Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire saw the addition of the owlery. It sits apart from the rest of Hogwarts Castle, on a steep outcropping of rock that was added atop an existing hill. Interestingly enough, this little tower never went through any changes after being added (as far as I can tell), so I’m only having to build it the one time.
Some of the details are rather tricky to work out. Kinda hard to find detailed photography of some parts of the structure. And the architecture is a little different from the rest of the castle, too – after all, it’s built for birds, not for people. It’s very…airy. Lots of complicated holes and ledges. That’s great for letting owls in and out, but it does mean the interior is more likely to be visible, so I have to pay more attention to the interior geometry than usual for this project.
Here, some of those holes are starting to take shape:
There’s not enough detail there for it to look right, though. It’s more recognizable in the next render:
The other side has a similar set of openings:
Then just a few more details bring the owlery itself to a finished state!
I say “owlery itself” because I haven’t yet built the steps leading up to the owlery. These are going to be tricky. They don’t show up in any of the blueprints I’ve seen, and good photo reference is pretty hard to find. I’ll probably have to look into whether the versions in the video games seem accurate, and maybe rely on those. Anyway, I’ll save the steps for a future post.
For today, we’ll wrap up with a couple of impossible views. Ever wondered where the owlery was in relation to the old Quidditch training grounds?
Technical drawings are the thing that made this Hogwarts project possible, full stop. I don’t remember which of these was the correct order of events:
I stumbled upon some blueprints online and thought, Wow, I could actually do a 3D model investigating the changes!
I thought, Wow, I’d really like to do a 3D model investigating the changes! and subsequently found some blueprints online.
But either way, I don’t think I ever would have started this thing without some floor plans to guide me.
For the first film, I’ve got two different scans of a single plan of the miniature. One is a high-res B&W scan; the other has much lower resolution and a tighter crop, but it’s in color. Interestingly, their perspectives don’t match, suggesting that one or both of them may have actually originated as photos, not scans. But regardless, here I’ve tried to align them together, applying the low-res color data to the high-res scan. I’ve also rotated it (to match the plans for the other films) and corrected the perspective.
I have a few observations. First of all, this is evidently the fourth revision, dated January 14th, 2001, but there were likely other revisions after this. I say that because this plan is not completely accurate. Flaws I’ve noticed:
The Great Hall balcony has the wrong shape – the corners are square and it doesn’t wrap around the north side of the structure.
The training grounds tower doesn’t indicate the circle tower where it meets the Durham courtyard structures.
The quad interior has the wrong dimensions.
The walkway along the east side of the quad exterior appears to have a single level, and the elevation is marked as (I believe) 220′. This is the same level as the adjacent stone bridge. The final design for the first film moves the walkway lower down, with the part nearest the bridge even lower still. This also calls into question the accuracy of the area north of the quad, for which I sadly have no adequate photo reference.
Still, this is an absolutely invaluable look at the original castle.
Sadly, I have no floor plans for the miniature in the second or third films. I very much appreciate Warner Bros. posting these Prisoner of Azkaban elevations at the Studio Tour in London, though:
These cover many of the main changes to the castle in that film, and they were the reason I started my project with the Azkaban castle.
Goblet of Fire is an interesting one. I do have one partial floor plan, but the whole Great Hall/boathouse area is all wrong, as is the quad interior. I suspect that one wasn’t the final revision either.
As you can see, this consists of two scans or photos overlaid on top of each other. This composite I did not do – this is how the image was posted by user “decat” at the RPF.
This drawing provides evidence for the quad cloisters still existing in POA. Presumably, they were still part of that version, and at the time this drawing was created, they simply hadn’t yet decided to raise the quad, add the new arch, remove the cloister and fountain, etc. This is also the only plan I have of the training grounds tower from the COS redesign, and of the adjacent pathway that would eventually change in HBP.
I have no drawings of the miniature from OOTP. Fortunately, not much changed, and the changes that did occur will be easy enough to replicate with help from photogrammetry measurements.
The final HBP floor plan was actually released by Warner Bros. in the book Harry Potter: Page to Screen. It’s a two-page spread, which is wonderful for being able to read all the writing, but it does put an unfortunate seam right in the middle:
Still, it’s a fabulously detailed view of a critical production document and I’m grateful for it. I’m not aware of any inaccuracies here.
The same can almost be said of the earlier version on display at the Studio Tour:
The odd tapering crop is the result of perspective correction, since the original photo was taken at an angle. Note the lack of even the small HBP training grounds tower, the dotted outline of the old DADA tower to be removed, and the more detailed plan of the new astronomy tower.
If that’s not enough for you, though, don’t worry – when it comes to the astronomy tower, MTV News has your back! (Of all sites!)
I haven’t built the astronomy tower yet as of this writing, but this drawing is going to make it a cinch.
The main DH floor plan has also been officially released, albeit with some photo overlays that obscure some of the writing:
That film’s substantial changes are on full display here. The Fantastic Beasts castle is virtually identical; if they did create any drawings for that one, I haven’t seen them.
The real danger in studying these closely is that they refer to all the countless detail drawings that have not surfaced, and likely never will. Always leaves me feeling like the proverbial mouse for whom that cookie was simply not enough.
But ultimately, there’s a real beauty in all these drawings, even if I always find myself wanting more. I’m grateful to the deeply skilled drafters who brought these to life, and to the folks who’ve made them available to us fans!
Before we get to the meat and potatoes of today’s post, here’s a comparison requested by blog reader “The Englanderish.” We’re looking at the original design of this area (left) versus the Goblet of Fire redesign (right), but with their positioning adjusted so that 2the Great Halls line up.
Anyway, let’s build off of this previous post with interior photogrammetry for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey! The Hollywood version, that is. Here’s the single rider queue snaking up to the second floor to rejoin the main queue in the (roughly sized/positioned) Gryffindor common room:
As I’ve described in the past, this photogrammetry is just a tool to provide me with dimensions and layout for areas where I don’t have sufficient technical drawings. I’ve never seen any blueprints of this ride’s queue. So no matter how fragmentary these automatically generated models may be, they’ll be invaluable when I try to actually model everything.
Here’s the start of the Express Pass queue:
This room feels reminiscent of the Chamber of Reception. Not a bad way to make up for skipping the first part of the normal queue. Some of the talking portraits are also duplicated here, in order to provide a similar experience for riders with Express Pass.
The Express Pass queue ends up next to the main queue in Dumbledore’s office. From there they continue into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and proceed toward the Gryffindor common room:
I know it’s confusing to look at. Here’s a mildly helpful plan view of the second floor (first floor, for you Brits) so far:
Still more work to do, but I thought it’d be fun to share my progress.
I’m back! I’ve been way too busy to put much time into Hogwarts, but I’ve been able to sneak in enough moments here and there to have an update for today.
Big staircases with lots of landings and odd angles aren’t necessarily super fun for me, but they’ve gotta be done. The GOF version of the boathouse stairs kept the same look as the original, but they were all reconfigured so they could meet up with the viaduct courtyard. They only changed once more, in DH, when the viaduct courtyard and boathouse both changed.
I started cannibalizing bits and pieces of my original build to create the GOF version, working from the bottom up:
At this point, it was just about getting the pieces in place. I knew I’d fix all the spots where they intersect once I had the overall setup right.
As I finished arranging the different flights and landings, I was surprised to discover that the steps were vertically overshooting the viaduct courtyard by a significant margin. On the left is the too-tall version; on the right is the same thing after squashing the whole thing down a bit:
Then it was just a matter of clipping off all the extra bits so the pieces actually fit together neatly – the most tedious step of them all – and adding the flambeaux that light the way. Here are the complete GOF steps on the right, compared to their predecessors on the left:
We’ll wrap up for today with an interesting plan view of the GOF castle, with the original boathouse steps superimposed as well:
I’m gonna be away from my computer for a bit, so don’t be surprised by the lack of updates. But I’ll give you a glimpse of the progress to come after that:
The next additions to the Goblet of Fire castle were the “pepperpot” and the foundations of the viaduct courtyard:
I like that angle!
Next, I moved back around the backside of the Great Hall to begin adding the quad building. The south wall was changed in GOF – a new archway acts as another entry into the quad itself.
Speaking of the quad interior, check out this POA/GOF before-and-after:
I should reiterate that some parts of this are a little speculative…I don’t know for sure that the lower floor, the cloisters, and the fountain were still there in POA. But the best evidence seems to point toward that being the case. And as a reminder, the balustrade toward the bottom left in the POA version is pretty speculative too. And of course, if you’ve played the video games a lot, the lack of cloisters on the right might look pretty weird, but as far as I can tell they never came back after POA.
I’m starting to notice an interesting shift in myself. I’ve tended to think of myself as having an especially big soft spot for the first few castle designs. But as I move the virtual camera around my growing model of the GOF castle, I’m appreciating its aesthetic more and more. It holds up really well from a lot of angles. They did a really good job of choosing camera angles that flatter the earlier castle designs, obscuring some of the clunkier elements. But the GOF castle doesn’t really have many bad angles to begin with.
Anyway, here you can see me preparing to add the viaduct:
And now with the viaduct in place:
It may seem like that would be a simple matter of dropping in the existing viaduct, but it actually took some effort. The switch from the Chamber of Reception to the courtyard causes the whole viaduct to swivel a little, and I had to compress it a bit to fit the new angle. I wonder if the original modelmakers had to rebuild the whole viaduct from scratch or if they were able to squeeze the original viaduct into that space somehow?
Anyway, my next move was to drop in a whole bunch of stuff from the POA model that didn’t change for GOF, creating a much more complete castle:
As part of those efforts, I also finally added a missing detail at the base of the Dark Tower – a little entry stairwell that’s hard to find shots of. Here’s my best attempt at bringing it to life, based on the available information:
The main elements the GOF castle still needs are the owlery, the boathouse steps, and the terrain. Saving those for a future post!
When we last saw the Goblet of Fire Hogwarts model, I had grabbed some elements from the clock tower area and duplicated them in front of the Great Hall. Since then, I’ve adapted those elements to create the new entrance hall and viaduct courtyard.
Here’s the fixed-up version (right); slide to compare it to the render from last time, just showing the unaltered clock tower and courtyard elements (left):
(Ignore the way the “link building” roof gets steeper; that’s just a fix because I realized I’d made it too low.)
Here’s are some miscellaneous shots around the area:
This next one gives a good sense of what details I put into the clock, as well as what details I didn’t:
Conspicuously missing in that last render is the “pepperpot” building next to the Great Hall – hence the gap in the balustrade toward the right side, immediately adjacent to the courtyard. I think I’ll probably be adding that building next.
If you’ve followed this project for a while, you know I jump around a lot. I’ve got a master “to do” list, but sometimes I get bored with an item – or, in the case of the walkways and cliffs from last time, sometimes I run out of references. So I decided to jump over to an all-new phase of the project: creating the Goblet of Fire iteration of Hogwarts!
I started with the south end, where the Great Hall is. Some of the surrounding structures didn’t change at all from the previous film, so I ported those over. But the Great Hall itself got tweaked and slightly repositioned. Let’s start with just the design changes – easier to compare the Halls when they’re still in the same spot.
Original on the left, GOF redesign on the right:
The main difference is that the front was lengthened. This section with the bigger window corresponds to the entrance hall, a set that didn’t really fit very clearly into any part of the original Great Hall/Chamber of Reception structure. When the length was extended, the dormer windows and central turret on the roof were adjusted to keep things visually centered. The turret at the back/top of the hall was also redesigned as well as duplicated at the front of the structure.
So that’s the new design. What about the new position? Well, it’s easiest to show that by overlaying the GOF Great Hall onto the original castle:
The original position is the one that’s higher up and closer to the big marble staircase tower. The new position allowed for a redesigned “link building” between the entrance hall and the marble staircase tower – again, better matching the interior sets – and put the Great Hall closer the same level as the viaduct and its new courtyard. (Originally, the Great Hall was significantly higher than the viaduct; students had to climb all those Oxford stairs in the Chamber of Reception to get up to the Great Hall.)
Here I’ve added the link building:
The reason the rest of the GOF castle is missing is simple: I’m doing it one structure at a time, whether that means simply making its previous version visible or actually building new stuff.
The next structures to tackle are the new front of the Great Hall/entrance hall building (replacing the Chamber of Reception) and the viaduct courtyard. I believe the courtyard was brought to life by redressing the clock tower courtyard set from the previous film. I started this area by duplicating and repositioning the corresponding elements from the clock tower area, resulting in…this:
Yeah, the clock tower is definitely taller than the Great Hall. Lots of other things to tweak, too. All that and more in a future post – make sure you hit the Follow button (at the bottom of the page on mobile, to the right on desktop) to get notified of new updates!
We’ve now got four chunks of Hogwarts’s original terrain finished. In my model, they’re divided as follows:
The blue chunk below the viaduct entrance is separate from the purple chunk below the Long Gallery because the blue chunk was redone in Goblet of Fire. The gold and green chunks on the other side could have been combined with each other and/or the blue chunk, but separating them improves sculpting performance.
The next chunk I added was a small patch that’s exclusive to Prisoner of Azkaban. They slightly built up the area just beneath the corner of the Great Hall, giving it a slightly different profile. (All of this terrain had to be redone when the Great Hall was shifted in Goblet of Fire, but the redesign was more similar to the POA version than to the original.)
Sorcerer’s Stone on the left, Prisoner of Azkaban on the right:
Another view:
But there were bigger changes in POA, of course. When they added the clock tower, wooden bridge, and so on, the surrounding terrain was totally redone. So in creating the bluffs that originally led down to the lake back there, I have to be able to swap them out with the POA version without affecting the adjacent terrain (shown in green above).
Techniques here are the same as what we’ve already seen, although it’s interesting to see the updated rock textures (sans moss) on the base mesh…
This is where photogrammetry stops being useful and I just have to closely study the few available reference images. (Blueprints aren’t super helpful either, since the terrain only follows them very, very roughly.) Another complication is that some VFX shots actually cut off parts of the miniature, particularly in this area; in those cases, I’m trying to treat the complete miniature itself as canon.
More base mesh:
No, you’re not crazy – the mesh protrudes right through the walls of the terrace in some spots. That’ll be fixed soon enough; it’s not hard to shave off excess landscape.
What’s going to be harder is the ravine between the two halves of the castle. That’s where even photo reference starts to dry up, at least for this original version of the castle. Photogrammetry from the big overhead shot in Chamber of Secrets will help me with the north side of the ravine, so I decided to work on that before trying to tackle the south side:
Meanwhile, around the front side, I’ve finally added the tiny lower walkway that seems to curve through the base of the stone bridge:
Sadly, I still can’t find any clear, reliable, pre-POA information on where exactly that walkway goes on the other side of the bridge. I’m starting to think that the one available SS-era floor plan of this area isn’t accurate.
This post is getting long…I’ll save further progress for the next one!
Sculpting, sculpting, sculpting…slowly, with many hours of rest to avoid aggravating my stupid arms…
Wrapping up the sculpting on this chunk of landscape:
Here’s an overhead view of the terrain so far. Play with the slider to compare the render (left) to a quasi-topological map (right):
The terrain just doesn’t look right, though, does it? I’ve been having a really hard time getting the colors of the rocks and foliage right. If I match one reference photo, it stops matching another…if I match one film, it stops matching another….if I match one lighting scheme, it stops matching another…if I match the rocks, it stops matching the foliage. Pretty tricky.
With more tweaks in this next render, we’re getting closer…
Then I paid a visit to textures.com and grabbed some rock photos. I scrambled those up together and used them to add a little photographic grit to my existing procedural rock texture.
We’re getting there! I’ll keep working on that texture. I also need to add some moss to the castle walls where they meet the rock.
Ending today with an unrelated render – I added a few more details inside the boathouse.
I reeeaaaally haven’t built this interior to hold up to this sort of scrutiny, so enjoy the rare close-up!
Hogwarts 4D 