Planet creation software that creates
boundless fractal landscapes of enormous complexity
for more information on
this award, see HERE
A seashore on a MojoWorld planet.
Click HERE for a larger view (in a popup window)
MojoWorld is a remarkably ambitious
program. Not content with creating mere scenery, it creates
entire planets. Other 3D landscape programs let you construct
a scene upon a fixed area as though it were a theatrical
set with ‘terrains’ and other objects placed
at precise positions. In MojoWorld, by contrast, you
have relatively little control over the geography of
a specific locality. Instead, you create a complete world
of great complexity and travel around it in search of
interesting locations. For a more in-depth discussion
of the ideas behind MojoWorld, read our interview with
its creator, Dr. F Kenton “Doc Mojo” Musgrave.
By altering parameters in the MojoWorld viewer, I
have been able to change considerably the appearance
of the scene shown above without even bothering
to move to a different location...
Here the sun is
smaller, the waves are bigger, the atmosphere
is mistier and snow has fallen
Now the sea level is lower, the sun is higher and
even more snow has fallen
Here I've added the colours of an alien sunset
and 'taken the picture' with a wide angle lens
The snow has started to melt now, the water is
high and calm while the sky is clear and blue
MojoWorld is a product in two parts: The Viewer and
the Generator. The Generator gives you all the tools
you need to create new worlds whereas the Viewer lets
you explore existing worlds. The Viewer is free and can
be downloaded from the Pandromeda
site. Within the Viewer, you can walk or fly around
a world using the keyboard or clicking on-screen controls
to direct your movement.
Here is the Viewer interface.
You can move around the landscape freely in realtime
and render a picture when you find a view that you like
While the Generator gives you far more control over
the appearance of a planet, you would be wrong to think
that the Viewer is no more than a toy or a ‘demo’.
It isn’t. It is a fascinating and useful application
in its own right. Existing planets may be extremely complex
and your explorations of them will almost certainly uncover
vistas that nobody else has ever seen. Moreover, each
planet comes with a number of built-in parameters, such
as sea level, cloud density and the amount of snow (the
actual parameters available are dictated by the planet’s
author and vary from planet to planet), so you may be
able to alter facets of the geometry and atmospheric
effects. You can also change the sun’s position,
the focal length of the camera and the height of the
viewer - so the range of possible landscapes that you
may discover is really quite great. Once you’ve
found a scene that you like, you can render it as a still
image or an animated QuickTime movie. You can also render
QuickTime panoramas (QTVR) which let you look around
the landscape in 360 degrees.
This is a closeup view of the Hyperspace mixer. This lets
you alter various parameters by dragging out sliders.
Differing sets of parameters are available in each planet
and are defined by the planet's creator.
Before rendering an image or a movie, you have the option
to specify a number of parameters in order to adjust
the image resolution between (low for speed, high for
quality) or mark off a specific rectangle to render.
Scenes can be saved for ‘batch rendering’ later
so that, for example, a several high resolution images
or a movie could be rendered overnight.
|MojoWorld is not without its problems. Its Readme file
warns about unspecified incompatibilities with some
virus software and recommends that this be disabled
before installing. When I browsed a directory called \gfxprogs on
my G:\ drive, the
MojoWorld installer displayed the directory as
G:\gfxprogs\\ (with two terminating
backslashes). I edited this to G:\gfxprogs\mojo\ and
the installer bombed out. I then wasted a good
half hour disabling my virus software, removing
my virus software from memory using the Windows
Task Manager, rebooting my PC and other fruitless
activities until I eventually decided to browse
to the directory but not to edit its name in the
Installer. This time the software installed without
problem. I can only deduce that, for some reason,
it either requires that a directory exists (that
is, it won’t create a new subdirectory
if one is specified by the user) or that the path
requires two backslashes at the end of the directory
name. A little documentation explaining that would
have been nice.
Another problem I had was in scheduling the rendering
of QuickTime panoramas (QTVR) in the MojoWorld
Viewer. In theory I should be able to select a
landscape to be rendered as QTVR at a later time.
In practice, the QTVR rendering option was not
available when I attempted to select it. Rendering
QTVR immediately (rather than scheduling it for
later) works fine, however.
One final annoying problem relates to the QuickStart
tutorial. MojoWorld asks me if I wish to view this
when it starts up. When I say Yes, however, it
fails to load the tutorial. In the end I located
this (in the form of two HTML files) and loaded
The MojoWorld Generator interface (which is only available
in the commercial version of the software) is a good
deal more complicated than the Viewer. It is also a good
deal more powerful. This is where you create your own
planets from scratch. Each planet has a fully formed
geography. In this respect, MojoWorld is unlike landscape
design software such as Bryce or Vue; those programs
let you create a relatively small section of a terrain
- a few acres or square miles, say. If you try to wander
beyond the limits of that landscape you will arrive in
an undefined void.
The Generator is where you create planets. To take full
control over this process you will need to set numerous
parameters in numerous dialog boxes.
The radius of each MojoWorld planet is, by default,
6,000 kilometres, which is about the size of the earth
(this can be increased or decreased). You can wander
around a planet until doomsday and you will never arrive
at an undefined void. In fact, you can even fly out into
space and orbit your planet. MojoWorld doesn’t
currently create entire solar systems (or universes)
but in principle one day it might.
As with the Viewer you can alter the atmosphere, the
time of day (the sun’s elevation) and the time
of year (the sun’s apparent path across the sky
changes position to simulate the seasonal change in the
angle of the ecliptic).
When designing planets, you can use editors to add or
alter elements such as the stars, clouds, sun, land and
sea. Preset values can be chosen to give you instant
results. The editors also come with sets of sliders,
dials and radio buttons to let you alter individual parameters
- say by changing the height and density of clouds, the
colour of the sky or the radius of the planet.
This is a closeup view of one of MojoWorld's many editor
dialogs. Notice the way that properties are organised
on networks like stations on a railway line
The parameters in the editors are arranged on lines
like the stations on a map of the London Underground
with new sets of ‘branch lines’ popping
when certain ‘main line stations’ are clicked.
Click one of the stations on the branchline and more
railways lines may appear with yet more branchlines.
Every so often you may click a special icon that pops
up a different editor with even more options (say, to
edit a material or define a parameter such as shininess
by creating a function graph). While this gives you a
great deal of control over the creation process, it also
gives you a great deal of scope for messing things up!
MojoWorld is a complicated program and you are unlikely
to be able simply to leap into without first following
the tutorials and browsing through its substantial (400+
MojoWorld goes to great lengths to create planets
that have many of the same characteristics as real
planets. Even so, there are (as you might expect!)
a number of ‘cheats’ involved. For
example, the working of a solar system is imperfectly
simulated and distant objects such as stars are
just textured backdrops. Pandromeda claims that
in future versions of MojoWorld the planets will
exist in proper solar systems and stars will form
part of a three dimensional volumetric texture.
MojoWorld comes in three editions. In declining order
of sophistication these are MojoWorld Professional, Standard
and Focus. I’ve been using the Professional edition
in this review, though most of the features discussed
are also found in the Standard edition.
In addition to planet creation, exploration and rendering,
both the Standard and Professional editions include support
for import of Poser figures and the ability to import
and export terrains (you can even export entire planets)
to and from other landscape applications. You can also
import 3D models created in other modelling programs
and 2D pictures.
While most of the work of planetscaping is done on a
global scale, you can take control over local features
by using the ‘Parameter Bomb’ tool. This
lets you select a region and apply specific effects to
it. For example, you could increase the mountain elevation
within a defined locality. In the Professional edition
of MojoWorld, you can even use Parameter Bombs to populate
a landscape with forests or add rivers. The trees in
a forest can optionally be made to turn towards a light
source or simulate movement due to wind.
can add a crop rectangle to preview small areas of a
landscape. Here I am previewing a section of a river
to check the effects of turbulence and flow which vary
according to the water’s ‘rate of descent’.
MojoWorld rivers are not simply valleys filled with
level water surfaces as in most other landscape generators.
Rivers actually flow over landscapes, following the paths
of deepest descent. Creating realistic river networks
does, however, take more effort than simply a dropping
water plane onto a terrain. If you get it wrong, the
effect can be bizarre rather than naturalistic. If you
get it right, however, the effect can be spectacular.
MojoWorld forests are created by filling a landscape
with one or more species of tree which may either be
selected from a library of pre-designed species or may
be created by the user. A tree editor lets you define
features such as the trunk and branch radius and twistiness.
A leaf editor gives you control over the shape and colour
of the leaves while a forest editor lets you control
the density and randomness of the trees.
The Professional edition of MojoWorld has a few other
useful additions. For example, it implements procedural
animation so that clouds, stars and water appear to move
when rendered as animations. Apart from that, the animation
capabilities of MojoWorld are sorely limited and this
is possibly its weakest feature. It
would take too long to enumerate the full list of MojoWorld
features here; they are, in any case, listed on
the Pandromeda web site.
The Layout mode provides a simplified user interface
It as to be said that while MojoWorld is powerful, it
is also complicated. In an effort to reduce the learning
curve, MojoWorld provides an alternative simplified user
interface called Layout Mode. This provides a limited
set of features with drag-and-drop objects, lighting
and effects arranged on a tabbed palette. It also has
a help pane to give basic information on a selected item.
This is certainly a useful feature but, even so, it doesn’t
fully bridge the gap between ease of use and control
over the complete range of features. In terms of ease
of use, e-on Software’s Vue beats MojoWorld hands
MojoWorld planets are not just flat landscapes covering
a few virtual acres. They form complete spheres with
curved horizons. For a larger view of this picture (in
a popup window), click HERE.
In spite of a few rough edges, MojoWorld is a mightily
impressive program. The ability to create fractal worlds
with no ‘final frontier’ puts it into a
different category from conventional landscape generation
programs such as Vue or Bryce. It is capable of constructing
and rendering worlds of breathtaking beauty, complete
with convincing seas, lakes, rivers and forestation.
Its animation capabilities are limited. It can, to a
degree, animate waves on water and atmospheric effects.
Trees can be made to simulate movement due to wind.
You cannot create fully animated models, however, nor
is there support for importing animated models. This
is a great shame as animated MojoWorld planets cry out
for a population of animals.
MojoWorld is not the easiest of programs to use.
If you want a simple and controllable way to create beautiful
landscapes, I would recommend Vue instead.
In spite of some optional user friendly additions to
its user interface, the underlying complexity of MojoWorld
is barely concealed. To make the most of it you will
need to put in a good deal of time and effort. To look
on the bright side, this may not be as onerous a task
as it sounds. MojoWorld is such a fascinating program
that even making mistakes can be fun!
|MojoWorld is an almost ludicrously ambitious and
innovative program which is really pushing the boundaries
of the possible in landscape and planet design. Eccentric
it may be, but this is eccentricity of a very high
order and we are pleased, therefore, to make it the
first ever recipient of the Bitwise