Made in 2001, re-rendered in February 2005, made in about 150 hours total
This is a reconstruction of the Forum Trajani as existed in ancient Rome. Today only the famous
Column of Trajan and some rubble remain, but back then it was a huge forum consisting of a
basilica, two libraries, the great column itself, a large square, an arc and a couple of
collonades (long corridors flanked by columns).
I originally started working on this model in 2001 for an assignment for school, but it soon grew
and in the end I rebuilt the entire Forum Trajani. I based my reconstruction on an archeological
reconstruction made by scientist Packer, who published a massive book on the subject. A lot of
research went into this one and some schools have used my reconstruction as educational material.
I also built a website about it back in 2001, containing my reconstruction and a lot of historical
information. This website is still up:
Forum Trajani website.
At the start of 2005 I looked back on this model and still liked it, but some things were really out
of date. Therefore I redid the entire lighting setup using Vray and replaced the old trees using Speedtree.
These new renders are shown on this website and they look a lot better than the old ones, yet some
things are still a bit clumsy: I did not know how to model good characters and how to use
mesh-editing effectively back then, so the statues look terrible. Remaking all the statues would be
too much work, so I just chose the views where the statues look best.
