What spec machine(s) are you using it on at the moment?

Mac G5 2GHz dual processor with 4GB ram and an NVidia Geforce 6800. However I have been using Macintoshes for 13 years and I was very disappointed to find out that they don't have many good quality 3D cards in the market and to me that is a huge drawback. I would happily pay more for my machine but not double for something that does not provide me with double the performance, so I have recently been converted to the dark side when we purchased five AMD Opteron machines for our in-house render farm that Ben from NewTek Europe helped me to set up.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

Yes - all the Worley Labs plug-ins are great! The Evasion3D collection is nice to have as well and the Polas plug-ins are also fantastic. My collection just keeps on growing as these will always continue to be needed.

Tell me how you came to be involved with the Durrat Al Bahrain project?

I had created another architectural walkthrough in Bahrain that had been seen by the owners of the project who approached me directly. There were other local and international bidders for the work, but they chose me.

Did you work from pre-made models of the island complex, or did you model and texture everything from scratch?

The architects designed the concepts and then got the budgets worked out with the client. I got the concept designs in line art, floor-plan style so I had to model and texture everything from scratch. I modelled the islands, added textures, environment and lighting and finally made animations. We also got some actual satellite images of the Bahrain map, some of which were as big as 900MB, and there was a lot of painting onto the maps in PhotoShop with my Wacom Cintiq monitor. My first set of islands were built inside 15 days with LightWave 3D.

Can you tell me more about the project?

Durrat Al Bahrain is one of the biggest projects in the history of this country. It is worth over $1.3 billion and will add 13 islands on the southern coast of Bahrain. It is another in a long line of terra-forming projects in the Arabian Gulf and it is a landmark that will be clearly seen from planes flying overhead.

The development as a whole will have over 3,000 villas spread out over seven atoll islands and five petal islands as well as more villas on the mainland. There will be a central island called the Pearl Oasis which will have a resort hotel and a water theme park. There will also be a very large crescent-shaped island which will have a large mall, more hotels, apartment blocks, commercial developments and shopping, recreational and service facilities. On the mainland, there will be a large marina, a golf course development and a mosque. It will be an entirely new community that will be connected to the rest of Bahrain via a new super-highway.

Are the renders for print or will you be creating an animation?

Everything is needed for this scale of project and there is no end to what and where it goes. Interestingly, the architects had never seen the islands from the views I provided so they used my visualisations to improve their designs - working on adjustments as I was building them in LightWave. I think I was faster at building in 3D than they were coming up with new designs! After the first set of images, the first phase of the project was sold out immediately and now Phase 2 is sold out as well. We will be releasing an animated fly-through of the whole development next.