This small diorama -photo was made for a small maxminis -competition. Some terrain props I've made before were used in the diorama, and potato flour to make the ground look more authentic. Sky was taken from a photo and added to it using Gimp.

Below is the original photo, with original background:

There's a few words I'd like to share with you about using 3d-terrain and/or maps/tiles - what to use and why, and share my experiences about some maps and tiles I've used. And while I love modelling and creating cool terrain setups in my games, I've been moving towards using map tiles in my games instead of 3d props, and there's several reasons for that, which I'm going to tell you more about below. I've also added a few review-ish about tiles/terrains on this post.

Here's a few pics from the model of my home farm in Asikkala where I grew up, to be a gift for my father. Above, you can see all but one of the buildings in the model. The models I've created before and given as a gift, now I'll create the terrain around and build it inside a glass -covered table.

I've been publishing a lot of roleplaying/gamemastery/miniatures articles recently, and now it's time to get back to modelling. This time I'll show your how to create realistic -looking dunes and desert terrain yourself.

Background and motivation

I've built a lot of fantasy terrain, but not before starting to play Star Wars miniatures game has it come to my mind to create desert terrain. As I started to do it, I realized that it's pretty simple so I could as well create a tutorial while doing it.