Hogwarts Castle Miniature Model

The new instruction creator in Studio 2.0 was actually a lot easier to use than I thought it would be, so I was able to create the instructions this morning! While creating the instructions, I discovered a few internal issues, which I fixed. I have updated the files to include these fixes.

The instructions, as well as the rest of the files can be downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LR--neQF4elFA6VryCleo80Avfm4j5Gj?usp=sharing

I don't think there are any issues in the instructions, but if you come across one, please tell me in a comment so I can fix it!

 The new contest here on LEGO Ideas for magical builds of the Wizarding World got me back into the mood for this model, so I've been making some edits to it over the past week, and created some new renders to showcase the model in Studio 2.0's new rendering engine. The changes I made were to the roof of the main tower as seen in the last update, but also to some of the smaller turrets now that there are 1x1 round tiles in dark bluish gray. I also made some other color changes around the model to make it more accurate, the largest of those being to the wooden bridge. As well as those changes, there were also a few made to make the model less costly to build. The only visible of those changes was to the quidditch pitch, where I changed the goals from being made of gray wrenches, to being made of white clips holding rings from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit sets. There were also some other non visible changes to make the model less costly, which in total brought the price of pieces down by about $50. 

The model files for the new version, as well as all the images posted below and a bricklink parts list can be downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LR--neQF4elFA6VryCleo80Avfm4j5Gj?usp=sharing

I don't have updated instructions yet, but I am working on creating some, so that will hopefully be coming soon. Instructions take a lot of time to make for large models like this though, and as a high school senior free time isn't a word very often in my vocabulary, so don't expect it for at least a week at the minimum. 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this update, it was the new contest that got me into the mood to do some more work on this model, and I highly recommend you guys go check it out to see some more awesome Harry Potter builds. I have submitted one build to it, and another of mine will hopefully be going up soon. There is also a really awesome model of the basilisk that OrientExpress26 (heh, both our handles end in 26, just realized that :)) made which I am really impressed by, and I'm sure there are plenty more awesome models that have or haven't been posted yet.

And I won't keep you waiting any longer, here are the renderings of the newest version:

A view of the whole model:

A view of the front of the castle:

A view of the bell towers:

A view of the quidditch pitch:

A view of the owlery:

A view of the lake in the Forbidden Forest:

A view of Hagrid's Hut (this one has a weird rendering artifact in it, which I can't seem to get rid of):

A view of the Womping Willow, with the flying Ford Anglia stuck in it:

A view of the wooden bridge (if you want to see my larger scale model of the bridge, go to the Wizarding World contest page):

A view of the clock tower:

Another view of the front of the castle:

And last but not least, a birds eye view of the whole model:

Thanks again for all the support!

With the new 2x4x3 half cone pieces found in lego sets 71043 and 75954 I was able to make the slope of the Grand Staircase Tower roof more consistant, and look a whole lot better, here's an image of the new roof:

I also am taking advantage of Stud.io's new rendering engine, which looks a whole lot better. I will post some more high quality renders of the castle soon

After seeing many comments asking if I would add the chamber of secrets to this model, despite my reservations, I gave in and added it, so here is that! 

Also, another quick addition to this update, is that this morning, LEGO announced a microfig scale model of the front of hogwarts coming this September. It is similar in some aspects to my model here on IDEAS, so even though this model probably won't get made due to the fact that the new set is very similar to it, I like to think all the support you guys have given this model may have influenced LEGO a bit into creating their set, so a round of applause for all of you! (though maybe thinking we influenced them is wishful thinking, who knows :) )

Here is a download link to the model with the chamber of secrets (it is in the .ldr file format for ldraw, as I had to move the model out of LDD to get access to new pieces, if you don't use ldraw, I would recommend downloading the stud.io design program from bricklink, and you can import the model into that):https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lkI4QV8v345cHrwCSkNEOZt-_3L7OVTl/view?usp=...

I will post a bricklink parts list for the new model with the chamber of secrets as soon as I get that made.

And here is a link to the Eurobrick discussion about the new set, where I posted some short thoughts of mine on it, and where you can read more about it and see what others are thinking:https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/163609-71043-hogwa...

Hi everyone,

Ben, also known as LegoFan035 here on ideas, has built this model, and sent me some images of it for me to share with you guys! The version he built is a slightly older version of the model, but for the most part it is the same as the current one, so you will only notice a few things that are different. Hope you enjoy the images, and remember to thank Ben for building this model and sending them to me!

Ben also gave me some images from the building phase of the model, however I did not include those here, as the internal structure depicted there has changed in my latest version of the model, due to advice he gave me about it's strength. If any of you would like to see those images, I can put them in an update as well. 

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates over the past year, but I've been working on other projects, and haven't spent as much time on this one as I probably should have. I had been thinking of building this model, but, as stated, had gotten busy with other projects, and put that on hold. Recently, I was contacted by the Lego Ideas user LegoFan035, who built this model in real life, and that has brought me back here (more images of his model will be coming soon!). In thinking about building this model myself, I decided to see if there was any way I could make the cost of building it cheaper, both for myself, and for any of you who are interested in it, and I found that there were. In this new version of the model, it looks almost identical to the last one, but I changed the interior of the model to make it (hopefuly) stronger, and swapped pieces around here and there to reduce the cost. In all, I managed to reduce the cost of parts by over 25% on bricklink, which seems to be where the best prices are. 

The .LXF for this new cost-optimized model can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YCzFUYBeVkF23gJn0fmgjAAyFrw1-N0q/view?usp=sharing

And the .XML you can upload to bricklink for the parts list can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Sn765sHONib2lcRPcWKtzp305eNpJYq/view?usp=sharing

For instructions, you can generate them using Lego Digital Designer, I tried generating instructions using Blueprint, but at least for this model, the ones Blueprint generated weren't as good. In the future I might try to create a better set of instructions by hand, but at the moment that is too time consuming for me. There is one thing you will have to change from the instructions, which is that on the bell towers, it will tell you to use 3 of the 1x1 bricks with a stud on one side, but instead you will need to use the 3 1x1 bricks with studs on 2 adjacent sides. The reason for this discrepency is that LDD does not include part 26604 (the brick with studs on two adjacent sides). Since I'm assuming that I am probably the only one here who has studied the architecture of Hogwarts Castle, you guys probably don't know which ones the bell towers are, so here is an image of them. 

Thanks for the continued support everyone!

Thank you so much for all the recent support everyone, I am grateful for the staff pick, but 350 supporters in one day is just amazing!

I can't believe that this project has reached 1000 supporters! I always hoped that it would be successful, but I never thought that it would grow this fast. It has only been a month since I posted the project, and to think that there are already 1000 of you that have supported it is quite amazing. I hope all of you had a great time over the holidays, and thanks again for all the support!

I figured out that this model is (accidentally) the perfect width to fit the name of the school in using letters from Lego's Business Card Holder set.

Someone asked for download links for the updated model, so here they are.

Version 1:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwbI--_YQcYYLWNobVRZNWVuN2M/view?usp=sharing

This is the more detailed version of the model, but uses some parts in colors that Lego does not make them in yet.

Version 2:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwbI--_YQcYYRDZFb0RjUDRvdVU/view?usp=sharing

This is the less detailed version of the model, but it uses all parts that Lego currently makes, so if you wanted to build it, you could. (If anyone does choose to build this, please send me some pictures of your model!)

Thanks again for all the support everyone!