IronClaw

Getting inspiration from the brilliant opening sequence of the most successful Fantasy TV series “Game of Thrones”, Peter Denys expresses his creativity through this personal project. Still in WIP,  IronClaw was born with the goal of experimenting with the power of LightWave Tools. Take a look at the following article to learn the process to create this stunning animated intro.

Peter Denys: To be honest, this project popped up in my mind in quite a random way. I always have a big interested in topographic map, terrain cartography and 3D models. When I first saw Game of Thrones' intro, I was just blown away. Slowly, this project begun to take shape in my head and this is how I've started to work on this side project – almost two years ago.

LightWave came to me naturally: its powerful Nodal Surfacing system gave me everything I wanted. Apart from the terrain map and associated bitmaps that provided some details for the structure, everything is made with Lightwave's procedurals: mountains and rocks, building surfaces, water – everything!

The water is something I am particularly proud of: the base is a greyscale bitmap that outlines the land. I  softened the edges in order to give them sort of a glow, so the white terrain map fades slowly into black water area. This way I drove the scale of the procedural wavy texture used for the water.
 
Thanks to the nodal system that Lightwave provides, I feel like I'm in total control of what it's happening. And of course, this gives me a lot of fun, a sort of nerdy fun, but it's fun nonetheless.