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My ambitious endeavor, to reconstruct images of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, began as a marketing promotion for Bryce (a 3D modeling software, if by chance you don't know). I wanted to help promote the product, which I passionately love, and the owners at the time, MetaCreations, agreed to sponsor the endeavor. But in creating this imagery, I specifically restricted myself to using Bryce alone, and the imagery you see is essentially the most Bryce alone can do. It isn't good for human statuary, and so I had to scale back my designs, particularly in the Mausoleum, to reduce the statuary to a minimum. So if you are looking in on this purely from the interest of the Wonders themselves, I just wanted to say that the images do disagree with some of the historical facts of these wonders because of the limitations of the software I was using. The Mausoleum, in particular, had statuary surrounding all three tiers of its base. And I've mellowed out in my perception of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, going so far as to include two images of the traditional version I still have profound doubts about, along with my admittedly very speculative version, which is more practical from an engineering standpoint, but not historically documented. And I have continued to experiment with the mysterious Hanging Gardens, doing a drastically revised "Version 2" which is in my Recent Works Gallery. So as you look at these images of the Wonders, be reminded that indeed there is much we don't know about them, and visualizations like mine are based on considerable speculation. For those of you who use Bryce, you will be pleased to know this gallery of images is truly 100% Bryce (no imported objects, figures, textures, pictures, or anything else that didn't come with Bryce). So, theoretically, if you have nothing in your computer other than your core operating system and Bryce, you could duplicate everything I did here. While I did create some human figure statuary here entirely in Bryce, I would not hesitate recommending you use Poser instead for any human figures you want in Bryce scenes (life is too short, and Poser does them better). Finally, there is one really humongous text file in this gallery, but the various history/construction note buttons below will take you to exact topics within the text file (or you can scroll through it till your mouse button dies). Most of the imagery is 1024 wide, so you can see details better. For all the night scenes, you really must darken the room you're in to see the detail in the shadows. That said, enjoy! Bill Munns
December 2000 |
