Customer Story

CINEMA 4D and Allplan used to create children's book illustrations.

Knights and castles always make for interesting subject matter. It was therefore no surprise that German architect Markus Junker jumped at the opportunity to create numerous illustrations for a children's book that offers its readers an exciting look into the Middle Ages. Markus' client, Weldon Owen PTY, is situated on the other side of the globe, in Sidney, Australia.

The Middle Ages was the time in which knights roamed the land. But how did these legendary warriors live - in peace and in times of war? How were castles built so they could repel invaders? How were knights trained and which weapons did they carry? This illustrated book explains why crusades took place and introduces Europe's most interesting castles, including the infamous Bran Castle, or "Dracula's Castle", in what is today Romania. Daily life, crusades and knights' training, detailed information about castles and fortresses as well as maps to and brief descriptions of Europe's most famous castles are all included in this fascinating book.

For Markus Junker and his partner, Rolf Schröter, also a trained architect, this meant long hours doing on-site research at castles in Northern France and combing libraries for information to get a better understanding of the complex construction of castles and fortresses. After all, examples from the entire time span in which knights existed, almost 450 years, had to be illustrated. After Markus and Rolf had collected innumerable ideas, textures and insight, work began on constructing the first castle in Allplan. Their goal was to build a completely functional castle that could be used in a wide variety of illustrations. Ultimately, this castle was not based on any historic plans but its design, the manner in which it was constructed and other details would all have been possible in the Middle Ages.

The seamless connectivity between Nemetschek's Allplan and CINEMA 4D made a perfect transfer of files possible so that a team of five artists could continue work on the project. Now CINEMA 4D was at the center of the creation of scenes depicting everyday life in and around a castle of the Middle Ages. CINEMA 4D is also where various meshes were fine-tuned, such as roof trusses and arched doorways, to ensure a smooth workflow and optimized rendering. Figures were also created to add life to the castle. A particular challenge was the creation of scenes that included hundreds of enemy invaders. Poser figures were used to quickly create and import large numbers of characters. Close attention was paid to the texturing of these figures to make sure they represented the garb of the time. A lot of time was spent clothing the many figures using CINEMA 4D's Clothilde module, which produced excellent results. The fact that this cloth simulation module can also be used to explain how a catapult works bears evidence to artist Patrick Tilps' unique ingenuity. Indispensable for the last step in the creation process were Multi-Pass rendering and subsequent editing in Adobe Photoshop, which is where many images, whose size averaged 5835 x 3248 pixels, were fine-tuned.

With this project, Markus Junker and his team demonstrated how Allplan, CINEMA 4D and Photoshop combine to create a seamless and unbeatable production chain.

Markus Junker (www.godd.com)

Verlagsgruppe Oetinger (www.oetinger.de)