Howl’s Moving Castle - A Fully Custom Studio Ghibli 3D Recreation

I am incredibly excited to present to you what is, without a doubt, my most high-quality and ambitious project to date: a fully custom-modeled, textured, and rigged 3D recreation of Howl’s Moving Castle, the iconic structure from Studio Ghibli's beloved film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. This labor of love has been in the works for over two months, and I’ve poured more than 150 hours into every detail, making sure that it captures the whimsical essence and intricate design of the castle as faithfully as possible.

I used Blender to model the castle from scratch, ensuring that all of the different parts came together to form a cohesive, accurate representation of this incredible creation from Ghibli. Substance Painter was used to bring the textures to life, giving the structure the weathered look of a constantly moving and transforming home. I tried to creatie textures that mimic the hand-painted feel of Studio Ghibli’s traditional animation slightly, while maintaining a sort of high fidelity look.

For the legs, I incorporated basic inverse kinematics (IK), making it easier to animate lifelike walking motions while still keeping it true to the film's unique, almost lumbering gait. The rigging allows for a pretty decent degree of flexibility and expression in the castle’s movement.

It’s been a true test of patience and skill, and I’m beyond proud of the result. For anyone who decides to use this model in their own projects, whether for animation, game development, or any other creative endeavor, I hope it brings you as much joy to use as it did for me to create.

Of course, as with any intricate project, there’s always the possibility that some unexpected issues might pop up. If you happen to encounter any significant problems while working with the model, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I’ll do my best to fix any issues as quickly as possible and upload the updated files free of charge.

Thank you for checking out my project, and I hope you enjoy exploring and working with this detailed recreation of Howl’s Moving Castle. I’m thrilled to share this journey of creativity and craftsmanship with you!

Note: The environment is not included with this, the Blend file just contains the castle, as the environment assets do not belong to me.Further note: The inverse kinematic rig does not export properly with the FBX file (FBX can't save IK info), and the OBJ is rigless. The GLTF file does include custom baked textures (this took me ages) to allow you to import the castle into other 3D software - though the ones in the Blender file are of visual quality and ultimately this is meant for use within Blender - the rig and textures work best there.