I was wondering if you could post a perspective view from the front. It looks a little squished --> <–, but I suspect that may just be because of the orthographic view.
Also, I wouldn’t consider selling it since the castle is probably trademarked by Disney and they’re ruthless enough to sue daycare centers for having murals of their characters.
Also, I disagree that the roof tiles are too shiny. It’s just the angle of the lighting. The real roofs are also very shiny when the sun is high.
This is a stunning piece of work, otto what are you going to model next? The eifel tower? How about the hanging gardens of Babylon? Or the grand canyon?
I wouldn’t put it past you, you could probably pull it off. 
Very true.
Absolutely amazing! Loving it!
I followed your Golden Gate Bridge before, but this surpasses it.
Agree on the shininess of the roof tiles, but the wall is coming along well.
I think you should be able to sell it on Turbo Squid. You would have to be carefull of what you called it - ie. ‘Fairytale Castle’ rather than ‘Disney’s Cinderella Castle’. The worst they can do is tell you to take it down.
3dmedieval & Airil: I was considering selling it once I finish it, but I decided against it. It’s interesting to hear about those Disney court cases. It reminds me of another case where woman who tried to sue Disney for a brick falling on her head, yet the wall contains no bricks.
3dementia: Funny you mention that, I was actually considering modeling the Eiffel Tower before I decided on this. But I also remember someone else trying to model it on the forums as well.
Tea_Monster: Thank you :). And about the golden gate bridge. Unfortunately I never got around to posting the reason why I stopped working on it, but it was due to the fact that the file was becoming impossible to work with. It would crash quite frequently when trying to render, and due to silly mistakes and me being naive, it ended up having problems like over 5000 unique materials, and other issues. When I get around to it I might try and individually port all the objects into a new file and try to churn out some final renders.
This update is more of a test than progress. Since the texture I’m using is not quite suitable for close-ups, I played around with displacement settings. This picture alone is over 3 million faces, so I will only be using it only when absolutely necessary, and even then I might not use it. (I am also reluctant to use it because the bricks are not like that in real life). In addition to that, I also hand painted a brick grout bump map to try and make the render crisper. (The tower is a bit off center in the render).
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/3121/test27.jpg (~350kb)
(View full)
you are crazy skilled and have a real talent for pulling off these mega projects first the golden gate bridge now this. I wouldn’t even approach this with a 50ft pole because its complex nature would scare me shitless.
I cant describe it in words how shocked I am O__O
How can somebody make something so complex in blender
Please tell me how long you work with blender and similar programs.
You’re a genius in my case!!!
tyrant monkey: Thank you :), just doing it part by part 
r34n: I’ve been working with blender since January '07, first and only 3d program I’ve used so far.
It’s been a while since the last update, partly because modeling the back is going to be a pain, from not having blueprints, to lack of reference photos, as well as needing everything to fit together to pull the castle together as a whole. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself in terms of materials since I have not finished modeling yet, however I did work on nodes a bit recently, mainly because I can not get the roof to look right. It has a rather specific glare that is hard to pull off when only using textures. I tried modeling the shingles themselves, however it’s hard doing that with the curved roofs, I may use them only in extreme closeups. I recently did a render that provided more realistic results, however I did not save the image. I will upload that at another time.
//Skip if you just want pictures//
As of now I started to model the back of the castle. One problem that I ran into was the fact that the walls underlined in red did not line up, this in turn made the curved wall that connects them not centered properly, on top of that, I do not know if it should be centered with the main entrance. Although looking at photos it looks like it doesn’t. The main reason why its a problem though is that the roofs in the back, and eventually the supporting archways for them are all radially centered around that wall, however since the wall is not totally symmetrical, I do not know where the center is. This is causing things to become slightly misaligned, which may cause even bigger alignment issues down the road.
//
For now though, roof glare.
Materials and nodes are not final, (and the roofs in this render are a bit too purple.)
One path of the nodes tries to specifically isolate the glare on blue roofs, so separate glare effects can be applied from the building glare.
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/5863/test28.jpg
Finally, a roof material that doesn’t look half bad, still not final, but a lot closer to the goal.
The specular is off, but that is partially due to the fact that the glare nodes only pick up a certain blue color, and I didn’t adjust them for this render after I changed the roof color. The specular map also still needs tweaking.
(view full)
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/9484/test29.jpg
wow this is insane. Love every bit of it.
I think when you’re done you should sell it . . . to Disney. I’m sure they have plenty of uses for a thoroughly detailed 3D model of the castle.
First, a word from my inner child . . .
:eek: “Waaahh! Waahh! Waaahhh!!” :eek:
(Ahem. Thank you. I feel much better now…) :yes:
I definitely see what you mean about the roof texture. You are going to need to find a way to give some 3D definition to “all those roof shingles.” A normal-map is needed to displace the sun-glare. (I am really speaking only of the foreground roofs.)
As others have said, “this is insane(ly great).”
To say I am blown away by this work is an understatement. Fabulous. I will be following this closely.
crazyman!
this is a really good work 
Thanks everyone 
A small update, getting back into to modeling 
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/9910/test31.jpg
Tweaked nodes a bit, as well as made a stronger normal map.
That’s unbelievably detailed, I mean wow! The window details are great! I can scarcely imagine the work you put into this project .Capital wow! How did you make the window arch details ?
TheCroc: It is very similar to the way you make arches, if you take a look at the example on the first page, its basically the same steps, except with more points to revolve around. These arches were easier to make for me however, since I could recycle the main shape from the ones in the front. In fact, all the shapes on the window come from 1 arch pattern with some proportional editing.
Update,
Finished the back, which was rather guess and check. Although some details are fudged (such as the rings distance from the edge), the overall layout of the walls remains pretty accurate (see attached), and luckily the details that are incorrect don’t take away from the image. Actually, just noticed I forgot to center the smaller roofs of the two side triple roof clusters.
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/1496/test32.jpg
wow…now that is incredible detail! amazing!
don’t you have trouble keeping track of everything? i imagine something like this is…well, complex, and that’s a bit of an understatement 
p.s. how fast is your computer?!? i mean, that’s a heck-of-a-lot of faces!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:
edit - my brother, upon seeing one of those pictures, said “wow, that must take a lot of patience!”
Woah! Dude this is amazing! You have crazy modeling skills. It looks good so far with the textures… but I’m hoping when it’s done it will be photo realistic! It has such potential to do so it would be a shame to not have it. Just make sure you add texture variation to really sell the photo realistic look…
But I’m really loving this work so far. Keep up the good work!
wow! I’d never have thought of this! nice! great modelling!..
