Environment - Hogwarts Great Hall

Serith

I wanted to work on my texturing and lighting (my weakest skillsets), so after watching some Harry Potter films, I decided to use the Hogwarts castle's great hall as a piece to do so. As an interior with large windows to the outside, I think it's a great set to experiment with different lighting and moods. It's kind of mute as far as a variety of textures goes but that should make it a little easier to focus on a few at a time. Here's an image from the movies of the great hall:

Serith

Here is my first wip shot, about 4-5 hours of research and modeling. Everything will be remodeled or at least have additional modeling done to it. This first step was to recreate the hall from images without any measurements, which meant a lot of guess work. But that's why the very first thing I did was model a human figure to act as my visual scale to compare.

[Edit] The human figure on the left is an adult scale, and the figure on the right is a child scale.

PatrickL

The length of your hall seems shorter than the one in the picture, but other than that it seems really spot on. I'll be watching this thread!

Serith

I think it's a perspective thing. The camera in the film is wider, but you pointing that out made me realize the arched windows on the right side were shorter than the reference, so I updated that. Thanks!
Here's a quick update on a window detail and how I started it. I wont update for a few days since I'll be out of town.

AriesGal1629

Nice subject matter!

System

-_-

Serith

Very cool Chris! I'll be watching your thread, I really like those skull candles.

Serith

Just a small update, finished modeling the low poly assets for the big window.

I was able to get it down to these 3 assets

megalmn2000

are theses gonna be bake or it's gonna be only geometries?

Serith

I will be using tiling textures for these assets. Anything that requires a bake will be modeled high poly first.

Serith

Another small update, finished modeling the rafters. Just one asset for all of them.


If anyone wonders why this is taking me so long to do, I'm swamped at work haha...

Orangeknight

I'm really interested to see were this will go.

Seirei

Do you plan on adding the snow, the christmas decoration and the students?

Serith

I haven't decided about the decoration yet. I'm thinking more of a Halloween dinner so I can have some floating pumpkins in there. We shall see

chrisradsby

4000 tris for those things seems very expensive, I mean you got lots of edge loops on the smallest detail, you need to optimize them it'll be super-expensive otherwise.

mutatedjellyfish

chrisradsby wrote: »

4000 tris for those things seems very expensive, I mean you got lots of edge loops on the smallest detail, you need to optimize them it'll be super-expensive otherwise.

Word. A lot of that detail ribbing and what not needs to be baked down into a normal map. 4k is huge for a repeated architectural detail that isn't right up in the player's grill.

vvv Good point.

S_ource

He is maybey going to bake normals from a hp and then its maybey good to have more edge loops for lp so the rays from lp cage will hit the hp in a better way or something like that maybey? I dont know just a guess?

Serith

I don't mean to sound defensive, but this is not too much higher than what I would model it at Naughty Dog. Our engine divides meshes by its UV's (around 350 uv's per vert set) and at 3100 uv's that rafter is only about 8-9 vert sets. Typically we can display around 3000-3200 vert sets on screen at any given time (characters included). Keep in mind that we also cut off the fps at 30. Yes it's a little higher than normal, but also this is an interior shot which allows for higher detail on objects since there will be less distance of things to draw. As for the texturing, I'll be using a tiling wood texture for the rafter piece. (probably a 512). A general rule I use is go higher poly on the low poly meshes, and then bring it down as needed. I find that easier than adding polys later and usually I don't have to.
However, I will be a little more conscious about my polycounts though now that you point this out, thanks for the feedback!

mutatedjellyfish

Meh, we all have worked in different engines. My only real concern would be the repetition of such a high-poly asset, but your own experience is more applicable to your own work than ours, so do it how you see fit.

The bit about going higher poly first and scaling back if needed is valid, and something I should take note of, though.

Construction-wise, I'm having a hard time seeing the curved arch pieces as wood... I think curved arches in that gothic style were mostly stone with straight wooden rafter pieces, but I'm possibly poorly remembering my art history lectures.

Serith

You're definitely right. This would not be a good piece to use trying to work in another engine. But it's important to apply the tools you know the best to produce your best work.

And you might be right about the wood. I thought it was wood from the ref but now that you mention it, it does look like stone too.

After a quick google I found this real building which seems to be what I'm going for: http://www.riat.org/images/cotswolds/cotswolds1/2005-05-18%20011.jpg

So I think I'm going to stick with wood for this case. Thanks again for the feedback!

XRevan23

I was going to say it looked too high poly, but then read your post and you know what your doing, but can't wait to see how this ends up looking like.

Serith

Been a while since I've worked on this. Modeled a few more architectural details.

Also did a different version of the top windows in this side windows.

Just a few more minor things to model low poly before I start texturing and making the high poly statues and such.