Creating A Castle

Another task we were given was to create a small castle using some of the techniques we had previously been taught.

To begin with, I started by creating a cylinders to create the four corner towers. I built the first cylinder by going to the Create menu at the top and selecting Standard Primitives, then Cylinder.

 

On the grid, I drew a tower with a radius about the size of one square, and made it about four squares high. Now that I had created the main part of the tower, I needed to create the spire to make it look more like a castle tower. I did this by going to the Create menu again, only this time selecting Cone instead. I made the radius of the cone roughly the same size as the cylinder, and adjusted it in the right hand panel so the radius measured exactly the same as the cylinder.

As I had both parts of the tower made, I just needed to align them so they were on top of each other in the right order. I did this by selecting the cylinder and clicking the Align tool at the top, before selecting the cone causing a new window to open.

I changed one axis to 'minimum' and maximum', the other in the opposite way, and the other to 'centre', which caused the cone to sit accurately on top of the cylinder.

Now that I had finished creating the tower, I wanted to clone it three times for the other corners of the castle. The cloning method is a much quicker tool to use rather than creating 4 separate cylinders, especially to get them all the same size.

To clone the tower I simply selected the tower using the 'Select' tool, and then right clicked on the object and selected the 'Clone' option. Once the cylinder was cloned, using the 'Move Object' tool, I moved the cylinder into the correct position on the grid. I did the exact same for each of the cylinders, making sure they were all evenly position on the grid and the same distance apart.

For the spires of the tower, I again cloned them using the same method and then used the 'Move' and 'Align' tools to position them accurately.

The next part of the castle I chose to build were the walls. To do this, I chose the 'box' under the Create menu.  I created the box so that it fitted between the two corner towers sufficiently, and was slightly smaller in height. To get the size even more accurate, I used the right hand panel to adjust the length more precisely.

Once the wall was the right size, I wanted to clone it to create the rest of the walls for the castle. For the opposite side, I was able to just clone the wall and move it, using the 'Clone' and 'Move Object' tools. However, for the two remaining sides, I had to rotate the wall first. I did this by, selecting the wall and right clicking, and choosing the small box on the 'Rotate' option. A new window then appeared where I was able to make the object rotate 90 degrees. Now that the wall was positioned in the right direction, I simply moved it into the correct place using the move tool. I then just had to clone the wall and move it to complete the last wall of the castle.

On the front wall I wanted to make an archway. I did this by firstly creating a sphere using the create tool. I made the sphere the size I wanted the arch to be. As soon as I had done this, I used the move tool to position the sphere in the centre of the wall where I wanted it to be cut. I then selected the wall and on the panel to the right hand side, I chose 'Compound Objects' on the drop down list,  clicked the 'Boolean' option below and pressed the 'Pick Operand B' button before selecting the sphere. This then cut out the sphere shape in the wall, leaving an arch.

Additionally, I wanted to add some battlements to the front of the castle. To make these, I created a small box using the Create tool and positioned it at the top of the wall. I then used the Boolean tool to cut the shape out of the wall. I repeated this method all away along the top of the front wall so that the box cut outs were evenly spaced out.

 

Now that I had made the main part of the castle, I decided that I would add some more towers within it. This time I thought I would create a square tower for a change. So using the Create Box options, I created a tall square shaped tower. I also used the Move tool to position the tower more accurately where I wanted it. I then created a Pyramid shape using the Create tool and made sure it was the same size as the tower. Using the Align tool, I selected both objects and altered the positioning of the axis's so that the pyramid was on top of the box.

Furthermore, I went on to add some windows in the tower. First off, I created a small box, making it the size that I wanted my windows to be. Then, using the Boolean tool, I positioned the box in the tower where I wanted the windows to be and cut out the shape. I did this several times on the tower, so they were going up vertically.

Also, I created two more circular towers next to the previous tower. I made these using the same techniques as before, by using cylinders and cones, and aligning them on top of each other. I added windows to the towers too by using the same Boolean technique.

Lastly, I just changed the colours of the castle. I changed the colours by selecting the object, using the Select tool, and then on the panel to the right, clicking on the colour box and choosing the colour I wanted. For the walls I chose a deep red colour and for the outer towers I chose black. I made all the castle spires black, but for the towers within the castle I used blues and greens. I simply chose these colours out of preference and not to make the castle look more realistic in any way.