Getting Motivated

To test and develop my passion for modelling Middle-Earth-based props, I chose to model a very simple but very prominent model within the world; the One Ring.

I used plenty of reference imagery to create this and I had little uncertainty because of that. This allowed me to quickly create a model of great importance and test my ability in all areas of the model making process; modelling, UV mapping and texturing. Since I was able to complete this within a matter of hours, I chose to make a second texture for the ring; the ring's hidden inscription.

The inscription was written in Black Speech and reads:

One Ring to rule them all,

One Ring to find them;

One Ring to bring them all

and in the darkness, bind them.

I cut the inscription up into its 4 lines and used an alpha in substance to make this into a height, normal and emission map for the object.

Just for fun, I then took the object into UE4 and created a blueprint that allowed the textures to be switched on a key-press.

The result of this mini-project confirmed that I am passionate about making props from this fantasy world that I enjoy. This was definitely helped by the abundance of reference, rather than jumping straight in at the deep end which could be something else to explore during this project.