accurate or precise enough so I will add more info to it.
Ok, just a few precision here. The keep or the middle turret you made should stay exactly
as it is. Only the small turrets must be modified. They must be larger and outside the castle
walls and attached to it. So I corrected my drawing a bit to make it clearer. I must admit
it was not clear enough in the original drawing. Yes, the castle walls are asymmetric, in fact
this is the representation of a child drawing. It might be for you more difficult for you to make,
so do not hesitate if you have questions or need more precision.

And the main body or structure of the castle must be about 20/30% longer or stretched out vertically.

Apart from these l'il details all is fine and look good so far!




Oh! one more thing...Is it possible to break some part of the castle...
like 2 or 3 broken crenels and a few fissures in the wall?

Only the small turrets must be modified. They must be larger and outside the castle
walls and attached to it.

....about 30 % wider and the height can remain the same.

Hi Uguel,

I missed your last post before making some mods. I have increased the castle vertically by 25%

I have increased the size of the small turrets, and (for now) just placed them in possition. Is this possition correct? Once I know where they are to go, I can connect them to the outer wall.



Model (dxf)
http://rapidshare.com/files/22176361/castle02.zip.html

Hello again,

Have made another mod to see if this is closer

The body of the castle is just fine.
Can you lower the turrets position about 1/3 ?
So there will be 1/3 of their length (starting from their lower parts) attached to the castle (like they were stuck to it)
and the rest of the turrets will not be attached to the castle and this starting a bit under their windows to their pointed roofs.
.....and could you made them about 1/3 wider...?


thanks!!!!

Wow, it looks really great.

It would take me a week to model something like that.

Nice work.

Ok, Stem, you posted reply # 8 while I was answering to you!
I just saw the picture of the castle and it is very close. Just lower the turrets about 1/3 of their lenght
and make them wider about 1/3 of their circumference . Do not touch the rest of the castle unless you can break some crennels or some
part of the castle a bit. But do not worry if you can't . Maybe I can do it with the mapping or with the help some boolean operations.


thanks!!! :thumbup:

Only a week? gee! it will take me at least 2 or 3 weeks!!!! LOL

How do you want support for the turrets?

I still need to make some edit once everything is in correct possition, so I will see what I can do (I presume you want some wear and tear, etc?)

Yes, you got it pefectly!

How do you want support for the turrets?

The turrets are only stuck or cemented to the castle.
Le's presume there's a lead wire under coats of cement or stones.


Can you keep this version the way it is, duplicate it
and bring the "wear and tear" to the second one...?
So we'll be able to make a better decision, ok?
You do not have to do the second version tonight. You can do it later during the week and only if you want.

Model (dxf)

http://rapidshare.com/files/22186744/castle05.zip

I am interested in these trees, please keep us informed on your progress

Regards,

Ok, I will download the first version. Thanx!
and here's an example with the c-r-a-c-k-s or fissures added,
(sorry for the hyphens but we cannot write the word c-r-a-c-k otherwise on the forum!)





No rush for this one and only if it is feasible.

I will.

Yes, I found that in my last post, and I had to change it to "wear and tear" LOL


Yes, I can break the corners, and make "wear and tear"

all right then...and thanx for your patience!
well, I am sure we'll be able to make a very interesting graphic out of it!
I" ll start working on the landscape tomorrow.

If adding wear and tear to parts of the castile wouldn't U want to add some to the roofs also ??As they would show staining etc ....

Also most have a Moat that is part of the landscape????

Grand Dad

Hi Uguel,
I had a quick play with breaking off the corners. I am not sure if this is enough. Have a look at the image, see what you think.
I can break more, or if you would prefer to see the model and take a better look, then I will upload.

yes, you're right. If we tear some of the parts of the castle, all the other parts will look too brand new and they won't match anymore.
But the thing is, if we break many parts of the castle in order to be consequent we our ideas, we will loose the original
shape too much and it's a bit risky too!. So all things considered, I will choose the non-altered version posted in reply #15.



You mean like a trench dug around a castle?....Actually, my first idea was to have
the castle at the top of a hill. The moat is a good idea too.... Notice that I can also
try a version with a moat if things go well.

Well, I decided to choose the one in post #15!
Like I said to Terryala, I do not wan't alter the whole castle too much and
break the harmony of the shape for now.

Okay, just to give you an idea, I made a l'il watercolour
...here is how I would envision it

And here are the kind of trees I would like to add along the path....



I cut a tree trunk from an image and drew the branches in Photoshop
I did also another one in Bryce with the help of the tree lab (I don't like their trees much)
and added some rocks to the tree with a fluffy material applied to them to imitate the swelling of the trunk.

Looks good, I look forward to the first renderings (no rush)
Yes, after seeing the watercolor, I can see the need for this type of tree. I will have a try at building some trees.

Have you noticed that many of the Bryce's trees do not look very natural;
the trunks narrow too fast and the green of the foliage is too metallic.
I made a few trees with a li'l program I had called Onyx and they look more natural
although I might not need them for the first edition of the castle....for I'll use the creepy type instead.


Technical question, I finally found a few props on my cd's that might come in handy for the
castle. Say bats and gargoyles... my question is, If I open a bat that is 1 mb in Bryce and I duplicate
it as many times as I need and resize all of them smaller than they were at first, will they still be 1 .mb each after or
they will all become reduced in size...? For if they keep the same size even after reducing them,
I might just draw them in Photoshop and import them with Leo after.

Thanx!

Yes,
For the geometry/polygons, yes. But is the size of the model including texture maps? as the texture map will only be loaded (or saved with scene) once (if the same texture map).
For example, if you have an object with a high res texture map, then when loading the object+map this could say for example be 1mb, but the texture map is 900k, which would show the model size as 100k, if you load 10 of these objects, you would have 10*100k (for the models) + 900k (for the texture map) =1.9mb
You could of course load the model into Bryce and render only the model (from different angles), at the same time create an object mask,... you could then load these onto a 2d picture object. This would save in the saved scene size, and also reduce render time.

I have been playing with the treelab in Bryce. Varying results, but still not sure if anything can be made for your scene,

One possible?




edit,

Sorry forgot to post the settings (just in case you do like the type?)

Hmm, not exactly what I was looking for...
If you look carefully at the tree trunk it looks more like a Savana tree,
not like European or North American trees.

Ok, here is what I meant, although it was made with Bryce. I was able to get pretty closer
to what I was aiming at. Yet, I cannot say that I am particularly fond of the way the trunk is narrowing.
...looks like a mandrake too! LOL

This one is also a type of tree I like.
I did it with Onyx tree.

The castle build is going well. Remember that I work slowly
and cannot allow much time a day.....so here is what I have so far....

this is only the beginning of the journey..there will be much more to go!

Hi Uguel,
Looks good, I will have to have a look at the program.


You take your time, there is certainly no rush, I think the castle is coming along extremely well. Excellent work.

Wow, looking great.

Hey guys, do you know if there is a way to set the camera to have only the sky in the background?
I'd like to get the sky as in the l'il watercolour I made (see post #24)
I can delete the plane but it would leave half the image empty.
Any idea?

thanx!

Empty space where plane was? How about putting clouds in that area????

GD

Yes, maybe I can do that if there is no other way around.
thanx!!!

Hi Uguel,

Probably the easiest is to have all objects in scene (once finised) linked to the perspective camera, you can then pull tha camera back so the horizon is gone below the view.(your objects, due to the link, would stay in the same view position). Or you could set a 2D face behind the model with a cloud image.

I will try that. Thanx!

Here's the castle with all the mapping on.

What is causing me difficulties is how to draw a path on a bumped mountain (with the terrain Editor)
just wide enough to have trees on it. Because of the bumps the path can be
either too narrow or look like an inter-continental highway. it is very hard to predict. I might
try to "map'' the mountain with a path done in a 2D program instead and if it doesn't work,
I'll abandon this kind of terrain and simply choose a simpler one.

Regards path how about using stairs with landings every so many feet. can use something that looks like old flat stones .

Instead of trying to go stright up U could also try terraceing them.

GD

Spelling isn't worth a hoot tonite...

That's hard to get.

I tried a basic river terrain ( but inverted it ) with the editor. Needs some playing after but kind of gives a path.



Just a thought.

Hi Uguel,

I am not completely sure the effect that you want, or what you are working from. So I will give one example of how I would place a path onto an hill.

A very simple example:

First, I would have an hill created in Bryce, and a path that I made in a paint program:

Hill


Path


I then have my texture for the path


and texture for the hill


I know, but the textures are only for example.

So now we go to the texture editor and add first the path texture(base), then the hill texture(green), and then the path itself(path), so you would see in the texture editor



The "base" and "green" are just added normally in the Texture source editor, but when you add the path you must copy and paste this into the second window :-
This is because the path is for transparency.

When the textures are loaded, then applied, you can render the hill


Now to cut the path into the hill
Select the hill, and then go into the terrain editor, in the Editing tools, select "Pictures", the left image is the hill, now in the centre image load the path, then left click(hold) on the blend, and slide this untill you see the path blending with the hill (right picture). dont go to far, or the path will be too deep



When the blend looks correct (you may not get this correct the first attempt, so would advise you save the scene first) select apply, the path will then be cut out of the hill



This may not be what you want, if not, then please give more detail of how you want it to look, as there are other ways to do this.

Thank you all for your help!

@ Stem, I knew another way of doing this but I think your way will be better for we have more control on the brush opacity.
What I used to do is create a terrain, duplicate it once. So there will be 2 terrains, one on the top of the other
The first terrain will have a sandy texture applied and the second terrain will have a grassy texture applied and
all textures taken from the Materials lab. Once I applied both a different texture, I raised the grassy texture a bit
say 2 to 4 pixels on the Y axis. And, with the grassy texture selected, I go to the material lab and draw a path with
the default brush directly onto the terrain.Once the path is created, I return to the scene and see if it is ok.

But I find this way a bit difficult because we do not have a full control of the brush so sometimes I just
draw the path in Photoshop or Paint Shop and click on "image" (from the fractal window) and load the path
from there. I did not load it from the same place as you did and I tried your way today and I found we have more
control on the brush behaviour.

This may not be what you want, if not, then please give more detail of how you want it to look, as there are other ways to do this.

yes, this is what I wanted to do save that my path had to be wider.

...one thing, did you know where the path location will be on the terrain ?
for sometimes, I had to turn the terrains to find it.(both selected)
I usually work in the director's view.


here's the way I did it. There are 2 terrains as you can see,
one terrain over the other, the green one is a l"il bit more elevated to give depth to the path.

@Uguel,






Output as seen from default Directors chair view:




The way you where creating the path is another way (there are a few options). You can also use that way to produce steps on the path, by having the lower terrain filtered as steps.

Hey, thanx Stem for your help
I have some friends coming over for the week-end
but I might be able to give a try next week.

Again thanks for all the good work! :thumbup:

Hello Uguel,

Your welcome, one point I should of added, to reset the views (so you can reset views when adding pathes etc).

To reset the views, this will place all views to default, and you will be in the Directors view, as when you first open Bryce.

For PC

I agree and yes, this is what I use to do but you did well mentioning this for
any info we add to the thread might be useful for other Bryce users too.

thanks.


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

Here's one of my latest renders. I simply added an image of a hill I liked
mixed with a Bryce terrain. I already had a couple of animals in DAZ Studio
so I took a bat and a small dragon and added them to the scene.

This image is not completely finished yet. There's still some little things
I might change or correct. As you will notice, the distance doesn't compliment
the castle much.... so I plan to make another image with a better view of the castle
and I will try other trees and textures as well.

"The Castle's Guardian"

That looks really cool Uguel, I can't wait for the final scene.

hey thanks.
...still lots of things to correct though.
The castle is too far and is not really part of the scenery.
I will have to make a real terrain, less elevated than this one
and try other things too.