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Hellenistic Blending

25

In a private project, Clemens Poblotzki has re-created the Greek Pergamon.

Viewing tip: switch to full-screen and 1080p resolution.

Clemens writes:

This is a private visualization project of the acropolis of ancient Pergamum done entirely in Blender 2.5. There certainly is room for improvement and it will develop if time permits.

The excavations at Pergamon in the 19th century were a prestige project of 19th century Germany struggling to catch up politically and culturally with its European Neighbours.

Luckily the results of these campaigns are painstakingly documented in juicy old German, beautifully illustrated and - what's best - available online.

The larger part of the findings, most notably the remains of "The Great Altar", were acquired from Turkey at a time when it had little interest in its pagan, hellenistic heritage. They still reside within the Pergamon Museum in Berlin up to this day.

Contrary to other ancient cities like Athens or Rome there were no notable 3D visualizations of Pergamon to be found around the web, so the city looked like an ideal platform to dig a little deeper into 3D techniques for private pleasure without having to compare the result with a perfectly executed hollywood production. ;-) ...unfortunately there is an official highly-budgeted visualization project going on now ... well, that's life.

After some experiments with Google Sketchup, Blender 2.5 came out just at the right time last Spring. This 2 minute camera flight is a first result.
Other scenes are "half" finished but not good enough to show yet.

Dank je wel to everyone who builds, maintains documents an supports this beautiful and powerful software!

Link

25 Comments

  1. Wow! That is super impressive!
    And as a private project?! Hats off.
    Discovery Channel will be envious.
    That must have been some heavy data to render.

    What might be cool:
    Some realistic camera movements. You took the time to simulate lens flare and color bleeding (at least that's what it looked like), so why not put a "real" camera in there, instead of the clean virtual flyaround? Just a thought.
    But it's awesome nonetheless.

  2. Two thumbs.

    That is a demostration that blender is very powerfull and it does not matter what software you use, the artist is the point.

    Note: A thought from my father: Your hard work is the most valueble thing that you can show to the world.

    Five stars for this timemachine that made me go to the past.

    Mario Camarillo

    From N.L, Monterrey, México.

  3. Yeah very evocative. I could almost imagine the people bustling about.
    Maybe I 've seen too many epic films...
    Really though the ancient world had some amazing construction.
    Now amazingly done in Blender.
    Thanks for sharing

  4. What Liquid Orange says is correct. But also, two questions :
    1) How many verticies ? Because I like numbers.
    2) How did you make/texture the landscape ? Guessing some DEM files and Google Earth ?
    I always wanted to make something like this but never had the patience. Fantastic stuff.

  5. Thanks for making this. I'm from Greece (Hellas) and now that my
    country is deep in the economy crisis, our ancient findings (around
    the world) and culture are some of the very few things that still make
    us proud and happy to be 'here'.
    Thank you very much.
    Greetings from Athens, Greece.

  6. Sheesh! He must be having a monster of a system, my laptop dies if I try to render a mustang :(

    Awesome modeling though, can hardly imagine the amount of effort that must have gone into it.

  7. Woah;

    I just walked over those stairs and in between those columns less than 2 weeks ago!
    The Pergamon Museum in Berlin has the temple on display there; with all the surviving panels conveniently shown to ogle at.

    Amazing the synchronicity of seeing somebody doing a 3d reproduction of this less than 2 weeks later; in my favorite software!

    Sweeeet

    --
    Justa

  8. Steve Mattingly on

    That is unbelievable! I can only dream of becoming that good at Blender. I have dabbled with Blender here and there and this video has literally blown me away! Great job!

  9. Absolutely fantastic bit of work, well done. I work as an archaeologist in London and would love to attempt Blender reconstructions of some of the building remains uncovered during excavations. Sadly, I lack both the patience and, more importantly, the talent. I'm impressed and more than a little jealous.

  10. this is a great start. my only comment would be that it could use some more texture work its very clean right now . other then that great work .

  11. Thanks for all your kind comments!

    @Jonatan
    Yes BGE looks nice, have to learn some python first though.

    @Rhysy
    1) ~ 4 500 000 verticies
    2) Yes, Microdem, Google Earth and my own photos from the location. The hill itself is built from height lines on a map.

    ~ 4 Min/frame rendertime at Full HD on 8 Threads, i7 920, 2.67GHz, 6GB Ram
    3500 Frames
    only one "Sun" Lightsource + Ambient Occlusion, no "fancy stuff"

    @DimitrisC
    Greek Culture survived the Romans, Persians, Gauls... it will not be beaten by greedy bankers and irresponsible politicians ;-) Don't despair!

  12. Very impressive work. I like the fact that you did this as a private project. What else would
    you do with your spare time?

  13. I liked the animation. Doing some architectural visualization myself I spotted a mistake I myself made years ago: break your animation up into separate shots and scenes.

    The camera takes a very convoluted path through the architecture. For instance, at the end we fly over the structure and past the horse statues. After we have flown away from the building a couple hundred feet, we then go back in for a close-up of the carving.

    I would re-imagine it. Fly through the building and past the horses, but don't go too far. With a separate camera (and utilizing a 1/2 second cross-fade), pan from a mid-shot of the horses down to the carving.

    Yes, your animation will end up shorter, but it will hold the audience's attention more. Perhaps you could show more of your city without struggling with a long flightpath for the camera.

    Try and mix wide-angle, mid-level, and close-ups. Use transitions, but mainly stick to quick cross-fades. Fade-to-white and fade-to-black are also helpful for separating scenes.

    Also, with different scenes you can use different light setups. You can optimize exposure between the sun-lit side of buildings and the shaded sides by simply having them not be one continuous shot.

    I hope my criticism was constructive for you, and I look forward to seeing your work progress.

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