Halloween Render 1

Chess Board Render

Concept Art

 I first concept art was a simple tower with a hut and well as a simple/basic layout for the design my model would be based upon. My second I decided to try and draw a medieval house just to further my understanding of the architecture and design.









My third concept was when I decided to create a castle surrounding my lighthouse with a bridge connecting my towers. The fourth was my initial thought of how I would shape the tower that would be my actually lighthouse. 





















My final concept was the design I decided to stick with (despite the copy being not very visible) I stuck to this concept for my final model and changed assets such as the tops of each tower from cone to cube and the addition of a dock and a central tower.

Evaluation of my project

I believe that I achieved my goal of portraying a theme/story through the use of a render quite well. I think that anyone would be able to tell that my lighthouse theme was medieval thanks to my research on medieval architecture and colour being portrayed successfully in my scene. As shown in my screen grabs and concept art, over time my design changed.

The biggest change was probably the switch from the cone shaped roofs to the more realistic cubed roofs. I did this as I believed that the cone shaped roofs gave a more toy-like look for the castle a decided to change it to look more like a real medieval. I'm glad that I chose medieval as a theme as I already know a lot about that period and find that type of architecture really interesting and fun to design for. I also found it quite easy as I already knew what type of design it would need before I even did my research. Next time I want to choose a theme I'm unfamiliar with so I will focus more on my research and concepts over my ideas I had before, also it would challenge and push me more to create a more effective render.

I found the assignment reasonably ok. There were times where I found certain things difficult like such as making things symmetrical, making a fire and creating a realistic looking landscape for my lighthouse to be on. However, I enjoyed designing and drawing concept art for my lighthouse. The actually modelling I had mixed views on as there were times where things came together really well like my walls however I had difficulty with creating my windows and texturing them effectively.

I think that I transported my concept art well into 3D on Maya as all my main assets that I implemented were easily transferrable into 3D space. Obviously some things like the walls and towers were easier to create but the central tower was a little bit more difficult.

Overall, I believe that I have been successful in creating a medieval themed lighthouse that effectively portrays my research and concept art in a 2D render. My final thoughts are that to improve I would make a more realistic looking model with either texture or maybe a tweak to certain design aspects.

My renders

This was my first attempt at a render for my scene but I felt like it didn't give a good angle for my lighthouse as parts of it you cant see and the colour seemed very dull.

I tried to change the angle to make it more visible and it worked, however is till felt that the lighting didn't compliment the scene very well. 

This is my final render for my scene. I made sure to capture enough colour and light to make it look more appealing. I also used the rules of composition such as, rule of the odds with the 3 mountains which makes the scene more interesting and it gives a sense of it being more natural and less planned and avoid the middle by having my lighthouse positioned slightly to the left of my render, this gives the viewer the chance to focus on other things beside just the lighthouse such as the mountains or the docks . I made sure that the main assets of my scene are all clearly visible and the light coming from it can be seen easily in terms of coverage and the direction its coming from.

Castle Designs