The Transfiguration Courtyard

Time for a Hogwarts feature that’s right out of Durham Cathedral, at least in its original form. The cloisters were used as the filming location for the “middle courtyard” or “Transfiguration courtyard” in the early films, though it was later represented by a similar courtyard at Oxford and then by a set at Leavesden.

I first spent a morning working on under-the-hood tweaks to hopefully improve the file’s performance – downrezzing overlarge normal maps, replacing duplicated objects with linked proxies, decimating some meshes that had gotten too dense, etc. The hope is that my computer will be able to handle the file a little more easily moving forward. No sexy renders to share for that, though, so here’s a cute puppy photo instead.

Anyway, back to Hogwarts! A big question cropped up as I was compiling my references: How much detail do I put into the cloisters – specifically, the doorways that lead to other parts of the castle? These are seen in the location shoots in the first two films, but at least some of these were evidently left out the miniature. (They never would have been visible in the film, so I can appreciate the decision to focus elsewhere.) Furthermore, the south walk (which corresponds to the east walk at Durham) changed repeatedly over the course of the films, and I have no idea what the cloister interior looked like at that point.

I figured the most reasonable approach would be to create the complete courtyard without those doorways and then see if I could get away with it in my renders. I started with the tracery of the cloisters and a basic ground plane:

This part was easy because I’d already built the clock tower courtyard – its cloisters contain a lot of design elements adapted from Durham Cathedral.

The fountain in the center of the courtyard was next, and this one’s going to give me some trouble later on…not because it’s hard to create, but because it’s unclear exactly when it vanished. Let’s break it down:

It was created for the first film, apparently as a set dressing that sat on top of the lavatorium (monks’ handwashing station) that sits in the middle of the courtyard at Durham.
It’s still there in the second film, both on location and in a bespoke 1/8th-scale model of the courtyard used in an overhead establishing shot.
The center of the courtyard is never visible in the third film, so that one’s a question mark.
As I mentioned, goings-on in the courtyard were shot at Oxford instead of Durham Cathedral for the fourth film, so the location looks totally different and won’t be reflected in my model. There is an aerial shot during the First Task when we briefly see the Durham courtyard, but if the fountain is there, only the very top of it is peeking over the roofline.
No idea in the fifth film…
In the sixth film, the courtyard was realized as a set that included the base of the Astronomy Tower. (I suspect this was a revamp of the viaduct courtyard set, which I suspect was a revamp of the clock tower courtyard set.) There’s no fountain in that set, but that set is far from a perfect match to the miniature. I can’t find any shots of the center of the courtyard in the miniature, but the fountain is gone from the technical drawings and I’d imagine the same is true of the miniature.
In the final film, the fountain is again missing from the technical drawings, and this is confirmed with a CG overhead shot of the area.

With all that in mind…until I can find more reference that confirms which changes were made when, I’m just going to assume the fountain lasted till the sixth film, at which point it was removed and never came back.

Anyway, I added the fountain and started the sewer grate. I also added the benches, which seem to have been more set dressings. You can see in this render that I’ve finally mirrored the east walls of the Long Gallery onto the west side, too:

That’s the first render I did with the new Blender 2.90. It’s got some great new features, but it kept crashing when I attempted to render. After some troubleshooting, I figured it out: this version of the software doesn’t like my old smoke simulations. That’ll need to be addressed, but for now, I’m afraid the hearths of Hogwarts have gone cold.

That structure in the top left corner of that render is a newly-added Durham Cathedral transept, the last missing piece of the Long Gallery. In the first film, this one was a simple mirror image of the one on the other side, but when the Dark Tower (center) was added in Prisoner of Azkaban, this transept had to be shortened a bit, resulting in a slightly asymmetrical footprint that lasted right through the end of the series. Easier to see from the air:

As you can see, the one to the left of the central tower isn’t as long as its counterpart on the right.

One interesting thing about this courtyard is that each of its four sides has a different look. I next took care of the north wall, which corresponds to the west wall at Durham:

You’ve no doubt noticed that the cloister is still roofless – I decided to save that for after the surrounding walls were built. Speaking of which, here are the last of them:

It’s hard to find detailed reference for the wall on the right (above the two benches) in the miniature. Its design is similar to that of the corresponding wall at Durham Cathedral, but there are some differences. To make matters worse, there are some apparent discrepancies in the number of windows in the various Hogwarts images available, but there’s a good chance that what I’ve done is accurate to the state of the main miniature at the time of POA. And if not, it’s at least quite close – it could be that there are supposed to be six windows on the shorter part of the wall instead of five.

Anyway, the only remaining step was to add the cloister roofs! With these in place, the answer to my “big question” became clear: No, I didn’t need to add doors and other details inside the cloisters. They simply aren’t visible unless you’re actually inside the cloisters, and I’m okay with not having detailed views inside there. So with that in mind…voilà, the complete transfiguration courtyard!

Incidentally, I love that structure just above the center of that render, below the DADA tower. It was added in the third film when the DADA tower got shifted over a bit, and it’s basically just a Durham Cathedral transept, except, like…a standalone version. Something about it tickles me. Naturally, everything will look better once that wall next to it has an actual building behind it, but that’ll come with adding the final major piece of the main castle: the training grounds tower!

What Was There Before the Hogwarts Greenhouses?

It’s not a question that you could answer just by watching the films. Here we have to rely on behind-the-scenes shots and technical drawings from Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone to reconstruct this area in its original state.

But first, I knew I needed to finish up this area as seen from Chamber of Secrets through Half-Blood Prince! I finished the curtain walls and added lawns:

Here’s a cool POV shot coming down the back steps of the Durham building:

That’s a wrap for this area in the Prisoner of Azkaban 3D model! But what did it look like at the time of the first film? Well, you still had curtain walls surrounding a large, L-shaped lawn, but the walls weren’t quite as far from the castle, and instead of the domed conservatory acting as the entryway, you had this relatively simple, squarish, Alnwick Castle-inspired building:

This side of the building is actually seen in a couple of shots in the film, but I haven’t been able to find as much detailed information about the other sides – in particular, the opposite side that faces the castle proper. For that facade, I’ve just used the same details as what you see here, but I can’t deny the possibility that some of the details were a little different. (I wonder in particular if they really would have put the Hogwarts crest on the other side.) Unless I find elevations or images of that part of the miniature, I may never know…when the greenhouses and conservatory were added in COS, this small gatehouse disappeared forever.

Anyway, here are a couple of before-and-after sliders to play with! On the left is the Sorcerer’s Stone castle; the right is Prisoner of Azkaban. (The changes we’re currently focused on occurred in Chamber of Secrets, but you’ll of course see some Azkaban changes too.)

I’ll wrap up this post with a view of some additional work I did next on the west side of the Alnwick Castle warder’s tower. Here there are again some details that differ a bit between the VFX miniature and the real-world filming location; I’m primarily going off of the miniature, though Alnwick does provide invaluable reference as well. I guess you could say my goal is to capture the shared imagined reality that the model and the location both help bring to life.

The two contenders for my next area of focus are the transfiguration/middle/Durham courtyard and the training grounds tower. I’m much more excited at the prospect of doing the latter, but I think I may tackle the courtyard first. Be sure to subscribe to be notified with future updates!

The Domed Conservatory

I’ve been looking forward to this one! When the greenhouses went in for Chamber of Secrets, the small building forming the entrance to that courtyard was replaced with a larger and more ornate conservatory with a dome and cupola. It’s a neat structure, but my biggest reason for being excited is that there are blueprints at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour…and these provide lots of detail on the interior, which is hard to glimpse from the exterior of the model. The upshot is that today’s post concludes with the first (to my knowledge) views of the conservatory interior on the internet!

How’d I get there? Well, I decided to start from the inside; it’s easier that way, plus it allows interesting views that won’t be possible once the structure is enclosed. There’s an octagonal arrangement of planters and columns:

Texturing the interior is an interesting challenge. I don’t want to spend that long on it, since it’ll barely be visible from the outside. It’s also hard to find good texture reference precisely because it’s barely visible from the outside – and for the same reason, they probably didn’t go super realistic in terms of all the finishes anyway. (From what little we can see at the Studio Tour, it looks like the inside may have become understandably dusty, which further complicates things. I also don’t know what they were going for with the weird gold paint job on the planters.)

As I pondered this, I continued with the modeling. Next up was the spiral staircase up to the balcony level. An apparent inconsistency in the technical drawings gave me a moment of trouble with the number of risers, but I’m pretty sure my interpretation is the correct one. With a little sleuthing, I learned that this spiral staircase was based on a 1:25 scale set sold by E.M.A. Model Supplies in London. In fact, the specific product (ST-7304) is listed for sale on their website to this day. Here’s the product image:

They then added the cage and banister. Here’s my version with most of the staircase modeling done:

Finishing the staircase and moving on to the balcony above:

Unless you’re pretty short, you’ll want to watch your head as you ascend the spiral staircase. There’s a spot near the top with less than five feet of vertical clearance.

It looks like the foliage in the conservatory is mostly palm trees and the like; I tweaked some assets from CGTrader. These obviously won’t be an exact match to the ones inside the miniature, but they get the job done.

Time to start enclosing the thing:

The next section up has more dragons. I’d planned on simply using the exact same asset from the greenhouses…but I should have done my research first. Turns out the ones on the conservatory are a little different in shape/size. So I went back and roughly rigged the dragon so I could pose it a little differently for the conservatory. It’s not a perfect match to the pose, sadly, but it wouldn’t be worth it to do a whole ‘nother sculpt.

Then it was just a matter of adding the dome…

The only thing left was the cupola on top. But as I was about to start that, I randomly started noticing some issues with the castle’s overall coloration. The color has always been a tricky thing due to the various changes in the paint job, the lighting, and the color grading over time. But I’ve gradually found more and more unprocessed shots of the castle in relatively neutral white lighting, and comparing those to my renders, I decided my castle needed to be a little more yellow and a little less red. It’s surprisingly tough to get the right balance, so I’ll likely go back and continue to tweak the colors at some point. But for now, I think this brings us still closer to a convincing reproduction of the castle:

Anyway, let’s finish the conservatory!

Not half bad! But of course, the real fun is putting the camera inside, where – again, to my knowledge – no Potter fan has gone before! It’s a relatively tight interior space, so we’ll use a fisheye lens:

And here’s a shot from the balcony level:

You saw it here first, folks! (And if you didn’t…well, let me know where you did see it first, because I’d love to see more views inside the conservatory!)

I think my next steps will be to finish the last bit of the curtain wall surrounding the greenhouses and then finish up all the footpaths and lawns. See you soon!

You Can Never Have Too Many Greenhouses

The 3D model of the Prisoner of Azkaban castle keeps chugging along! After completing that first greenhouse, I duplicated it three more times:

These four all share the exact same design, but then there are four more along the east side of the Durham area, and their dimensions are a little different, so I had to create (and thrice duplicate) a new variation over there:

And then at last there is Greenhouse Three, which is a smaller lean-to on the castle’s outer wall. (You can catch a glimpse of it in the above render.) This is the greenhouse where the Herbology lesson with the mandrakes takes place. It’s got its own unique design, so I took care of that next. Some of the dimensions here don’t line up quite as precisely as I’d like, but I’ve tried to minimize the number (and visibility) of compromises as much as I can:

You can also see that I’ve also added rust, adjusted the weathering of the wood, and started with the footpaths between the greenhouses. I even threw in one of the largest vines that snakes its way out of the greenhouses, visible toward the bottom right:

In the background, you’ll see that I’ve begun the curtain walls around the greenhouse area. These were actually there in the original design of the castle, even before the greenhouses were added in Chamber of Secrets; they just had to be pushed outward a bit to accommodate that addition. Here’s a better view of their progress:

See where the wall stops on the right? That’s going to be the site of the final greenhouse structure, the domed conservatory that also acts as the only way out of the greenhouse courtyard and into the grounds. But I’m going to save that for the next post. I’m hoping to even share something I’ve never seen before: an interior view of that conservatory*!

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a slightly different aerial view of the POA model so far. Still plenty more to be done, but we’re getting closer!

* If they happened to include the conservatory interior in any of the video games, let me know! I haven’t played them but I’ve looked through longplays on YouTube and never spotted it.

Rescaled Bricks & Greenhouse Dragons

I promise we’re going to get to sculpting the decorative dragons from the tops of the greenhouses, but first I wanted to share a “before and after”. A reader who goes by kronkolweg pointed out that my castle’s bricks were a little big. It had already been starting to bug me a bit, and this was just the kick I needed to get off my butt and fix it.

For the original castle miniature, one or more brick textures were hand-sculpted, molded, mass-produced in FastCast resin, and glued to the miniature’s wooden understructure before being hand-painted. There was a transition to more detailed plaster-based textures starting in Chamber of Secrets – I’m not sure if any of the original resin brick textures ultimately survived through to the final Half-Blood Prince iteration of the miniature. In any case, the overall effect is the same, and my procedural brick material mimics it without requiring me to individually texture each wall. The thing is, when I created this material (as documented here, here, and here), I had much less of the castle built, which meant I had fewer points of comparison for the scale of the bricks. Frankly, I don’t remember how much actual measurement there was, as opposed to simple eyeballing, but it’s become clear that the results are a little oversized.

So, being the Excel nut that I am, I sat down and made a spreadsheet. I took horizontal and vertical brick counts for various areas of the castle, comparing my model to the miniature. There’s a certain margin of error in the scale of my castle, and the bricks of the miniature are not necessarily of completely uniform scale, so I averaged the different measurements and arrived at my brick adjustments: a 34% reduction in width and a 21% reduction in height.

The interactive sliders below compare the old larger bricks (left) to the new smaller bricks (right):

The difference is subtle from any real distance, but it’s more accurate now, which always feels good.

With this tweak completed, I shifted my attention to those greenhouse dragons! Fortunately, they’re all identical, so I only had to sculpt one. I did so in a separate file, and – well, if you’re interested, just watch part 1 of the video.

Frankly, I can’t get enough of these sliders, so let’s compare the base mesh to the full-resolution sculpt…

…and now comparing the full-resolution sculpt to the retopologized version with normal mapped details:

If the differences seem really minor…good! The point of retopo is to vastly simplify the geometry, which makes the asset a lot more manageable. The sculpt on the left has over 1.3 million faces; the retopologized version on the right only has around 1,500. Much easier on the computer! Of course, that eliminates a lot of details; baking and applying a normal map is a way of faking those back in, hopefully with an end result that’s nearly indistinguishable from the original sculpt. (In this particular case, there are a few small artifacts in the shading, but these are not noticeable when color is applied and we move the camera away a little.)

You can watch this whole process in part 2 of the video:

The retopology process is still a lot slower, harder, and more frustrating for me than I’d like, but in the end I was satisfied with the result, so I created an appropriate material, brought the mesh over into the main castle model, and duplicated it to the appropriate spots on the single greenhouse I’d already created. Voilà!

That’s a wrap for the dragon, and for this greenhouse overall! The next steps will be to duplicate this greenhouse and create the other two design variations on it. Then I’ll be able to move on to the domed conservatory, the curtain walls surrounding the greenhouses, and hopefully some ground cover and footpaths. Be sure to subscribe to this blog and the YouTube channel for updates as they come!

Starting the Greenhouses

Hogwarts got its greenhouses added in Chamber of Secrets. They sat undisturbed in what was formerly an open courtyard until Deathly Hallows Part 2, at which point some adjacent architecture was removed and the greenhouses expanded a bit to fill the empty space.

My own 3D recreations of these greenhouses provided some fun challenges right off the bat. As I alluded to in the previous post, I was surprised to realize that they are not all identical. I mean, I knew that there was a lean-to attached to the wall of the castle as well as a domed conservatory out front, but I’d assumed the other greenhouses were octuplets. No such luck. The ones that run parallel to the Long Gallery aren’t quite as long as the ones that run east-west along the north facade, though they’re made of the same basic building blocks.

As always, I wanted to get the details and dimensions right. Without much in the way of detailed technical drawings, I resorted to making some quick-‘n’-messy diagrams to organize my thoughts and measurements.

Quick and messy, like I said, but it really helped me figure out how to proceed with the modeling. I started framing just one wall of just one greenhouse, laying out the largest support posts every 10 feet. Some of these will eventually have sculpted dragons on top, but those’ll come in a future blog post:

Blender’s Array modifier makes it easy to just work on one segment and have all the others update accordingly. No textures at this point either – I knew the white paint would later need to be scuffed up a bit.

Adding more details, temporarily pretending that the greenhouses don’t have any doors:

The familiar question of whether to follow the miniature or the set cropped up yet again. Actually, it’s more complicated. The greenhouses didn’t show up often in the films, but they got a glorious establishing shot in Chamber of Secrets. The VFX team put together a very impressive shot that moves across the lake, over the grounds, and right through an open window into the lean-to, AKA Greenhouse Three. The shot combines the 1/24th-scale Hogwarts miniature (and CG background) with a live-action plate shot on the greenhouse set, and it’s pretty seamless, especially for the early 2000s. But the camera has to go right up to the greenhouses, exposing a lot of detail…and at 1/24th scale, some of that detail wasn’t going to hold up. So they built separate 1/8th-scale miniatures of the three greenhouses the camera would get closest to. For whatever reason, while those larger bespoke miniatures match the design of the set, the main castle miniature is slightly different. I’m mainly talking about the windowpanes – they’re narrower and more numerous in the main castle miniature.

Sooooo…what to do? Follow the set and 1/8th-scale miniature, or follow the 1/24th-scale miniature? I take these decisions on a case-by-case basis, and for the greenhouses, I ultimately went with the wider windowpanes from the set and 1/8th-scale miniature (for a variety of reasons).

Here we go – doors and details and preliminary materials.

Starting to add the beams for the roof:

Hey, it looks kinda like a greenhouse!

By this point, I had been really debating exactly how much interior detail to do. This project file just keeps getting bigger and bigger, which means my computer has an increasingly hard time keeping up. It’s thus in my best interest to only include the details I need – but of course, the greenhouses are rather transparent, and I still wanted to them to “read” correctly from the outside. Once I had them fully enclosed, I was able to see how the materials interacted with the light and decide how much interior detail I needed to include. Not much, it turns out, as long as I don’t let the glass get too crystal-clear:

Some of the geometry got slightly messy as I went around the corners of the greenhouse, trying to respect all the various reference images as much as possible, but I’m pretty happy with the result:

For a moment, I thought all I had left to do was sculpt the decorative dragons on top, but then I remembered that I needed to pop the roof hatches too – otherwise, how would the camera float in for that great shot in COS?

(These are all open at random angles, BTW…I’m anal, but not anal enough to match them exactly.)

Anyway, I’ll be sculpting the dragons next, but we’ll save that for a future post, hopefully in video form. I’ll also need to create all the other greenhouses using the same components. See you next time!

When Durham Met Alnwick: The Warder’s Tower Story

My Prisoner of Azkaban model is really coming along now. I’ve continued into the area where Durham Cathedral architecture starts to collide with Alnwick Castle architecture. I also tweaked some of the wood textures and added some narrow slits I missed on the Dark Tower.

The greenhouses will eventually sit in this area, but I’m more interested in the Alnwick stuff at the moment. First up: a short structure that’s virtually identical to the warder’s tower at Alnwick. (I mean, it kinda had to be, since they shot stuff on location there!) I’d actually already started this structure early last year. You can see it in this old render from the very beginning of this blog:

This was all done in a completely separate file, and of course it was before I had created my trusty Hogwarts brick materials. Feel free to read more about it in this early post.

Bringing this model over into the main file was relatively easy, especially since I’d built it to the same scale to facilitate this eventual migration. Here’s a rather similar angle of the exact same partial model, but properly positioned and textured:

Time to flesh out the warder’s tower. I’m going to keep calling it that, by the way; to my knowledge, it has no in-universe name. It’s simply designated as Building P on the technical drawings, and I’m not going to expect myself (much less you!) to remember that.

Anyway, since this model I’d previously started was based purely on the real-world Alnwick location, I did have to make some tweaks to match the VFX miniature built for the Potter films. (I split the difference in a few spots.)

I also had to decide what to do about the Hogwarts-style torches that flank the archway – they were temporarily installed at Alnwick for the shoot, but when they were similarly added to the miniature, they were moved inward and upward to adjacent walls closer to the archway. I went back and forth on this quite a bit before ultimately deciding to accept the location shoot as canon, not the miniature. I felt this choice was bolstered significantly by the fact that this part of the miniature was never actually seen in the films, whereas the full-sized torches are prominently visible in multiple scenes shot on location for both SS and COS. (I still think the other way would been a fully defensible choice too, though.)

Here we are with the torches added, the remainder of the structure built, and some of the remaining details incorporated:

I’m really noticing the stark architectural contrast between Durham and Alnwick. There are so many more funky angles in the Alnwick-derived areas of Hogwarts…they really stand out quite a bit compared to the rest of the school, where the footprint is dominated by right angles, octagons, and circles. This isn’t news to me, but the contrast is especially noticeable when you’ve just come off a long stretch of essentially modelling a cathedral. Alnwick Castle is a lot more haphazard and organic, and of course it was simply built for very different purposes. I like these areas of Hogwarts – and I don’t think that’s only due to nostalgia – but I can understand why Stuart Craig was eager to tidy up the castle’s profile in the later films.

Here’s a POV shot from over by the base of the bell towers with this side of the warder’s tower complete. This view would only be unobstructed in the first film because as I said, this is where the greenhouses went in.

On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I’ve already begun laying the groundwork for the next structures I’m going to tackle. I don’t have anything to show yet, but I’ll give you a hint: there are 8.5 of them, and despite my longtime assumption that they were all the same size, they’re actually not.

Yup. Completely unrelated. Anyway, see ya next time!

Finishing the Bell Towers – “Azkaban” AND Original Versions!

Here we go – those bell towers need to be completed. I finished the intricate openings and decorative motifs in the middle parts of the towers. Fortunately, these never changed in any of the films, even when the tops of the towers changed, so I only had to create them this once!

Then, to complete the bell towers, I added the tops of the towers, which are very similar to the top of the central tower – just shrunk by about 23%, and with a few minor design differences. I was grateful for this not only because it allowed me to reuse elements from the central tower, but also because I discovered a mistake in the central tower in the process. All fixed now!

Of course, there are two versions of the bell towers: the original design, and this Prisoner of Azkaban redesign. With the latter complete, I decided to switch over and do the former as well!

Sadly, photogrammetry is no help when it comes to the original tops of the bell towers, but their simple design is pretty easy to eyeball. A few of the smallest details were educated guesses – for instance, I’ve added windowpanes in a few areas that could just be openings.

Anyway, enough talk – let’s compare the two designs! Drag the slider below to compare the original Sorcerer’s Stone design (left) to the Prisoner of Azkaban redesign (right). (The smaller tower above the Long Gallery will also come and go, since that was added in Chamber of Secrets.)

Here’s a reverse angle:

Surprise – there’s the original design of the central tower, too! I snuck that in there as well.

Viewing the whole castle from lake level, you can really see what a difference this simple redesign of these three towers made in the castle’s overall silhouette and character. My model is also looking a lot more complete overall!

Adding the wall between the bell towers was easy, since all of its elements are similar to stuff I’ve already created. I briefly considered tackling the greenhouses next, but then I got distracted by the adjacent walls that bring us to the training grounds tower and the middle courtyard, which will probably be where I go in our next blog post.

In the meantime, Ms. Rowling continues to tweet disappointingly misguided things about transgender people. For what it’s worth – if you, dear reader, happen to be trans, non-binary, or a member of any other oft-marginalized community, know that this Hogwarts (incomplete though it may be) will always be there to welcome your awesome self, and so will I.

The Long Gallery & Starting the Bell Towers

Work on my 3D model of the Prisoner of Azkaban castle continues! The area that corresponds to Durham Cathedral’s north transept is now complete:

I shifted my way attention to the adjacent walls that correspond to the cathedral’s nave and north aisle, otherwise known at Hogwarts as the Long Gallery. I was surprised to notice that the windows and buttresses are not evenly spaced. In fact, the upper windows don’t even align with the lower windows. I fought this briefly, thinking I must be mistaken, but nope, I’m pretty positive none of this stuff lines up in the miniature – and not in ways that match the imperfections of Durham!

I wanted to match the miniature as closely as I could, so I started by adding placeholders for the bell towers at the other end of the Long Gallery to help me lock in my spacing:

The stand-ins are shorter than the talent, and their faces are kinda blank, but hey, what are you gonna do.

At this point I discovered that my entire Long Gallery area was about a foot too far east, so I took a few minutes to shift it over and swivel the viaduct accordingly (a whopping 0.25°). A foot’s not a lot – at 1:24 scale, that comes out to half an inch in the miniature – but it helps to line things up as closely as I can.

With that done, I blocked in the walls and roofs of the long gallery:

Then came the details, with all their subtly variable spacing. Here’s an orthographic view from the side – a perspective-less elevation view, in other words. All the misalignment is totally intentional, and it should be pretty accurate (although I made further tweaks after this render).

Of course, it’ll look better once the far side is enclosed as well; I’m not working on that courtyard side yet.

In the meantime, my next task was to create the 15-foot-wide octagonal tower on the roof of the Long Gallery. This was added in Chamber of Secrets; my guess is that it was a purely aesthetic decision, perhaps motivated by the fact that the establishing shot of the greenhouses shows that area more clearly than we had seen in the first film.

Pretty quick add, and it never changed in any of the later films. Just gotta make sure I exclude it from the eventual Sorcerer’s Stone version of the model!

Next up? The bell towers! While the central tower isn’t very similar to the one at Durham Cathedral, the bell towers have a lot more in common with their Durham counterparts, the North and South Galilee Towers. In fact, the basic impression of the original design in the first two films is that they’ve simply knocked a few of the pinnacles off and added a conical roof to each tower. (Closer inspection does reveal some subtle differences in the details, as with all the Durham areas.) In Prisoner of Azkaban, the conical roofs were replaced with taller belfries and octagonal spires that echo the redesigned central tower, but the lower sections still bear a striking resemblance to Durham Cathedral. They also get a lot more intricate than the central tower, which makes them a little intimidating. I decided to start with the bottom portion, which is all based off stuff I’ve already made:

Now for the hard stuff! Okay, it’s not exactly hard…it’s just…a lot.

Halfway there:

The openings are tricky. In some shots in the early films, you can very unambiguously see straight through from one side to another, but in some photos of the miniature from the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, it looks like there are interior walls. After finding other photos that seem to show straight through in the Studio Tour as well, I decided to keep mine hollow, as you see above. Hopefully that’s still accurate to the later films.

Next time we’ll finish the bell towers, add the wall between them, and continue around this northern part of the castle!

Modeling Time-lapse: Durham Transept & POA Central Tower

Something different today! By request, I’ve documented my 3D modeling process with a sped-up screen capture. (You’re welcome, Pete!) Watch me work on the area that corresponds to the transepts of Durham Cathedral, as well as the Prisoner of Azkaban version of the central tower. I’ve tried to keep the commentary relevant no matter whether you’re a fellow Blender user or not.

If you’re interested in more videos like this, comment here or on the video to let me know! They take some extra work but I can do more if there’s enough demand. Don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel too!

Here are a few renders of the progress seen in the video. As always, click for larger versions:

After finishing the video, I put the last few touches on the central tower:

Fits in pretty well, no?