The teaser trailer for Les Fondateurs: La Quête de Gryffondor is out! Spoiler alert: there’s a brief shot of Hogwarts at the end, courtesy of yours truly. I’m really looking forward to producing more shots of the castle for this fan film!
Fun facts about the animation, which was created specifically for the teaser:
- This was created using a copy of the main model. I removed everything that wouldn’t be visible, since I wasn’t using a render farm and I wanted to keep the render times decently fast. (We intend to use a render farm for the film itself, and I also plan to bake a lot of the procedural textures to images, which should speed things up. By then Blender will have adaptive sampling as well.)
- This shot includes some parts of the castle that weren’t/aren’t complete in the main model – I built some geometry that would work for this brief shot, but there are some inaccuracies. Fortunately, the castle does change over time! In any case, the model used for the film itself will be more detailed and accurate.
- There are no volumetrics in this shot – all the fog was a composited mist pass, plus an overcast HDRI for the sky and lighting. (Thanks, HDRIHaven!)
- I removed the pipe that sticks out of Gryffindor Tower…it looked funky from this angle and distance.
I’m looking forward to seeing this project come together!
Hogwarts 4D 
…Damn, that’s atmospheric. =D I actually like that this version of the castle is unique to the teaser, haha – as far as I know, you’re the first person ever to render a version of Hogwarts during the time of the Founders! So until the prequel TV series comes along, I reckon this is canon by virtue of being the only image in existence. 😉 Well, it’s my canon anyway.
Also, this might just be me, but I kinda love the way the castle shamelessly reshapes itself over time. It sort of feels right that it would look slightly different in its earliest incarnation, whether for out-of-universe story reasons or in-universe magical ones. (I’ve heard the theory advanced that the reason for the wholesale redesign of the Grand Staircase in DH Pt. 2 is that the castle reshaped itself under Snape as Headmaster. Out went the fun, whimsy and moving staircases; in came order and dour grey discipline. Is a fun theory, even if it’s not the official explanation.)
Also, that reminds me… which version of the castle are you planning on using for the Founders era? =) Arguably it might make sense to use the Philosopher’s Stone iteration (or something like it), as the oldest example of the architecture… but then again, Crimes of Grindelwald sorta retcons Hogwarts to having always resembled the model they built for DH, so who knows. Personally I think you’d be entirely justified building whichever version you like best, haha, or whichever suits the story… but I did wonder what your plan was, as Hogwarts Architect for the movie. 😉
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I’m waiting till later in production to create the shots. When the time comes, I’ll likely use a copy of whatever version of the castle is most complete in my model – presumably POA. If there are visibly incomplete areas, I’ll fill those in as the shots dictate. The goal is to produce something recognizable and convincing, even some parts end up slightly different. I’ve been given pretty free rein, as the filmmakers share our comfort with the castle’s architectural fluidity. I’ve even wondered if it goes through cycles, and we just happened to catch it in the same design in both DH2 and Fantastic Beasts. 😉
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