Castle Model and Building Set

This started as one project but then morphed into two seperate projects - a model in 3DS Max of the curtain wall of a castle, and a set of models to use in UnrealEd to build a castle.

Castle Curtain-Wall Model

The initial model shown in the first few images here is loosely based on the excellent illustrations of the book "Castle", by David MaCaulay, one of a series of books showing, through detailed drawings, how ancient structures were built. I used these drawings as a reference for the details of the walkways, merlons, embrasures, etc., modifying specific details as necessary to make a satisfactory model of the outer curtain wall of a castle.

I started by modelling a section of wall, built one of the D-shaped smaller guard towers that are spaced at intervals along the wall, then modified that tower further in order to build the gatehouse shown above. I also constructed a large round corner tower.

Detail of the top of a corner tower.

The corner towers are circular. They feature a store room at the base that is entered from ground level, and a second room at the height of the wall walkway and accessible from it. A circular staircase provides access to the top level, where a ladder leads through a trap door in the roof to the uppermost walkway.

Normally a low conical roof would conceal the interior details shown here.

Detail of the hoarding being constructed along the wall.

If a seige is anticipated, wooden hoardings can be built to enclose the merlons and provide additional protection for the castle's defenders. First, a horizontal beam is driven through an opening provided beneath each merlon. Vertical posts are attached to this base, joined by roof beams that pass between the upright stone finials. Long planks bridge the gaps between each supporting beam, and a flooring of shorter planks is built along these, with regular gaps left to provide murder-holes through which to drop things (stone, boiling water or pitch, etc.) on attackers at the base of the wall. The base of the walls flares outward to deflect anything dropped outwards towards the attacking forces.

There is a wide gap in the planks forming the outer wall of the structure, through which archers can fire at approaching attackers. The roof protects both this enclosed wooden walkway and the permanent stone walkway back of the merlons from missles.

Unreal Castle Building Set

Later, once I'd started working on making models to use for building levels in Unreal Tournament, I decided that the Castle models would make a good building set; of course, the pieces needed to be completely rebuilt to be suitable for use in UnrealEd. Things like the textures all needing to be resized to powers of two, and each item exported with an appropriate corner or centered location at the origin so that aligning them in UnrealEd would be a snap.

While rebuilding, I decided to change the gatehouse and towers from curved structures to rectilinear ones, as it's easier to build the structures that way.

I never finished this set nor built an Unreal level with it, but my test level for running around and seeing how the models look and work together in-game can be found here.