3D Artist Recreates the Shire from Lord of the Rings in UE4

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” – Those represent the opening lines to the written classic ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien and while we get a fairly decent idea of what The Shire and/or Hobbiton looks like from the books, but most notably from the film franchise, to date, there has been very little from the world of gaming to give us a fair and graphically glorious representation of what it might look like.

Well, following the release of a video by 3D artist Liam Tart, thanks to some clearly hefty work in Unreal Engine 4, we have a fully graphical 3D representation of not only what it looks like, but also what could potentially be achieved in a new gaming title!

The Shire – In Unreal Engine 4!

Representing what was clearly a colossally huge labor of love, the video below looks absolutely stunning as Liam Tart gives us, arguably, one of our best computer-generated 3D representations of the home of the Hobbits to date. No, you won’t see Bilbo, Frodo, or Gandalf the Grey wandering around, but it still looks absolutely stunning!

Better still, the video has been uploaded with quality going all the way up to 4K. So presuming you have a fancy display, be sure to crank those settings up to truly appreciate the work put into this tech demo!

Can I Try It Out?

In something that is likely to do with not wishing to fall foul of any lawyers, the video above is currently the only window we have into this amazing 3D graphical project. As such, don’t bother looking for any download links to explore the village by yourself online because, quite frankly, there aren’t any.

It does kind of make you hope though that, one day, we may truly get an open-world middle-earth to explore and, throw in some World of Warcraft mechanics, and I daresay that if it looks this good, people will already be willing to throw their money at it!

More than anything though, let’s all give Liam Tart some love by checking out some of his graphical art via the link here!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!