Welcome to Hilltop Design’s Mojo Worlds gallery. If you don’t know what Mojo World is yet, really, you need to check it out. See the small image over there to the right? You know the routine, clicky clicky.
After immersing myself in Bryce since Bryce 2 first came out. the one thing that I’ve never been able to do very well is to create a landscape image that looked decent. Which is pretty wacky, since that’s what Bryce was designed to do. Over the years, I’ve used it for everything but landscapes. Go figure.
I’ve done pretty much everything that can be done in Bryce, as well as creating stuff that stretches the envelope of the program.
So now, I’m exploring a brand new program, one that’s simply knocking my socks off. It’s created by one of the people behind the terrains in Bryce, Dr. F. Kenton “Doc Mojo” Musgrave and it’s called Mojo World. You can check it out at the Pandromeda website. Download the demo of the Mojo World Generator and play with it. Better yet, download the FREE Mojo World Transporter, which is available on both the Windows and Mac platform, so you can explore worlds and render images and QuickTime VR’s of the cool views you run across in the Mojo Worlds other people have created. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it, and you probably never will.
Once you’ve played with the free stuff, help support this program by purchasing your very own copy of Mojo World 2. You’ll end up with an amazing program, as well as one of the coolest manuals you’ve ever seen. I mean, usually manuals are used to hold down paperwork on your desk, or to stick on your bookshelf so you look all smart and stuff. The manual for Mojo World is actually a very interesting read, as far as the inspiration for it, the story of Doc Mojo and the concept for how Mojo World came about, as well as behind the scenes information on how this program works. And the coolest thing of all- the manual not only lays flat to the page that’s open, but it also GLOWS IN THE DARK! Wheeeee!! The entire package is top notch, it simply rocks.
The concept behind Mojo World is nothing short of genius.
In Bryce, and all the other 3D world building programs, you more or less create a stage, then create and place items on that stage, moving them around in order to create the illusion of places with lakes and mountains. If you spin the camera around, you’re looking at nothing more than a flat plane with nothing on it.
On the other hand, in Mojo World, you build an entire planet. You have, for the first time, TOTAL control of EVERYTHING. All the properties of the terrain and water is generated using fractals. You don’t build a section of a planet to look at, you actually build an entire planet. A round planet, just like the real deal. A world with atmospheric effects, and even multiple suns and moons if you’d like. You can walk or fly around the entire planet in any direction, and the terrains you create are sitting there, waiting to be explored. It’s nothing short of amazing.
And dig this- it’s possible, depending on what sort of goodies you put into the scene file, which contains an entire world, you can put that world on a single floppy disc.
Another cool feature- you can put the world you created online, and people can download it, open it up, and start exploring. The exploration is the fun part. Since it’s an entire world, chances are you’ll find a feature that the creator of the world hasn’t seen yet. You can then put the coordinates of your view into the world, and send it back to the world’s creator so they can see what you found. How cool is that?
This software is the most powerful 3D app for generating landscapes and terrains- bar none. And it’s the worlds only 3D app that can generate an continent- wide river system. You’ve got to see this program to believe it.
At the Pandromeda website, you can download a demo of the world creator, as well as a free Transporter you can use to explore the worlds others have created, as well as rendering out still images, and QTVR files too.
From a guy who swore he’d never use anything other than Bryce, this program is simply rocking my socks off.
Steve