William Falcon

The reason behind the smoothness of that particular island comes down to a matter of scale and not being able to decide exactly how big I wanted the island to appear...see, the actual official size of Mata Nui, is, well, really darn big. Initially, I wanted to represent that by making one the islets (which I added rather early in the creation of the image) a rather large-sized island itself. But, as the image progressed, it became clear to me that finding imagery to represent that scale for the whole of the scene was going to be very hard. I suppose I could have used satellite images for the jungle, but somehow I don't really think it would look as nice as aerial photographs of rainforests, which is what I primarily used. To make a long story short, I scaled the island down a bit in most areas, but that little islet remains the same. You are absolutely right though: aesthetically, the islet should be texturally rougher and I plan to add some cliffs and rocks around its edges. Same goes with the jungle: some crags, hills and cliffs are perhaps called for...

Thanks for the comments everyone. I will definitely consider doing more of these images, and I've been thinking of where to position the camera for the next one. Maybe Po-Wahi.

Well, it has been something like four or five years since I've posted anything (artwork-related or otherwise) on BZPower. But I just created something very cool and I feel the need to share it with some people who will have an especial appreciation for it. As you probably know, a marvelous fellow called Christian Faber recently started a blog where he shared, among other things, the official grayscale height maps used for the creation of Mata Nui and Metru Nui. Creating a 3d model of Mata Nui is something that I've toyed with, off and on, for eight years...in fact, back in 2004, I made a post of my first attempt, the height-map for which was created using a highly-'shopped modification of the classic Mata Nui map. Anyway, after messing around with the official height-map, and trying to think of ways to create a more photorealistic version of the Mata Nui map, I decided to take a screenshot of the modeled landscape and superimpose real, photographed imagery over it, to create a convincing picture of the island from at least one perspective. Not sure if anyone has attempted this before, but if so, well, here's my interpretation; First, the original render. You are looking north from the tip of Le-Wahi, towards the Mangai Volcano and the Ko-Wahi mountains: And the realistic version: Just for good measure... I added some atmospheric haze (derived from a depth map of the 3d model) to complete the illusion of enormity and distance. This makes some of the more distant mountains slightly tricky to see. Likewise, only if you look very closely can you see the smoke rising from the mouth of the Mangai. The aquamarine details in the ocean come from the Faber Files map. I hope you enjoy