Middle Earth aScenery?

[Wing Nut]

Just curious if anyone has ever created or thought of creating the Middle-Earth scenery from The Lord of the Rings?  It certainly would be a challenge!

Kevin

[microlight]

As long as you could use GMAX to design the winged Nazgul, or Gwaihir the Windlord to fly over it!

[Travis]

Now are you talking about the actual stuff that is there such as Hobbitton?  Or are you talking about things like Helm's Deep or Saruman's Tower?

[Wing Nut]

I would personally love to fly over Gondor or Mordor.  For that matter, Lothlorien or Rivendell too.  The Shire would be great...

[Travis]

The problem is finding a big enough surface area without any airports, and with a wide enough range of climate to take in the world of Middle Earth.  New Zealand would fit that last one, but I don't know of any even remote areas that are large enough, and with no airstrips.

[Wing Nut]

What?

[microlight]

You have to be careful at Minas Morgul Skyport (KSAU), 'cos those mountains are really hard to negotiate (ask Frodo!)

[Travis]

LMAO!!  Okay, so where do we put this place?  New Zealand is still my top choice, for pretty obvious reasons, but its still too small.  Something the size of Australia would be better, but it doesn't have enough native terrain types to do this.

I suppose it could just have everything viewed in the movies, just a little closer together.

[Wing Nut]

The outback might be better.  More open area.  Come to think of it, S. America might work as well as The Urals in Russia.  Western China, Northern Canada...

[Travis]

Okay, so lets spread Middle Earth around the real Earth:

The Shire goes in New Zealand.

Mordor could end up in either Australia or Russia (I'll have to take a tour).

Rivendell can sit in a South American rainforest.

I'm not sure about Bree, but as its not much to look at anyway, I think we can skip it for now.

Helm's Deep (what I would really like to see) might be somewhere in the midwestern US, with all its sweeping, open plains.

Its been almost six months since I've seen either of the movies or read any of the books, so tell me what areas I have missed.

[Wing Nut]

If you divide the areas up into major or minor areas, this is what I get.

[Travis]

Tell you what, if you'll get the actual terrain mesh stuff together, I'll do what I can with the buildings and such.  Whadaya think?

[Wing Nut]

I mean it when I say I don't know jack about scenery!  You just spoke greek to me!  :-[  To be perfectly honest, I have fiddled with Gmax a bit, but not enough to work on my own...

[Travis]

HEHE!!  We're in the same boat, man!  I know jack about scenery design, but I know that if this is to be done, the basic terrain mesh of the sim would have to be drastically altered, or we would have to at least spend a mass amount of time scouting out the right spots!

Okay, since I'm not very good at putting the names of the places in LOTR with the actual scenes in the movie, or the parts in the book, why don't you give me a list of the names with approximate places I can find the visuals in Fellowship.  I have it on DVD and can scan through it to find what we need.  After that, I'll start scouting the world for good spots for each.

Then later, we'll see what you DO know about Gmax, and go from there.

[microlight]

What you need is a map of Middle-Earth, and design around that. Middle-Earth always reminded me of a rough map of Europe (or am I trying to read too much into it?), and you can find it in the LOTR printed edition. If you located it in central Russia or somewhere vast and open, you could more or less design as you want, using things like TerraBuilder and Coastline Maker to construct a Middle Earth 'island' in the middle of nowhere. That way, you'd have all of the terrain in the same place, and you could design as fits.

Sounds easy, huh. BTW I've never used these progs (yet), but they's free and available - just do a Google.