Hey everyone! 810NICLE Day 2022 has come and gone, and after over a year in the oven, Mask of Destiny’s Spirit Forge is finally starting to see the light of day. Now that the site is live, I thought it’d be smart to give you an overview of what this project will involve.

Essentially, the Spirit Forge is an initiative to make things like 3D printing and resin casting more accessible to the community at large. While LEGO may have discontinued the BIONICLE toyline, we now have the means to create sets of our own, as talented community members like Vahki6 and Ziontyro (both of whom have been consulting on the Spirit Forge) have shown us. Mask of Destiny wants to make this as easy as possible, for as many people as possible.

At the moment, the Spirit Forge is divided into three sections — Design, Build, and Play. Design is focused on the first step of creating a custom BIONICLE set, that being the Stud.io step. As such, this section currently features a directory of several Stud.io part packs, and will soon be updated with an in-depth guide to using the software, courtesy of VootCaboot. Design will also be where Mask of Destiny hosts our digital canisters — downloads containing instructions and high-quality renders for original Spirit Forge sets. Our first wave, the Lost Rahi, is dedicated to prototype 2001 Rahi, such as those featured in The Legend of Mata Nui, as well as the infamous Sand Tarakava (the canister for which is downloadable now).

The second section, Build, is focused on creating physical items — 3D printing, resin casting, et cetera. At the moment, this section contains a guide on 3D printing by HahliNuva of Red Star Games. In the future, it will be updated with details such as hardware and material recommendations, as well as guides on resin casting and resin color matching, allowing users to accurately recreate parts that never got a mass release (such as the yellow Ruru of the Sand Tarakava).

The third section, Play, is focused on bringing BIONICLE to life in the digital world. This section currently features model packs from Team Kanohi and Litestone Studios, as well as links to all the tools Litestone uses to build The Legend of Mata Nui REBUILT. With these resources at their disposal, almost anyone could be well on their way to creating a BIONICLE game or mod of their own.

Before we wrap up, there’s one thing VootCaboot, our resident Stud.io expert, would like to address regarding the Biopack:

Hey there. For a while now, I’ve been maintaining the Biopack for the sake of the Stud.io users in the BIONICLE community, and I have been proud to, despite the amount of tedious work that Stud.io can require. However, the long and the short of it is that I can’t continue to work on the Biopack — at least not the current iteration. So, for the sake of the community staying in the know, here’s a TL;DR for what I’m about to explain:

I will no longer work with Lehvak Nuva, SwampKryakwa, Zhokker, or any other bigots. Their models will not be maintained further by myself, and I will not knowingly work with or promote them beyond what I have already produced.

The Biopack will remain available as-is, but will be gradually superceded by other projects by myself and others.

If you want to help with future Stud.io projects, message me on my Twitter account, Reddit account, or join the Mask of Destiny Discord and @VootCaboot#8008!

And now for the long version:

It’s unfortunate to say that we would not be where we are with Stud.io (in multiple regards) without SwampKryakwa and Lehvak Nuva. For those unaware, Lehvak Nuva is a 3D modeler, perhaps most prolific for creating the BIONICLE Races mod(s) for Skyrim. SwampKryakwa is his friend, who first made the Biopack and processed Lehvak’s models for Stud.io.

They helped to kickstart a new age of BIONICLE-related 3D modeling, and got a lot of people interested in digital building, modeling, and printing. However, they are both bigoted Russians who seem, at best, unwilling to interrogate the messages surrounding LGBT people and the Ukrainian people that the culture of Russia is steeped in.

Most notably, in June 2022, SwampKryakwa was part of a group who briefly took control of the r/BIONICLELEGO subreddit, and outright banned all LGBT-positive content during Pride Month. While I was formerly willing to ignore his bigotry for the sake of the community, the fact that he was willing to be involved in a strike against a section of the community that has been working incredibly hard to be an inclusive space regardless of gender, sexuality, or nationality makes working with him (and anyone that remains friends with him) difficult at best. Because of this, there is no future where I see myself working with Lehvak’s models, nor Swamp’s color packs or part packs. I am grateful for the work they have done in illuminating the eccentricies of Stud.io, but I simply cannot ignore Swamp’s bigotry and Lehvak’s abetting of it.

In light of all of that, I don’t feel comfortable using, promoting, or fixing the models that they’ve produced. Luckily, I am not alone! I will continue to work on and fund Kingsidorak’s project, the Sidopack, and I am gladly working with other modelers like OhluCG, Galva, and others to continue updating the library of official BIONICLE parts. What this means for the Biopack and its users specifically is that I will not be releasing another Stud.io pack under the name “The Biopack” without replacing every model made by people who wish to do harm to wide swaths of the community. While other modelers’ parts do exist in the Biopack, they are in the minority, and I will be handling those models on a modeler-by-modeler basis.

As such, the Biopack, in its current form, is on an indefinite hiatus. However, with the work of all these talented modelers, coders, and other artists who work to preserve and build upon the future of BIONICLE, I can confidently say that digital art, Stud.io included, isn’t going away anytime soon. If you want to help with increasing the quality, accessibility, and depth of digital Bionicle resources, please support us through either contributing content of your own to the Spirit Forge over at Mask of Destiny, or donating to show some appreciation for the effort of our artists, modelers, and web designers, and help us improve our online offerings like BioMedia Project and the Spirit Forge.

VootCaboot

The Spirit Forge is very much a work in progress, and will continue to evolve and expand in the near future. We hope you’re as excited about this project as we are — the creativity and ingenuity of the BIONICLE community are unmatched, and we hope to equip anyone who’d like to with the tools to put them to use.

If you’d like to discuss the Spirit Forge, you can do so by joining the official Mask of Destiny Discord server.

Thanks for reading!