[HN Gopher] A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D
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A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D
Author : GuardianCaveman
Score : 706 points
Date : 2023-10-22 06:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl)
| ferfumarma wrote:
| This is incredible; thanks for posting it.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Great stuff, it looks incredibly well rendered!
|
| I'm surprised the original city centre square was preserved, but
| all the original pyramids were knocked down, was it really worth
| the effort just to get those stones?
| defrost wrote:
| Given they'd been already cut and shaped to a portable size it
| was easier to take those stones than to cut and craft new ones.
|
| The casing stones from the much larger Egyptian pyramids were
| all scavenged several centuries ago:
|
| https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/06/the-great-pyramid-...
| usrusr wrote:
| A nice illustration of how the ubiquity of cheap fossil-based
| transport and manufacturing has completely skewed our
| perception.
|
| _Of course_ it 's easier to pick stones from a convenient pile
| that's already where you need it, even if it perhaps requires
| some banging at them to get them loose. Most convenient quarry
| on the continent, likely the exact reason why you started
| building in the vicinity in the first place.
|
| But I'm certainly not immune to perception through those
| petrol-colored sunglasses myself, please don't read this as
| "look at that fool!"
| avar wrote:
| > was it really worth the effort just to get those stones?
|
| It wasn't just to get building materials.
|
| You don't want a giant monument to gods that demanded human
| sacrifice as a prominent part of the skyline when you're trying
| to convert the local heathens to Christianity.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Very cool. Back in the late 90's when VRML was a thing there was
| a website demo that did a rendering. It still survives as
| http://www.dellerae.com/tenoch/
| perilunar wrote:
| I remember that site!
|
| Unfortunately the VR files now longer work without the VRML
| plugins, which are no longer available or supported (AFAIK).
|
| It could be made to work again with the X_ITE 3D Javascript
| viewer though, which I tried recently to view some old VRML
| files.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Nicely done!
|
| Reminds me a bit of the 3D Starry Night.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Dt9ziemYA
| jacquesm wrote:
| Wow, thank you for posting that. One of my kids is in love with
| that picture, certainly going to show him this.
| esafak wrote:
| As an installation: https://www.vangoghsf.com/
| thomasfl wrote:
| What a great project. I wonder how it was done. Blender and
| photoshop?
| mischa_u wrote:
| Made using open-source software. Blender, Gimp and Darktable.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's an amazing piece of work. Assuming accuracy: what strikes
| me is that certain features of the ancient city apparently carry
| over into the modern day and how ecologically balanced the older
| city looks compared to the new one. Another interesting feature
| seems to be that 'places of power' back then are still places of
| power today but different kinds of power.
| ThomasKole wrote:
| 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.
| asimpletune wrote:
| What made you interested in doing this region? How did you find
| source material? Also, are you planning on doing more?
|
| I imagine that some nations would even give out grants for an
| open source and fully immersive, 3d version of some historical
| region. Like parts of classical or hellenic Greece for example,
| or Carthage, Cairo, Syracuse, Judea, etc...
|
| Thanks for making this btw, great work!
| ThomasKole wrote:
| I can't really say why I got interested, it just happened.
| History in general is fascinating, and I find Meoamerican
| history extra special.
|
| I don't have any concrete plants for more, but who knows!
| yoyopa wrote:
| is there evidence of that many street trees, or was that
| artistic license
| ThomasKole wrote:
| A bit of artistic license, but the trees play a crucial role.
| They are Ahuejotes, and they keep together the plots of
| farmland called Chinampas. You can see some of this today in
| Xochimilco.
|
| We don't know if that was what it was like in Tenochtitlan,
| but it is likely. What adds to this is the fact that the
| houses are all one story, so the trees look taller and more
| numerous than they are.
| PierreProstata wrote:
| In the same vein, many of today's boulevards and highways
| line up with old streets in your renders, is that a
| historical coincidence or is the Mexico City layout a
| direct result of Tenochtitlan remains despite its
| destruction?
| wsc981 wrote:
| I know in The Netherlands this happened in the city I
| grew up, Hoogeveen [0].
|
| _> In the second half of the 1960s, Hoogeveen was the
| fastest growing town in the Netherlands. Until that
| period, the town contained a number of canals, which had
| been dug in the area 's early days when it was a prime
| source of peat and maritime transportation was a
| necessity for efficient transportation of cargo. By the
| 1960s the rise of the automobile and truck-based
| transportation meant the canals had lost much of their
| economic function, and the canals were filled in._
|
| ------
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogeveen
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is also true in New Orleans.
| akiselev wrote:
| It's not a coincidence. The conquistadors spent months in
| Tenochtitlan as guests of Montezuma and wrote extensively
| about how amazing the urban planning was. They would have
| preferred to keep the city in tact all things considered.
|
| Since the Aztecs had done all of the hard work of
| figuring how to build out drainage and stability with the
| chinampas, the Spaniards built their new buildings on top
| of the foundations remaining from the Aztec buildings. It
| then took several centuries to fill in all of the canals
| and turn them into streets so the layout of Mexico City
| very much reflects Tenochtitlan.
|
| For example the Zocalo square is right where the Aztec
| ceremonial center used to be and I believe the
| Metropolitan Cathedral was originally built on top of the
| foundations of a minor temple that was built as part of
| the Templo Mayor complex.
| totetsu wrote:
| > You can see some of this today in Xochimilco. Yikes
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/5XgfQTpiNaz8QUtf6
| malermeister wrote:
| Incredible work! Since you've made this in 3D, I wonder if that
| could potentially enable a more immersive way to get more out
| of the work you've put in than just static images?
|
| Would it be possible to do a sort of flyover video with the
| assets you've created? Or potentially even plop the assets into
| a game engine and let people interactively explore?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| 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.
| speps wrote:
| Super impressed! I can help you make this into a real-time
| flyover if you're willing to collaborate. My contact is in
| my profile ;)
| chefandy wrote:
| Have you tried rendering any of it in UE utilizing nanite?
| Aeolun wrote:
| How did you fill it with buildings? I imagine they're not
| all unique?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| Certainly not. Take a look at Blenders new Geometry Nodes
| system.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| I was gonna ask, "did you use geometry nodes?" But then I
| CTRL+F this comment chain.
|
| I've gotten absolutely incredible mileage out of geo
| nodes for forests and cities. Once you get used to the
| peculiarities, geometry incredibly superior to using
| particles and heatmaps. And I'm just a hobbyist! I use
| Blender for gamemastering, but haven't ever been paid to
| do it . . yet.
|
| (If that sounds like fishing it is totally fishing. How
| does a middle-age MilStdJunkie break into the modelling /
| simulating market?)
|
| Did you do any street-level renders? I realize that it's
| completely, totally a different kettle of fish, the
| detail you got here would murder the entire world's
| computers if it had 1m scale detail.
|
| Fabulous, fabulous work. Amazing. I did something similar
| for New Amsterdam ~1660CE, for "Providence", a
| Lovecraftian horror game set in colonial New England. But
| New Amsterdam and Seekonk in 1660 is _nothing_ compared
| to this, Tenochtitlan in the immediate pre-contact
| period.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Amazing work. Are any Blender .blend files available? How large
| are they?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| 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!
| Beached wrote:
| please do, this is great and it would be a shame to lose
| all this initial hard work
| impendia wrote:
| 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?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| 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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| From a Mexican, I'd like to congratulate you for all this
| effort and thank you for the amazing experience you put
| together for us to enjoy.
|
| All of this history was taught to me through primary school,
| and yet, this project made me put together some things I
| haven't realized before. Visualization goes a long way.
|
| The New Fire ceremony looks amazing, everything else is also
| beautiful. Thanks again for such a fine piece of work!
| qwertox wrote:
| My first thought when the page was loading was "Wow", then
| while scrolling even more so. It's impressive.
|
| How long have you been working on this?
|
| Edit: Oh, I see, `This project is the result of over 1.5 years
| of research and iteration. It would not have been possible
| without the input of the following people:`
| dale_glass wrote:
| That looks amazing!
|
| If you'd ever like to see it in VR, we run an open source
| desktop/VR social platform at https://overte.org/
|
| It shouldn't be too hard to set up a server and take a walk
| among the past. By the looks of it it's probably way too big
| for the entire thing to be loaded at once, so things likely
| need trimming down quite a bit.
|
| We're a decentralized system, so you can run your own server if
| you like.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Text mentions smoked peppers, but there is no smoke rising from
| the city. Was that too hard or distracting or both? Might smoke
| be added in the future as an addenda? Inspiring as is to be
| sure, but for sake of realism it struck me as off since the
| rest is so detailed and eye catching.
| subroutine wrote:
| This image shows smoke rising from the temples:
|
| https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/image_dest/newfire_twopea.
| ..
| m0llusk wrote:
| Is that really the expectation? That fire would only be
| used within the extremely limited range of temples? It
| seems more likely that there would be fires for cooking and
| basic industry all over the city. This would have a big
| impact on how the city looks. Maybe they are using
| induction for cooking?
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Has there been any attempt to recreate the daily wood/charcoal
| smoke released from that all that ?
| catapart wrote:
| 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 the same?
|
| Walking around in ancient cities should not be reserved for
| assassination missions in action games (regardless of how fun
| that is). I'd love to just have a 'day in the life' simulation
| that I could move through, interact with, and study! Feels like
| a way to make history feel tangible. It would be awesome to
| immerse myself in a New Mexican pueblo builder society, or with
| an indigenous Native American tribe on the praries, or in the
| Japanese imperial Palace circa the Edo era, or in pre-medieval
| Europe, or, or, or...
|
| Sorry for the predominant 'what else you got' vibe; I really am
| impressed by the scope and detail of your work! It just tends
| to send the mind racing with possibility, which I hope you'll
| take as the compliment I intend it as!
| pomian wrote:
| 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.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Congrats for your work! The last night photo is perhaps the
| most beautiful.
| wishfish wrote:
| 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.
| ThomasKole wrote:
| No streetview level, the reconstruction is definitely
| "impressionistic" in that way. There's only illusion of
| detail, it does not hold up up close.
| Beached wrote:
| yet? if you still have the files, would you consider
| turning this into a VR experience and add in street level
| detail slowly over time?
|
| if that sounds like way too much work, any chance you would
| open source your work for needs to add to it?
| zelda-mazzy wrote:
| 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.
| ThomasKole wrote:
| It's all CC-BY-4.0, so, yep.
| dakial1 wrote:
| Amazing work! Congratulations! I never knew Tenochtitlan was so
| huge and beautiful
| ouraf wrote:
| Have you considered 3d printing this? It would be a massive
| project, but would be a museum level display piece.
| atombender wrote:
| This is fantastic. I'm curious what the sources are. I know there
| are some maps, books written by Spanish conquistadors, and so on.
| How much do we know about the city beyond the sites of
| significant historical events?
| akiselev wrote:
| A surprising amount! They were mostly pictorial but the Aztecs
| and their vassal cities were _very_ meticulous about keeping
| government records of all kinds and even though almost all of
| Tenochtitlan 's documents were destroyed during the battle,
| some of them were backed up in other cities. Since the
| conquistadors spent some time in the city as guests of
| Montezuma, we've also got first hand accounts from the soldiers
| and friars.
| npsomaratna wrote:
| This is fantastic. One thought that came to my mind is: would
| mosquito borne diseases have been a problem in city surrounded by
| so much water?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| I don't know much about that, but one of the districts was
| called "Moyotlan", or "place of the mosquitos" or "place of the
| gnats".
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Interesting, thank you. I wonder if that that area had
| stagnant water, allowing mosquito growth.
| aegypti wrote:
| 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...
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Understood, thank you. That makes sense.
| aegypti wrote:
| It was a great question, and a great reason to make an HN
| account too!
| hvis wrote:
| I guess when the aliens finally arrive, the important part
| will be to avoid hugging them.
| kadoban wrote:
| Probably safer to hug them than another human. Most
| diseases don't even cross species boundaries, seems
| unlikely they'd do well trying to infect a completely alien
| being.
|
| The reason that diseases from the old world were so deadly,
| when they crossed the pond, is that they'd evolved to
| spread quite well even in humans with an evolved or
| acquired resistance and were suddenly in a completely
| unprepared population.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| For those who don't follow the Fall of Civilizations podcast,
| this is worth a listen/watch:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8JVdpWCKeM
| jdmoreira wrote:
| +1 for this! One of my favourite podcast episodes ever
| aa_is_op wrote:
| The only YouTube channel I've ever sponsored. They are just out
| of this world!
| e40 wrote:
| This is incredible. Thanks!
| andsmedeiros wrote:
| It must have been such a beautiful city...
| rewsiffer wrote:
| How did the ancient city deal with sewage and waste?
| akiselev wrote:
| Tenochtitlan had a sophisticated system of urban planning with
| zoned public bathrooms (latrines, really) that were cleaned at
| night by a large labor force dedicated to keeping the city
| clean. The waste was collected by canoe from these bathrooms
| and dumped into the canal system where it decomposed and was
| later dredged up to fertilize and replenish the topsoil on the
| chinampas. Fresh drinking water was provided by mountain spring
| connected to the city by several aqueducts built in the 15th
| century.
| Springtime wrote:
| One day I hope there's a city building game that looks like this.
| Lovely work.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Reminds me of that Pharaoh remake that was out recently, but I
| suppose that one is Egypt only.
| ftyers wrote:
| Very cool that you have the site translated in Nahuatl! Was the
| translator a native speaker? If so, of which variety?
| ThomasKole wrote:
| 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.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| This is so incredibly cool. Something about the first few shots
| with the pyramid in the distance and the rest of the land gave me
| goosebumps! It really feels like a secret photograph from 600
| years ago
| pjs_ wrote:
| Incredible work. Love the fog and rain, as well as the one
| outstanding shot with a simulated wide-angle lens (https://tenoch
| titlan.thomaskole.nl/image_dest/precinct_panor...).
| datameta wrote:
| The chinampas are a super neat example of agroforestry. The soil
| is extremely dark (like Ukrainian chernozem or better) and has a
| very low depletion per cycle. Some still exist and are being
| stewarded toward renewal and proliferation!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa?wprov=sfla1
|
| https://youtu.be/86gyW0vUmVs?si=zz61OacembAksi76
| Solvency wrote:
| Buddy Levy's book on the Aztecs and Cortez is one of my favorites
| of all time.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Hernan-Cortes-Montezuma-...
|
| It would be amazing if you created an interactive history
| experience based on this. I'd love to be able to jump around to
| see where all of the historical tentpole moments happened
| throughout the city, such as the mass slaughter that happened
| while Cortez was away, and other historically significant
| moments.
| vessenes wrote:
| Thomas, this is beautiful. If we found you a UE5 expert, would
| you be open to the assets being used to deliver some sort of
| experience with it? I feel like this is just too good not to try
| and deploy towards some street-level experiences.
| pcl wrote:
| This is great, and really helps tie together the pre-Colombian
| history I've read about to the here-and-now.
|
| How feasible would it be to build some sort of AR component? In
| particular, I'd love to be able to see your rendering for my
| current position, as I wander around Mexico City.
| indie_rok wrote:
| As mexican (from Mexico City), seeing your house in the pictures
| and then the same area around a lake is just amazing!
|
| Kudos to this artist
| aws-user wrote:
| I like the detailed blood stained steps of the temples
| EugenioPerea wrote:
| Mexican Twitter went insane when this went viral a couple of
| months ago. Everyone loved it. Awesome work, Thomas. Thank you.
| rangerelf wrote:
| This is beautiful, thank you so much for sharing it.
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(page generated 2023-10-23 09:00 UTC)