The idea of the castle arose from an interest about medieval culture. The design shows that we can implemement a realistic design in Virtual Reality with a high level of detail. This concept can be applied to other landmark structures and posted on websites to promote education, interest, and tourism.


DESCRIPTION

The VRML scene begins outside of the castle on the opposite side of the moat. The path towards the castle is lit by several lanterns. The path leads to a bridge which goes into the castle from a drawbridge. Once inside, there is center hallway that leads to three separate rooms. On the right is a CONFERENCE ROOM with a round table similar to the one from the Arthurian Legend. The room on the right is a DINING ROOM with ten seats. The Room directly in front of the main hallway is the GRAND ROOM. The GRAND ROOM leads to several other rooms. The LIBRARY on the right has a entrance for a secret room by clicking on the light next to the fireplace. The ARMORY on the left has several different weapons and coats of armor. In the center of the ARMORY is the King's Armor. Directly in front of the GRAND HALL is the THRONE ROOM. The THRONE ROOM is preceded by a short hallway with knights on both sides leading the way to the throne. Above the THRONE ROOM there is the King and Queen's chambers which can be accessed from the GRAND HALL. The bedroom consists of a bathroom, closets, and other furniture. Surrounding all the buildings are the CASTLE WALLS and GUARD TOWERS. The GUARD TOWERS can be climbed all the way to the top with a great view of the castle courtyard.

The virtual reality castle created a great dilemma on how we were to model different intricate structure. This required a few unconventional means. A few of the more detailed parts were modelled in 3D STUDIO MAX Revision 5. These parts were exported to VRML and INLINED into the scene. Some of these parts include the chandellier, coats of armor, and chairs. The drawbridge used Timesensors and Orientation Interpolators to simulate the movement. All the double and single doors were made separately and used similar sensors in addition to a sound sensor. The secret room uses a heirarchy of objects to rotate with the rear wall when the lantern on the side is clicked. There is a audio clip that originates from the throne to show that this is the most important room in the castle. Some problems we faced were properly aligning all the different levels especially because of the second floor. Also, the lighting seeped through the objects and indirectly lit up objects that were not meant to be lit. There was a large problem with the textures because if the walls were not made in a specific way then different textures would appear based on the camera angle. The greatest source of trouble of this project was it's sheer size. This castle required many different rooms and intricate design for a sense of realism. All of these rooms had to have a certain degree of detail and in the end, the project had an enormous amount of polygons. This in turn greatly reduces the polygon count.

ENTRANCE

FIREPLACE

DINING ROOM

CONFERENCE ROOM

ARMORY

THRONE ROOM

KING / QUEEN CHAMBERS

3D MODEL OF CHANDELLIER

This project was completed on May 3, 2003 by: Samrat Bhoot and SheShin Yamin.