Creating a Castle! A Bumpy Road.

 

Creating a Castle! A Bumpy Road.

By: Marina Dawson

I began my first class of OBDF with Bryan thinking that I remembered most of the skills I had learned only a semester ago, I think I was a great fool. Since I hardly even remembered the rotate command, this was quite the journey of re-remembering old commands and learning new and very useful ones as well.

I first began with a simple polyline drawing on the plane, but after learning a new command called revolve, I decided that I wanted to put it to use by creating a small hill. I found this to be really easy, so I took it upon myself to also get a little fancy and put my rendering skills to use. 

After creating a landscape, I began to think of ways that I could make my design more intricate. So i created two different windows, and then doors. I did this by making a shape with the polyline tool, extruding it, and then creating small window shapes and then utilizing the Boolean-difference tool. This created an effect which actually made a fame for the doors, and then had small glass panels much like the ones we see everyday. I took this as a success.  

However, This then took a turn, and I realized that once I had created the polysurfaces which would act as my doors, I then would have to make castle doors to insert them into. Because the lines were simply planar surfaces and were not extruded forms, I then noticed that whenever I attempted to use the  Boolean-union tool or join, the command failed. I got really upset and did not fully comprehend what was going wrong. However, after a long detour I realized that I could draw on the "walls" the shape of the doors and windows and cut into the surface, and then move my shapes into them like puzzle pieces. This was effective, however after some thought, I realized that perhaps I could have made a polygon shape on the plane, offset it, and then extruded it so that way I could then place windows inside of the walls, much like a real castle. I was aware that I needed a refresher on this CAD system, and this was my reminder of how certain commands, and thinking smarter and not harder is a useful skill while working in Rhino. 

After playing around with where I wanted to put my "castle walls" I decided to create this big tall towers, a small courtyard, and then a main hall because I love the Harry Potter series and wanted to pay homage to the franchise by emulating similar elements that Hogwarts has . I added small details like a little room at the top of the tallest tower, simply because it reminded me of Shrek. 

I decided after some consideration, that I would spend  the time to do custom rendering on this piece, and although it did take a considerable amount of time. I realized that this was a process that was completely worth the time and effort because it served as an amazing refresher of how to create new materials in the rendering gallery, and how to make use of lighting tools. 

Overall, I am really pleased with how this project worked out, I feel that although there were lots of bumps in the road, this project served as a reminder of how much I enjoy working on Rhino. Additionally, I also taught myself new commands like "mirror" which cut my time in half  trying to form polygons with windows inside of them. I feel that I have learned a lot, and analyzed where I have gone wrong and taken the steps to work from these tedious and sometimes annoying moments. I am glad to have been given this opportunity to learn and grow.