Sauron defeated

“But at last the siege was so strait that Sauron himself came forth; and he wrestled with Gil-galad and Elendil, and they both were slain, and the sword of Elendil broke under him as he fell. But Sauron also was thrown down, and with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron and took it for his own. Then Sauron was for that time vanquished, and he forsook his body, and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places; and he took no visible shape again for many long years.”

“Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”, The Silmarillion: J.R.R Tolkien

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Technical aspects: This image comes from a scene not in the 3-volume “Lord of the Rings” book by J.R.R. Tolkien, but by his “prequel” book, “The Silmarillion”. It depicts how Isildur, heir to the throne of Gondor came to be in possession of the One Ruling Ring of Sauron. A difficult scene to depict, as I wanted to capture the drama of the moment and the tremendous temptation that the One Ring would bring a man – the moment of indecision and the lure of the ring.

DAZ 3D’s Michael 3 formed the basis of the character of Isildur and Sauron. The armor of Isildur was based on Xurge3D’s “Castle Guard for Mike 3”, and Sauron’s armor was a heavily morphed and tweaked “Dark Armor for Mike 3” – also from Xurge3D. Blacksmith 3D was used for the custom morphs. Both Isildur and Sauron’s helmets were created from scratch by myself using Hexagon 2.1 and UVMapper as was the shards of Narsil. The textures, bumpmaps and “dirt maps” of the figures were also created entirely by myself by hand as well as using some textures from various sources on the Internet.

The figures were posed in Poser 6 and exported to Bryce 6 and then a couple of large scale terrains, and rock objects were carefully placed and lit by about 10 spotlights and radial lights of various strengths and falloffs. The Mount Doom volcano in the background was lit by a single spotlight to give the impression of a volcanic eruption and several 2D images with transparency maps for the volcanic clouds

The final render was took about 50 minutes. No multiple renders needed on this one – for a change!

As in the past the renders were imported into Corel Photopaint 12, retouched and tweaked with a variety of tools and finally saved as the image you see on this page.

Worlds in the Making