The Road To Mordor by theSea

Vue • Fantasy • posted on May 10, 2008

Open full image in new tab Zoom on image

Hover over top left image to zoom.
Click anywhere to exit.

Members remain the original copyright holder in all their materials here at Renderosity. Use of any of their material inconsistent with the terms and conditions set forth is prohibited and is considered an infringement of the copyrights of the respective holders unless specially stated otherwise.

Description

Hi -- thanks for stopping by. As some of you may be aware, it's been a while since I've had a piece that I felt was really inspired. Well it took a major kick in the pants from my employer (think moving my job 75 miles away, thanks so very much, jerks) but I felt inspired this week. And so, we bring you "The Road to Mordor." Obviously, this was influenced by Peter Jackon's movies, more specifically the amazing concept work by John Howe and Alan Lee, but it's also a bit of my own take and not directly drawn from a moment in the movie or the book. Vue 6i render - slight level adjustment and captions in Photoshop. No other postwork. Production credits: Frodo and Sam are both DAZ's 'Matt' preschool figure, wearing the 'Villager Clothes.' Cloak is from DAZ and the figures were posed in DAZ|Studio and exported as .obj -- then brought into Vue and tweaked. Mt. Doom was imported from a digital elevation map of a mountian in Washington State - probably Rainer or Hood - I really didn't bother to check. Looked cool on the topo so I snagged it - thanks to the USGS for that one. There's a nice little tutorial on the Cornucopia site for using DEM's in Vue. Barad-Dur was modeled in Modo by yours truely - just a quick thing, but really nice to have the tools available to knock it together when needed. You can almost make out the four DAZ Wyverns circing the tower. Foreground Tree is "Leafless Tree - Old & Dead" from Cornucopia and bushes are Lisa B's "Dead Bushes" from DAZ. I also used some of Chipp Walter's TerraPak materials in here. Finally, this scene would not have looked one tenth as cool without the techniques I learned from watching tutorials over at Geek At Play Studios. If you're interested in improving your Vue skills you owe it to yourself to go watch all of those tutorials. Full Image is 1920 x 1200 and there's lots of detail so please consider a full sized view. My thanks to everyone who has viewed and commented my previous work - as always constructive critique and suggestions for improvement are encouraged, and your comments are appreciated.

Comments (42)

)

alltheoriginalnames

5:58PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

This is awesome, I love LOTR so I'm all about this. Great composition, and the sheer scope and scale really captures the rest of the adventure ahead. Very well done

november22

6:13PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Precious. Awesome scale; must checkout tutorials.

)

callad

6:13PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

VERY impressive work!!! Excellent lighting and the two figures show how big this fantastic landscape really is!!!

)

ESarge

6:40PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Fantastic image!! The detail and textures are magnificent!!

)

kobaltkween

6:49PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

i love the scale of this work. i think a lot of people would have made the tower central, but the volcano is a much more interesting focal point. one could write a paper about the role of fire and earth in LOTR, so i feel this image has lot of interesting undercurrents and symbols in it. i'm very sorry your job is relocating. that just plain sucks.

)

lethalliam

7:04PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Oh wow awesome LOTR scene. :)

)

geirla

7:24PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Great scene! Lots of depth to the picture. I really like how small the hobbits look compared to the scene. (yes, I know they're supposed to be small, but the scene makes it more so).

)

doarte

7:43PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

A beautiful production of the film's spirit, with your signature +5 from doarte

)

JCD

8:34PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Very well done - love that the mountain reigns over the tower and the atmospherics are spot on great!

)

Amethst25

9:23PM | Sat, 10 May 2008

Oh you must view this in full size! This is absolutely fabulous. The detail is great! I am sorry to hear about you job, but I am glad to see you posting again!

)