Live data from Hacker News

A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl

61–70 of 106 posts

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#61

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

This is amazing work. Do you have any street level views? Would be interesting to see some of the neighborhoods and plazas from ground level.

No streetview level, the reconstruction is definitely "impressionistic" in that way. There's only illusion of detail, it does not hold up up close.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#62

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

This is amazing, one of the coolest things I have ever seen on HN. Thanks for doing this! My question: what kind of evidence/sources were helpful in figuring out what Tenochtitlan looked like?

People have devoted their entire lives to studying this, but I can give a very short overview:

First, there's early colonial maps, such as the Mapa de Uppsala, which give us a decent understanding of the city. Then there are the accounts of the arriving Spanish. There's also archaeological evidence all throughout Mexico City, though much has been actively destroyed.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#63
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The area is huge, to a point where you have to worry about floating-point imprecision. The sheer amount of stuff in the scene is pretty crazy. Perhaps I can bake it down to something like what you might see in Google Earth in 3D.

How did you fill it with buildings? I imagine they’re not all unique?

Certainly not. Take a look at Blenders new Geometry Nodes system.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#64
post #35

Very cool that you have the site translated in Nahuatl! Was the translator a native speaker? If so, of which variety?

As far as I know, his family did speak it never passed it on, so he learn it afterwards. So semi-native, I guess. The variant is a central one, relatively close to the variant that would have been spoken by the Mexica.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#65

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

First and foremost, this is incredible! Fantastic work! I've always wanted to do something like this (on a MUCH smaller scale) with the Alamo mission, in Texas, as a way to visualize the battle, in real time. To that purpose, my end goal was always to pull whatever environments I modeled into Unreal engine (so nanite and lumen make short work of my detailed models). Which makes me wonder if you had any plans to do th…

Great idea. Historic recreation. Then get various historians, and/or people with regional historic stories, that may have been passed on from generation to generation, and add them too. Possibly a sidebar to check various layers as in Geo mapping, but instead of features, you get eras and or different points of view.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#66

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

Amazing work. Are any Blender .blend files available? How large are they?

Not at the moment, the problem is that the total project is quite large and would require me to write quite some documentation if you wanted to get started. Once I free up some time I might!

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#67
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mosquito borne disease didn’t exist in the Americas prior to contact, both the viruses and species that transmit them come from the old world. Cortes landed at Veracruz the next year, in 1519. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Acuna-So...

Understood, thank you. That makes sense.

It was a great question, and a great reason to make an HN account too!

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#68

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

Thanks for putting this together and doing all the research. 1.5 years is a long time but the end result looks amazing. Are there any plans to let educational institutions or historical museums use this? I imagine such a presentation would be invaluable for Mesoamerican studies.

Re: A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D

#69

Hey all, author here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The question I always get from tech people - yes, all open source software. 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, 1% Darktable or so.

Thanks for putting this together and doing all the research. 1.5 years is a long time but the end result looks amazing. Are there any plans to let educational institutions or historical museums use this? I imagine such a presentation would be invaluable for Mesoamerican studies.

It's all CC-BY-4.0, so, yep.
Post reply on HN