The World of Norrath
Skills: Design, Modeling, Texturing, Lighting
My goal for this on-going personal project is to further my digital sculpting skills in Mudbox and also have fun with some world building. The style is sort of a hybrid of photo-real tilt-shift with a bit of a fantasy MMORPG/RTS game theme. I want it to feel like a miniature atlas of a vast world. The illustrated map I'm using as inspiration is the world of Norrath from the classic MMORPG EverQuest. The end result will have motion with camera fly-throughs, but for now I'll be posting stills as I make progress, biome by biome.

I started by sculpting the three base continents in Mudbox. I brought over a combination of high-res geometry and normal/displacement maps, depending on the particular piece of land. I scattered trees & plants using a combination of particles and MultiScatter in 3D Studio Max. I wanted to stay true to the vibe of the game, so for the textures of the buildings I was able to extract them directly from the game files. I also created several main cities, each loosely based on those found in-game. Again, the details here were my own interpretation, with the city walls being my own design while many of the buildings within are inspired by the game.


There will eventually be three continents in total, each with a different style of vegitation and architecture. This main island is known as Antonica, and the two satellite islands are known as Odus and Faydwer. Antonica is rich with human populated castles, while the other two will be home to more diverse species.