Scifi Castle/Tower - How would you build it?
Gemini Queen
Posts: 263
I'm trying to create a scifi story, and there's obviously a princess who's got the "I'm a queen, yall just don't know it yet" vibe, it's gonna be great. However, I'm getting stumped on the "castle". I honestly have never seen a scifi castle in TV or movies, and looking at Google has me all kinds of confused. Regular fantasy is normally my forte, so I thought that I might be able to make it work. Though, I'm not seeing any products that specifically scream "SCIFI castle!". Kit bashing is going to be essentially, that's fine. But where do I start? What kind of components make a good "scifi castle" if such a thing exist?
I'm so clueless, so I figured I'd ask some more established/more creative minds this question and see what happens. Thanks in advanced.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
This is a really interesting question! I think, if I were making a SciFi-style castle, I would start with an actual castle model. Then maybe I'd change the textures of the walls to either a dark concrete, or a shiny black or coppery metal. Then, to really add the SciFi part, I'd add neon light tubes around windows and trim, and maybe mount some futuristic weapons on top. Perhaps also add some greebles, like antennae or satelllite dishes, pipes and wires, things like that. That way, it still has a castle's silhouette, without that I think it would just look like a SciFi building.
When you decide on how to do it, I hope you'll post the render for us to see! I've got about 6 projects I'm already working on, if not I might try something like this myself. Sounds cool!
Thanks for the suggestions! I did consider an actual castle to start with. There's the Victorian Steampunk Construction Set by The AntFarm or there's the Castle Creator For Daz Studio by BradCarsten. I'm leaning more towards the Victorian one since it's got giant gears and stuff, which is kind of scifi (I think) got some scifi walls and City blocks together in my cart. Just gonna wait for some of this stuff to go on sale before I buy it. Or I'll just buy one per pay period till I get the look that I'm going for. Here's some picutres to that I saw that kind of got me thinking. And yes, I will definitely post pictures.
The only science fiction castle I can think of at the moment is the Voltron one.
https://lionsandpilotsandbots.com/2018/05/01/castle-ships-in-voltron-lore/
Without knowing anything about your Sci-Fi world, here's a link to Sci-Fi cityscapes in the store: https://www.daz3d.com/cityscapes-and-buildings-sci-fi
These might be thought startes or jumping off points:
I don't have the first two, but I do have the third one and it's a huge set, useful for wide shots/panoramic scenes.
On another note, I also have TheAntFarm's Victorian Steampunk Construction set as well as BradCarsten's Castle Creator. Both are amazing and perfect for building your own structures: in the product art Brad has what looks to be a glass castle. I've used Castle Creator to do what Brad called an epic scene (not scifi but more historical/fantasy
)
Hope some of these helps
Steampunk? Just add gears.
Sci-Fi? Just add something that characterizes your sci fi. If it's laser swords? Add lasers.
Star Wars also had its Samurai fortress as a metal moon (or not... "That's no moon.") Repeating symbols and glyphs would help... the neo-samurai crest of the Empire in Star Wars was helpful like that, but also the repeating structure of the walls, the sliding blast doors like Japanese shoji. They took archaic ideas and translated them into a futurist design. Take an old fortress and spin it a certain way.
What characterizes your evil empire design? Then take that and use the motif for the fortress.
You'll find kitbash3d.com particularly interesting.
As well as the usual suspects of turbosquid, cgtrader, sketchfab, blendermarket, etc.
https://www.daz3d.com/cybercity-walls-01
Use those as a start for the walls. Possibly with weapons openings punched through. Towers with scramjet missile clusters on top. Radar arrays and close defensive cannon pods. Unlike medieval walls, think of ways to deflect incoming hypersonic weaponry so the walls don't have to be as massive as they would otherwise be. Maybe add a force field scintillation where atmospheric dust is being evaporated. The best example of a sci-fi looking fortress that it currently around that I can think of is a tank turret from the M1 Abrahms or the Challenger 2 - the angled armour, the flir, the tight mantlet and command turrets (M! only) are real life examples of good defensive design against extreme attack. Extrapolate these & it won't look too bad. If you prefer curvy design, the turret of the Chieftain Tank is a good shape.
Angled flat plate walls can be created from planes, smooth turrets from spheres & cylinders. Take a look at the spacecraft in the background of this image I did years ago:
It's made up only of spheres, (flattened or stretched in certain axes) and cylinders. No fancy modelling needed. Something like that would be relatively simple to do in DS, only needing an image editor for the textures (only 1 texture was used for all of the spacecraft components visible - it worked hard in that image). Imagine the big spacecraft half buried in a landscape, that'd look like a fortress.
Regards
Richard
I agree with all the others, I own the Castle Creator set and I LOVE it!
Along with what type of castle to create, it really depends on the world it exists in. Science Fiction is such an umbrella term. Has your science fiction world suffered an apocalypse? Dystopian - a patchwork of stained metals and rotting woods. Is it a futuristic wonderland? Utopian - a harmony of greenery and clean, sophisticated lines. How advanced is the technology? Steampunk - brassy gears and coiled pipes wrapped around monestrous walls.
Also keep in mind, science fiction is the only genre where you can explore the impossible! Make a castle supported by large grecian columns, a dome that spirals with hundreds of gears, and so many plants it makes the Hanging Gardens of Babylon look like a community park. From what you've said about your princess character...let the castle be a visual representation of her personality. From Pride and Prejudice, Pemberley is the only part of Jane Austen's novel where she goes into great detail about the surroundings. Pemberley is a visual representation of Mr. Darcy's personality. Let your castle tell that visual story for your princess...
Recognise this?
I give you a hint: It's the Black Knight's castle you have to rescue the Princess from.
LOL
I agree... Although the SciFi castle could be a pimped medieval castle, I doubt it would look like one if it was built ground up to start with.
I'd use one of the available starship building kits with cyber city walls. Atomic rocket "towers" for the win.
Below is an example render of Shantara - https://www.daz3d.com/shantara-cityscapes-supreme
together with a ship from https://www.daz3d.com/air-worlds
and sky from https://www.daz3d.com/skies-of-iradiance-high-sky-hdri-bundle-for-iray
Materials was converted to iray.
Have tried to add scaled up terrain with UltraScenery, but Daz Studio just crashed.
This one has always given me sort of a sci-fi castle vibe https://www.daz3d.com/the-wizard-castle-ii
Kibarreto has a number of sci-fi buildings that might work (also, a number of castles). The Sci-Fi City Kit contains components that you could stack up to create towers as tall as you want.
For a less sleek and futuristic look, consider the Sci-Fi Settlement Construction Kit and Construction Kit 2, or the Sci-Fi Hub. Again, these are modular, so you have a fair amount of freedom to build something that fits your particular need. Or you might like Stonemason's Frontier Outpost, which looks pretty castle-like. And if you're a PC+ member, Petipet's Ensk Outpost and Ensk Station are inexpensive modular kits that you can use to build sci-fi buildings.
If it helps here are things I'm looking at because I feel they'd work for what I'm trying
The bedroom in the MICK bundle looks kind of dark while there are shaders with lighter woods and stones for a more elegant medieval aesthetic. For sci-fi these can still work but not sci fi on their own but there are these:
https://www.daz3d.com/ultra-shaders-sci-fi-shaders
I'm using them on the fantasy alcove pillars which looks really cool. They have glass and metal versions and you can add patterns then lights and make the pattern as big or small as you want
I can also import props from sci fi sets if I need to
While I don't have these yet they should be great for sci-fi walls
https://www.daz3d.com/cyborg-shaders
So that is how I would build a scifi castle, use a medieval one but use scifi shaders for things like walls and add scifi props
Shantara render from Unity - https://www.daz3d.com/shantara-cityscapes-supreme
Stargate Atlantis, the town, could also represent a scifi castle with it's defence mechanisms.
edit if you read back, click this its an almost half hour video
NylonGirl
That's cool, I might take that into consideration with the building that I'll use to make her castle.
3dLux
Thank you for the suggestions! I actually had some of those in my cart already. The wall that I had in my cart was this one -
https://www.daz3d.com/cybercity-walls-01
I'll compare the two and see which one is better. As for the two castle builders, I was consdiering those. Maybe making them look like metal instead of like brick and then adding a shell and giving the shell a Tron like interface, etc. There's just so many ideas that I'm at a bit of a loss, lol.
The Blurst of Times
This is kind of the line of thinking that I had with the castle builders. If I could just make them "look" futuristic and add some lights, it might be fine. But I'll have to play around with a couple of products to get it exactly to where I want it to be. As for what sets my evil empire apart from others, if you've ever played Warframe and seen the Orokin buildings, guns, etc, that's the kind of look/feel that I'd like to go for.
TheMysteryIsThePoint
I've never heard about that site before and it looks amazing! However, I took a look at some other threads, and it doesn't seem like it's super compatible with Daz (people having to load them in and separate the props using geometry editor, having to lap the textures and colors in separately among other issues.) If I find a way to make them work without killing myself, then I will definitely use what's there.
richardandtracy
Thank you for painting this image in my head. I think that when the idea first came to me as a Scifi castle, I hadn't even taken into consideration the weapons. The force field, I did. But I'll take a look around the store for something. Nothing some kit bashing an the geometry editor can't fix.
Write Idea
Yes! That is exactly what I planned on doing! I wanted it to be glamourous but with purpose and style, kind of like her. She's a young ruler to be (no one else knows that) and she's making it known that the next era will be different with her as the ruler. I'll post more about it the artist Forum when it comes into more fruition.
I would use this somewhere...
https://www.daz3d.com/14mu-space-dock
Ascania Lol
PerttiA
Honestly, this was my dilema. I was thinking, since it's all futuristic, should it still be attached to the ground? Should it actually be one giant ship? Should it be standing on giant legs in the sky? I'll have to play with some more ideas to see what works.
PixelSploiting
I'm currently working on the first frame of the story which is an outerspace shot, and I'll need to get a couple of ships to make it work. Do you think that the battle ships would just be sitting in space all the time or just sitting on the planet waiting at the ready?
Artini
I have the Shantara cityscapes in my cart cause I thought it looked cool. Figured with some material changes and some lights, it'd work out great. But I really like where that's going!
GhostofMacbeth
Thanks for the suggestion!
bytescapes
I love almost everything that Kibarreto does! I most of his stuff in my cart for comparing with other items. However, I'm not PC plus (I probably should cause I spend enough money here) but the Ensk products don't look that terribly expensive. Thanks for suggesting them!
BandoriFan
Those Scifi shaders are spot on! I think that might be one of the main things that I really need is just some good shaders and clean up with the Geometry editor. Thanks!
Artini
Definitely feeling the scifi vibe, maybe even a bit steampunkish. I think that if I do buy that kit, then I'd have to only use certain buildings or certain parts of buildings, But the sky really is the limit with this kind of stuff.
PerttiA
I'll look into these, that kind of looks cool. I really need to nail down the design I'm going for, but seeing a lot of different references will definitely help me out a lot.
WendyLuvsCatz
Don't know what that is, but I'm digging the foggy look for the ground level and the higher end people live top side. That just sparked an awesome idea of mine, and I love it!
I read alot of sci-fi. The wonderful thing is, if you want the big ships to stay in space, they stay in space. It's your story and you can do what you want. The story I am reading now - the mega giant ships land in a mega spaceport... in the last book I read, shuttles were needed because the big ship cannot land on the planet. There's not even a reason given for it, just 'let's get in the shuttle and go to the surface.' Of course, if I were writing the story... I would have shuttles because it is such an easy plot device to use - like have it break down, or crash on a planet, or get tractor beamed by (space!) pirates, or have a chase...
The 'Future' texture set (by Moyra, at Rendo) for GIS looks quite scifi to me. I think the GIS set is still here at Daz (and I think it's all PC+).
Highlands Temple here at Daz has always had a scifi feel to me and is very elegant.
Throne Room and Fantasy Voyage (by Coflek-gnorg at Rendo) and AJ Dark Council by AppleJack (also at Rendo) are very nice scifi interiors.
That's all I can think of.
Hope you're going to show us some renders ;)