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Thread: Commission piece - Beaumaris Castle

  1. #1

    Default Commission piece - Beaumaris Castle

    Hi Everyone!

    Back at the beginning of the year I was invited to have a go at recreating Beaumaris Castle from the Profantasy Source Maps Castles collection.

    The work included building a Sketchup model of the castle to render a set of isometric symbols to make an isometric map of the castle, drawing 4 hyperlinked levels of top view floorplans at dungeon scale, and creating a surrounds map of the immediate environment of the castle. It was a huge amount of work, but Profantasy were fantastic (again) and I loved every minute of it.

    What you see here is a straight render of the Sketchup model with no post processing applied. The model sits on an imported render of the level 1 dungeon plan I (sorry about the poor quality of the level 1 plan - I was working on a broken laptop when I created the model)

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Image copyright Sue Daniel 2019

    Profantasy have confirmed that the Cartographer's Annual issue of Beaumaris Castle will be available for non-CC3 mappers to use at the end of the year, when the whole annual will be available as a single download. There's a lot of artwork included - the size of this issue alone is around 1.5 GB

    Hope you enjoy!

  2. #2
    Guild Expert ladiestorm's Avatar
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    this is absolutely beautiful, Mouse! I love the stonework look to it... It looks like it's part of a pop-up book!
    Like a thief in the night
    she comes with no form
    yet tranquility proceeds
    the accursed storm...


    check out my new Deviant Art page!
    https://www.deviantart.com/ladiestorm

  3. #3

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    Thank you, Storm

    Sketchup models do tend to be a bit sharp if you are used to looking at all the lovely hand drawn maps around here, but the symbols I rendered for the annual set from it have been post processed to make them a little less clinical than that

  4. #4
    Community Leader Bogie's Avatar
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    Really cool Mouse, love the detail!!

  5. #5

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    Aw thank you, Bogie

  6. #6
    Guild Artisan Guild Supporter Tenia's Avatar
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    Wonderful Mouse, I imagine it was a lot of work with Sketchup

  7. #7
    Guild Journeyer Chlodowech's Avatar
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    Indeed, having to work with a lot of round shapes is one of the most painful things to do with SketchUp. Along with getting all the measurements correct and not having a nasty little error here and there in the end.

    Great work, you have my respect!

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tenia View Post
    Wonderful Mouse, I imagine it was a lot of work with Sketchup
    Thank you

    It certainly was, but a totally fascinating project. I got really involved in researching the castle and its history.

    Quote Originally Posted by Chlodowech View Post
    Indeed, having to work with a lot of round shapes is one of the most painful things to do with SketchUp. Along with getting all the measurements correct and not having a nasty little error here and there in the end.

    Great work, you have my respect!
    Thanks Chlodowech

    The castle was never finished - it being the last one in the Welsh 'Iron Ring' of castles designed by James of St George and commissioned by King Edward I. Most historians seem to agree that had it been finished it would have looked very similar to Harlech Castle. Most of the dimensions are therefore approximate guestimates made by me, based on (rather oddly) the height of the model spiral stairs I made. It was quite a business trying to get it to work properly so that all the passageways and stairwells made sense. They are all there, by the way. The interior is relatively complete (though I haven't even attempted to recreate the entirety of the 1 km of passageways that exist within the walls themselves). I had to build it properly like that to be confident that the outside would also be a reasonable representation.

    Rounded walls are not as difficult as you might think

  9. #9
    Guild Journeyer Chlodowech's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mouse View Post
    Rounded walls are not as difficult as you might think
    Not so much the rounded walls themselves, but applying decorations to them in a regular manner without getting the nasty little errors. I regularly get cases where the planned window sits just where an edge of the "round" shape is, and then it's big remodelling time The only worse thing in my opinion is creating gothic rib vaults, especially for rooms that are not rectangular.

  10. #10

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    My goodness! I didn't go as far as recreating the rib vaults. I did, however, leave space for them so I knew how tall to make each level.

    I think when you make a circular array of something (as I had to many times over for this model) for some reason there seems to be an issue with things failing to snap properly into place. Believe me - after doing all those arrow slits and particularly the chapel windows (not visible from this angle) I really do know what you mean.

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