The Tower of Babel (Alternate Title: Dee is full of Hubris and suffers for it)

The Tower of Dee's Hubris

So for the first assignment, we were given the task to create a castle. Sounds pretty self explanatory, yes? Well, I immediately thought, why a castle though? Why not some other defensive structure where figures of authority ruled over grovelling peasants from?

I jumped right in, starting to do some research on different styles of fortification and 'castles' (technically still a castle! Just not the European kind) throughout history, and hit on a few types I was really quite fond of. Being a huge nerd for Mesopotamian cultures to begin with I had a strong bias to make a ziggurat, a la the Tower of Babel (see fig. 1) among other semi-religious, semi-fortified buildings.

(Fig 1. Public Domain picture of a Ziggurat in Iraq. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ancient_ziggurat_at_Ali_Air_Base_Iraq_2005.jpg)

I additionally looked up other prominent forms of ancient fortification such as Egyptian temple complexes and palaces (see fig. 2) that combined form and function to both have impressive visual and architectural appeal while maintaining a defensive function.

(Fig 2. Picture of the Medinet Habu ruin in Egypt, available for use under Creative Commons license. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:By_ovedc_-_Medinet_Habu_-_011.jpg)

In particular, the angular nature of both types of construction lends well to my still-primitive Rhino skills, as they can largely be constructed through use of Polyline, Polygon, Rectangle, and simple ExtrudeCrv commands. With that in mind, I set to work designing and constructing an Ancient Mesopotamian-Ancient Egyptian inspired pyramid structure that would serve as an impressive temple-palace back in the good old days.

I would additionally like to cite the video game Age of Mythology by Ensemble Studios for inspiring much of the design I came up with. As a huge fan of the game since childhood, two models from the game always held my attention: the Migdol Stronghold, and the Citadel, featured in the Egyptian civilization playable in game. These two in particular were very useful for reference.

Citadel


Migdol Stronghold

Anyway, work went underway, and immediately I bit off more than I could chew by constructing the walls out of many small parts rather than one large piece. Then made obelisks by constructing many small prisms and joining them together. Then made the second floor with interlocking prisms that took a significant amount of time as well. After a frankly absurd amount of time spent rectangle and polyline and extrudecrv-ing, I had managed to cobble together something close to what I had envisioned - with 20 minutes before the deadline, no less. I really tried to get some slanted crenelations into the top, but I couldn't figure it out, and ended up wasting hours on trying to shove it in to no avail. Maybe next time, eh?

WIP. You can see the little test-crenelation I have, but it's uneven and doesn't look great.

WIP. Attempted to integrate the crenelations, and you can see the big gap it leaves.

I suppose to sum up, I learnt that I'm not nearly as good as I think I am and I probably should bite off something I can chew, rather than throw myself into a design without forethought. Also, God Bless Copy-Paste-ing objects.

Onwards to the pictures!