Castles: Blending History and Fantasy.

An Introduction:

History has always fascinated me, and its influence has long bled into the various designs and worlds of my work of the course of my professional and personal career. I often find historical events make for excellent building blocks for crafting realistic worlds filled with all manner of creatures, weapons and magic, and folk tales and stories can craft unique experiences for players, readers and movie goers alike.

Exploring castles and ruins of once sprawling kingdoms and civilisations has always been a hobby of mine, and when i’m not reading, watching movies, or playing tabletop and video games I can be found out and about exploring small historic towns, walking atop battlements of old castles or roaming the halls of once sprawling estates and stately homes with a sketchbook and camera in hand.

I have always wanted to test and hone my 3D skills and practice creating vast environments, and then blend them with my 2D skills in the form of paint-overs and concept pieces, so i though why not create concepts and environments inspired by history with perhaps a few fantasy elements thrown in.

With that in mind I decided to create two concepts:

Number 1:

This would be a castle created from scratch in blender, and then brought into substance painter for colours and textures, and then photographed and brought into photoshop for a final paint-over.

Number 2:

This castle would be created out of pre-made assets in the Epic Games Store and using Quixel Bridge. These assets would be assembled in UE5 (Unreal Engine 5) and then photographed.

For the designs of these castles I researched heavily into the various designs of concentric castles, Gun forts, and Mote and Bailey castles and generated a bank of image assets that I would draw from in regard to materials, textures and layout.

I then created two castle layouts from these images and and planed out the perspective and composition from which the camera would view these two buildings and their surroundings.

Castle 1 :

With this castle I wanted to create a simple Motte and Bailey style design inspired by the original rectangular style keeps created by the Normans around the 11th century. I wanted to have this situated on a island surrounded by marshland, its ruined stone walls and battered keep, moss covered and left in a state of disrepair. The gatehouse for the keep would also be left in tatters, stones strewn around its base.

I wanted this castle to have a ruined almost post apocalyptic look, its golden age long behind it now left abandoned and isolated on a rocky island surrounded by the marshy remnants of what was once a vast great lake that stretched out towards the horizon and to the mountains far away.

The castle would also be placed opposite a small watchtower on a rocky outcrop opposite, that would have once hosted small dock that would have serviced the main fortress, the wooden frame now rotten and resting on the marshes below.

The keep would have served as a fortress both in controlling naval trade across the lake as well as a secure bastion of last resort if retreating nobles needed a secure fortress in which to wait out a siege.

Here you can see the 3D model of the fortress created in blender this was then later UV unwrapped and painted using Adobe substance painter.

The environment around it was also created using blender and was also brought into substance painter to receive an initial paint-over and texturing before being assembled into a single piece, rendered and brought into photoshop for a final paint-over.

Castle 2:

For the second caste I took inspiration from concentric castles adding two curtain walls to the design of the castle as well a fitting the top of the walls and towers with wooden hoardings for defensive purposes. I then wanted to “whitewash” parts of the castle walls and towers for aesthetic purposes and to allow the keep and towers to stand out from the background and look more imposing as they stand out from the horizon. This was also a practice done throughout the medieval period in order to make these buildings more aesthetically pleasing. Buildings such as The Tower of London’s “white tower,” and the Great Hall of Stirling Castle were whitewashed in their day. This was something I wanted to add into the design in order to add a sense of reality and vibrancy to the piece and show that the medieval world was a colourfull place despite the brutal events that took place throughout its history.

In regard to the layout of the castle I positioned it on the bend of a river with the inner walls being both taller and on a Motte to add a further layer of protection. I constructed historically inspired defences onto the walls, towers and gatehouses such as; Barbican, drawbridge, murder holes, arrow slits, machicolations, and hoardings to give it a sense of realism and believability. I also despite not being able to see via the various renders positioned the gatehouse for the outer wall, the Barbican for the inner wall, and the entrance to the keep at odd intervals around the walls as to not give attackers a straight route into the keep meaning any assault on the keep would take longer and thus would expend more men.

To piece together this castle I used Unreal Engine 5 with free asset packs from the Epic Games Store, and Quixel Bridge. The Goal was to create a castle just using these pre made assets and with nothing mand made in order to experiment with using the new UE5 features.

in order to create the overall look and feel of the castle I predominantly used a medieval housing asset pack as well as high quality mega scans. The medieval village pack provided me with the assets to create the walls and hoardings, whilst the Megascans provided me with the whitewashed wall assets, the terrain the castle was situated on as well as the rocks and the some of the foliage assets. The rest of the foliage was created using a special foliage asset pack which painted on to the terrain using the various landscaping, and foliage tools that UE5 offers.

In regard to the assets packs I was impressed with the overall quality and ease of access, my only concern came with the wooden hoardings. Due to the fact I was using an asset pack primarily built for housing the hoardings were taken from their roof and window assets which meant that the windows were too wide to be successful arrow slits. This presented a problem as I wanted to showcase an element of design on castles that is under utilised in castle design throughout video games and films, and although I could have gone with the crenelations and more typical look and feel, I felt this would have taken away from the overall balance and composition of the design. To top it all off the only Megascan assets available of these crenelations were scans from castles in their current condition which meant that the stonework would not have been as pristine as I would have liked, and would not have fit within the overall look of the castle.