
Explore ancient Athens online in 3D models - vo2maxer
https://hyperallergic.com/542093/ancient-athens-3d/
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vanderZwan
One thing I learned a decade ago is that ancient Greek sculpture wasn't pure
white marble (or bronze), but heavily painted with colors to appear more
lifelike - it often included glass insets for eyes too. From the looks of it
the few statues present in the buildings are painted, so he gets bonus points
for that!

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ainiriand
I am a bit... dissapointed? to see that the article calls them fantasy cities.
Those are historical recreations not just like going and building Minas
Tirith. I am not sure I am making my point clear, but I think it kind of
downgrades the recreations.

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jacobwilliamroy
If you scroll down on his website you'll see that he admits to omitting or
simplifying things due to technological limitations. He also says he took
artistic license with the restoration of the buildings, the surrounding
environments, and the representation of buildings for which there are no
traces left.

[http://www.ancientathens3d.com/](http://www.ancientathens3d.com/)

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Retric
That’s interesting. I would expect a historical city where most people are
walking from place to place to have a much higher density of buildings.

I wonder if there is anything like an actual map of buildings that remains
that includes all the wooden buildings list to fire, rot, or demolition.

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heartbeats
Not to detract from his work, but it's a shame he doesn't do serious
rendering, like with ray-tracing. From the videos, it looks like he's using
some lesser software that makes the light look very synthetic. There's also
some Z-fighting going on in the background.

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StavrosK
I can't imagine it would be too hard to export/import into other software that
renders better.

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Brendinooo
I have to think there's a market for something like this, done in a VR
environment. I'd love to walk around ancient Athens, even if there was little
to do except walk, visit shops, or sit in on a meal with a family.

If I ever did something like this, I'd love to reconstruct Forbes Field and
watch a Pirates game there.

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52-6F-62
Same! I've dreamt about the same. Though, I've could go further. Include
Ancient Rome, various Chinese empires, NYC in the 1800's, 1930's, Quebec City
in the 1600's, London in the 1200's, 1500's, 1800's.

On and on and on. Bonus points for interactivity.

Those kinds of projects could be profitable, no? The hardest part might be the
architectural realism—so funding that portion of the development.

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arethuza
The BBC did a fantastic series a few years back where a team explored and
created visualisations of some Italian cities:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/invisible-
italy](https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/invisible-italy)

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zeristor
There's a version for the main ancient European cities too:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/jLrgwB2csJCsWLpDrB...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/jLrgwB2csJCsWLpDrB8Kjf/ancient-
monuments-recreated-in-stunning-3d-the-great-pyramid-in-cairo-the-acropolis-
in-athens-and-hagia-sophia-in-instanbul)

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gosuri
_Visitors to the site can browse reconstructions that date back as early as
1200 BCE, the Mycenaean period — or Bronze Age — through Classical Athens,
featuring the rebuilds made necessary by the Greco-Persian War, and ages of
occupation by Romans and Ottomans._

Now this is something exciting I would like to try.

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billfruit
I do wonder what is the best tool for this kind of expansive open world 3d
construction, some perhaps would say Minecraft, but it is rather tedious and
not designed for the purpose. Maybe Magica Voxel, but I think the canvas sizes
are rather small.

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buboard
i enjoy creating ancient worlds in opensimulator (open source second life),
because the landscape can be quite large, but it s limited by the viewer's
capabilities. Still more fun than building alone in Unity or other 3d editors

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billfruit
Yes, but it seems an online product, which isn't what I would prefer.

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AdmiralAsshat
Props to all his hard work, although these days, I feel like you could get 80%
of the way there in 20% of the time just by using modding tools from something
like Skyrim to do the modeling.

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fsloth
What would these faster modding tools be? Aren't the modders using regular
modelers like Blender, 3DMax etc to create the models?

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buboard
some of the best 3d reconstructions of ancient cities are done by this youtube
channel :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR68fz7QoBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR68fz7QoBo)

Assasin's creed athens looks also marvelous:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a8cWF-29lI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a8cWF-29lI)

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qiller
Odyssey is fantastic when it comes to architectural accuracy, and the
Discovery Tour is a great way to explore the region.

Game vs life comparison:
[https://imgur.com/a/i7g0g50](https://imgur.com/a/i7g0g50)

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chrbr
I would pay for the Italian Assassin’s Creeds all over again if they had a big
discovery mode, now that I’ve been to Florence and Rome.

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rado
We associate these structures with ruins (even in historical films) and it's
good to see them in their true glory.

