Ancient ruins study, a test for background but I like it as it is.
Basic forms in blender, dropped as voxels in 3DCoat. Retopo and paint there, UVs in blender though. A ~100k model. Fast render using BI. Slight PP via nodes. A test on 3DC direct normals painting. The corinthian order (roman version).
Updated version with aphrodite statue
That’s pretty awesome, the material looks good. Though the breaks on the upper surface are a little too smooth.
I love the detail.
Thanks Keith M, you’re probably right, better to add some stones there. Its this damn decimation. It supposed to be a low poly mesh.
Ups thanks Aliet
Updated the render, more crisp now, smoothness was at 80, sorry.
It looks magnificent. Especially considering the low poly count, well done.
thanks WombatCombat,
Well I updated the render, just added a wall and 3d winter trees from (I dont remember sorry)
A small update of this project (lighting and minor sculpting fixes) . Still a blender internal render.
beautiful work as always michalis, really nice attention to detail in the column tops
thanks jeepster, yes, column tops, the capitals. Difficult without the help of 3dcoat (voxels - retopology). To keep them as low poly as possible, I mean. Most of details are via normal maps and baked cavity-AO maps there. All crisper details are directly painted as nor_maps - depth painting. What other option I had? To sculpt on millions of poly? Using zbrush, or even blender (this last is rather impossible). To model via nurbs resulting to a 10 times heavier ‘mechanical’ mesh? There’re different ways to skin a cat. lol
damn… how did i miss this thread? very very nice!!
Great work! Looks realistic and shows the power of the internal renderer.
this looks insanely realistic
Thanks gregzaal, sid350, gnomestudios
I shared this blender file with thea users, I also tested mitsuba, yafray. (these last two failed as they don’t support normal maps)
Blender internal performed better in my hands. BI is fine for exterior scenes. (but not as good for interior)
No indirect lighting used. A ~one min render time (fast machine 16 threads) at ~2000 px. I just used a second spot light to emulate some indirect lighting. (tip: ask ground face not to cast shadows when using sky based AO), bottom gradient color warm.
Still waiting for a decent and fast GI based IR.
An update,
aphrodite sculpted using blender (base body), 3dcoat (fish and base of statue), details and painting in zbrush, imported as 40k mesh+normals+displacement. BI render as usual in one min (2000 px, v 35402)
O_O
ok, this is a photo, no dubt ! 
well done 
Thank you MmAaXx, one is much better than no one. LOL
Another view, pp for vignette only, I may add some more elements in scene and do a nice traveling. It takes ~30 sec now to render a 2000 px frame.
Still waiting for a decent and fast GI based IR.
Yes, I am as well. I remember Brecht’s render branch last year was quite promising, but I guess it got lost in the shuffle…
Exterior scenes are OK for BI, its the interior that is killing me. Difficult to fake GI there. But not impossible LOL.
Do you think it’s worth setting up a similar crowd-funding site, like savetheoceansim, for restoring the render 25 branch?
For me personally, I would definitely consider donating to speed up the process.
