Warhammer 30k: The Great Triumph After Ullanor

Scroll down to see the process.

When I first started reading Warhammer novels, I was truly enamored by the inconceivable scale of things. The Great Triumph After Ullanor is an event that exemplifies that more than any other. Millions of human soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Space Marines amongst countless formations of vehicles and war machines; all gathered on a continent sized plain of polished and flattened stone as a far as the eye can see. All there to celebrate and commemorate one thing: the crowning of Horus Lupercal, the first found son of the Emperor, as Warmaster.

Upon reading the description of an entire mountain being scraped away and used to fill in the valleys and hills, creating a perfectly flat plain that stretched hundreds of miles, then polished to a marble like finish; I was totally blown away. Always a massive fan of science fiction, I had never encountered anything quite like this, or if I had it was always described as one of the greatest works of humanity. Here it was mentioned as if it was a task like any other, an easy achievement for The Imperium of Mankind. I thought, "If this was easy, imagine what else they can do." In many ways this event is what really drew me fully into the world and ignited my now intense interest.

This painting became an inevitability, something personal to me that I knew I would eventually create no matter what. Partly for the importance of the event and partly to satisfy my own curiosity of what it might have looked like. I did a ton of research on numbers, scale, and layout. In the end I decided to build a massive 3D replica of the event so I could really see it with my own eyes. It was so much fun crafting models of all the vehicles and people, setting the scene, and building the stage. In the end when I finally rendered the scene I felt proud of what I had created.

I spent quite a lot of time turning that render into a proper artwork, as can be seen below in the process section. Ultimately I am quite happy with the grandiosity of the final product and the absolute scale of this scene. It's exactly what I imagined: the sea of people and vehicles lapping up against the great dais, with the glowing figure of the Emperor Himself a beacon cutting through it all.

-Sam Bogits

Process

Pictured first are the initial color and value sketches where I experimented with having a slice of light cut through the scene and having the foreground be lighter than the background, a reversal from what we often see in art and life. I thought having a dark horizon would lend a bit more of a moody disposition to the scene and really extenuate the Emperor's slice of brilliance in the foreground. I went through several compositions and lighting schemes before I arrived at this one and the colors took a real journey over the course of this project. A scene of this scale took a lot of planning and research, of which can be seen further below on this page. Next are the several stages I went through once I had finished modeling and rendering the scene in Blender in order to turn it into an illustration from the raw image. Initially my colors were brighter but I felt they were too bright, once I darkened them I knew I wanted to include a blue sky to bring that feeling of hope back to the scene. This is both the greatest triumph of The Great Crusade, and the crux in the plot that leads to Horus' downfall, meaning much of my process involved striking the balance between forbiddingly melancholic and triumphant hope.

Here is where it all began, I spent a while digging through various books, mostly Horus Rising and A Thousand Sons to find descriptions and details about the event itself. I then designed the great stage the Emperor crowns Horus on and started to plot out the scale of the scene by hand. With millions of soldiers and vehicles viewed from so far away, I felt I couldn't properly capture the absolute scale of this event the way I wanted to, so I dove into creating a massive 3D model instead. My initial painting still informed most of my decisions for the model, especially the gold eagle and the colors. This entire process can be seen further below.

Below are all of the assets that I created for this scene. Each and every one of them I made from scratch based on reference images and research. I spent way too much time on this part of the process but I learned a lot about 3D and now have a collection of cool models I made myself. I am happy I took this route as I feel It allowed me to really capture the ridiculous sense of scale described in the books and make sure everything was the proper size.

This is some shots of the massive crowd area, the lines and lines of marines, and the stage itself, of which I filled with various statues, architectural pieces, and towers.

These are all the vehicles I modeled to fill the crowd area. A Stormbird gunship, Leman Russ tank, Baneblade super heavy tank, Basilisk Artillery, Imperator Titan, and Warlord Titan.

Here are each of the 9 Primarchs present at the event. From left to right: Jaghatai Khan, Sanguinius, Mortarion, Magnus the Red, Fulgrim, Rogal Dorn, Angron, Horus Lupercal, and Lorgar Aurelian. After them are the Custodes I made, the robed nobles, and the Mechanicum priests.

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