The LightHouse of Alexandria

As an Egyptain I am always facinated by egyptain history and I love telling ancient stories.Everyone knows about the pyramids the, the temples, but does anyone know about the lighthouse of alexendria.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, or Pharos of Alexandria as people call it, was an ancient marvel constructed between 284 and 246 BCE on the island of Pharos in Egypt. Commissioned by Ptolemy I Soter and completed under his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, this towering structure stood approximately 100 to 130 meters (330 to 430 feet) tall, making it one of the tallest man-made edifices of the ancient world, second only to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Designed by the Greek architect Sostratus of Cnidus, the lighthouse featured a three-tiered design: a square base, an octagonal midsection, and a cylindrical top. Its beacon, created by a furnace at the summit and reflected by polished bronze mirrors, guided sailors safely into Alexandria's bustling harbor for centuries. Recognized as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. but every great thing must come to an end, and after standing for 1500 years the lighthouse collapsed after a series of earthquakes.

In 1480 a castle was buillt on the original site using the remaing ruins from the lighthouse and it is how Citadel of Qaitbay was born.

Citadel of Qaitbay was one of the most important defensive strongholds not just in Alexandria but along the Mediterranean Sea coast.

3ds max

Vray

unforntuanly there are not many images of the lighthouse, and some of them do not look them with slight difference, but generally it is a 5 part bulding, a foundation layer with a bottom cuboid layer and octagonal layer, cylinderical layers and a beacon.

since the castle is still standing it was easy to find many refrences for it.

Base layer:

Was a 3 steps with the bottom part being 30mx30m and the total height being 6m each step is 2m. start with a cube as in the image with the same dimesnsions in the image.

Add an edit poly, using insert to insert 1m. and extrude 2m, repeat to add a 3rd step. In total 3 inserts and 2 extrudes should be made like in the image.

Lower square section:

Add another edit poly modifier. add as many edit poly modeifiers as you need. so if any mistakes is made, you can just delete the edit poly instead of restaring.

Extrude the inserted layer by 56m

select the top face and scale down to make the walls slant.

The castle is know to have many windows, so select the bottom and top edge and connect adding 12 edges. repeat for each side. do each side manually to avoid ruining the top face. add 22 edges in the oppsoite direction.

make the extrusions with the values seen in the images.

select the faces to make the windows like the image and extrude downwards.

select and connect the faces shown in the image, add 2 edges. extrude the faces produced by 0.5m

extrude the top layer faces by 1m outwards. then the new faces 1.5m upwards

Middle Octagonal Section:

Create a cylinder of radius 6.25, of length 20m, make it have 8 sides and uncheck smoothing. add 14 height segments and 2 cap segments

isolate selection

for eacg face, connect the top and bottom edge with 2 eges with seperatin 45.

connect the 2 edges between the edges you just made above by 2 edges of sepeartion 20

add vertical edges as shown in the image.

extrude the faces shown by 0.75m

extrude the windows inwards.

create a cylinder of radius 2.1m and height 3m. place half way inside one of the faces.

create a cone of a larger radius and extrude the buttom face downwards.

copy this shape on the 3 other sides, each other side

Upper Cylindrical Section:

create a cylinder of height 6.5m and radius 3.3. using extrude 0.3 times each of height 3m and insert of each of 0.25m.

now create another cylinder of height 6 and radius 0.5. form circular pattern around the cylindfer, make sure they are all instances and not copies. make 8 cylinders.

finally add a cone with radius 1: 3.4, radius 2: 0 and heigth of 2.6 and center at the very top

Fence towers:

Create a plane 100 by 100. center at 0,0,0

create a box 10,10,15,

copy 4 times as instances.

connect to crerate vertical and horizontal images like in the images

Ectrude the top face by 0.7 then again by 0.5

extrude the top faces and use chamfer. you can play with the style of the towers as you like.

Fence walls:

convert one of the towers into an edit poly then attach all the support towers to make them into one object

select edges and conenct forming 2 edges with a sepration as you please. this will be the thicnkess of the walls.

bridge to form the walls

decrorate the walls with the patterns you want, you connect, exturude, chamfer, just like we did so far.

if you would like, Support beams:

start with a small box, of equal width to your walls, and slightly taller than the bottom extrusion you have on the walls. copy as instances and equally space.

Extrude top face by 0.6m

insert by 0.2

pull the inserted face up a little, then extrude using shift.

add another small extrusion and extrude the side faces.

Stairs:

Using the 3ds max stairs modifier

use the settings as in the image above

There is a statue at the top of the castle. I managed to make one using an AI called meshi it is not perfect but for the sake of rendering. I edited the statue to make it more appropriate.

Making a plateform for the statue using a cylinder and place at the very top of the cone,

Since there is no original of the lighthouse, we can add creative details of what we think the caslte looked like.

Since the castle is greek we can only assume it had classical columns. You can look online for things you like

The castle

is mainly 4 textures, lime stone and granite, rooftiles and cermic tiles for flooring

lime stone texture:

get an image of your texture. place the color map in a normal map generator like crazybump or cpetry on google

You can also use textures from the Vray library.

Now apply the textures as you please. For example the bricks for the extruded edges may be larger than the ones inside. You can UVW Map and deattach the parts you want to have different texture. or if you have understanding of the UV Unwrap you could use it.

For lighting we will keep it simple and use an HDRI from the vray library, you could use any hdri you have

Group the castle togeather. Everything

if you want to scale it down for easier use and visibility, feel free to do so

It is time to set the scene for rendering.

The lighthouse is loated in a piece of land close to the coast but inside surrounded by the sea from all sides.

Let us start with the 'island' I have included the one I am using.

Add rocks, bushes, trees using the vray library to make the scene look more realistic

Now to making the sea:

1- Water shader.

Create a plane

Create a texture with a bluish diffuse

set the reflection and refraction to pure white

change the fog setting to values in the image above

change IOR to 1.2

change reflection glossiness to 0.8

Add a vray dissplacement modifier with the values shown in the image

Now switch to the slate matterial editor.

Add a composite map

add a standard 3d max noise map

use the setting for the composite map as in the image

connect the composite map to the vraydisplacement modifier.

Add a second layer to the composite modifier

use values larger than other layer

use a level size 10 for more details

You can play with the values to achive the desired results

Foam effect

get the the shader we made into the slate editor (the blue shader)

Create another vray material and bright blue diffuse

create a vray blend and connect both

add a vray dirt with the following setting

Set up cameras in the positions you feel best and have fun.

My renders are included above

Some renders are imagnitave, Like what it looked like right before the lighthouse was hit by a flood.