I just finished the modelling process. I’m not at your level, I already know it, but even so I would really love to have some feedbacks about what do you think 
“Rendered” in Cycles. Advices for the texturing process?
Wait a minute. You miss a good number of statues there. Cheating eh? :evilgrin:
(You can always go to blendswap and download some spiderman or something and place them there :RocknRoll: )
I didn’t knew this “palladian” thing existed. WTF were the customers? Mafia? Drug dealers? Holy house man!
Good model you have. But the width of the columns I think is not right. Put your model in the same angle and check the width of the columns. Seems more beautiful with the width of this image:
You know man, I’m Italian and this thing is… ehm… 5 miles far from me:) that’s the reason why I wanted to model it. Anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladian_architecture
I know, I’m cheating because I miss the dome (tiles were driving me crazy), and (of course) statues. But my skill level is not that high, still learning. Anyway, I used tons of pictures as a reference, mostly its “bluerprints” (Google Images), that’s how I figured out columns radius. But I think you are right, maybe I should re-check them 
Oh… And… Do you know some Good resource in order to learn how to improve my modeling skills to reach the goal of being able to model statues, and some good tutorials or ebook about cycles materials?
Try searching rotonda palladio pianta in Google Earth. I think they have 3d model of this place.
depends also how photo realist your goal is ?
if your close to the real buildking then go take some pics of the real one and use these as image texture
that would be closer to the real thing
try to add some details to it
like the dome should not difficult to do
may be split the model in different seperate parts
easier to texture it after in cycles!
salutations
Thank you very much.
Yup, my goal is a photorealistic rendering and I also thought it would be the best thing to go there and take some photos in order to add some good textures.
Uhm, and I’m still having some troubles with the dome. My main problem are the tiles. They are way too much, and the performance of my PC starts to get incredibly low when I work on them in edit mode. I also have a lot of problems because rotating them through an empty, with an array-count set to over 400, is not very handy…
It’s a good standard of modelling and looks good; hard to say if there are issues with the mesh as no wire.
Tutorials are useful, but they don’t add appreciatively to your skills unless you actually model - ideally model something that isn’t following a tutorial. They are great for learning new techniques and how to deal with edge flow, and from my own pov - short-cuts.
Thisis a great tutorial, and appropriate for what you are modelling; shame that it is a citizen only tut, but the price is well worth it. It has tips on using instancing to lower the demands on cycles; he also, iirc, uses layers so you can have only what you need showing.
BTW, if you’re using sub-surf modifier, there are a couple of tips to enable you to have more pollys; Without using the tips, by the time it gets to a millionish faces I’m getting serious lag; using the tips I’ve had over 7 million and while it can cause a few issues it’s usable. Current project has 3 million.
Works for amd and nvidia:
- User Preferences > System - check VBOs
- if you have a sub-surf modifier on a mesh, then after the sub-surf place something like a: Simple Deform and set the factor to zero.
- for nvidia I understand enabling Backface Culling, edit mode > n for side panel > view > backface culling, helps enormously. No idea if it can be set enable by default as use amd.
EDIT:
Oh, and good job on posting an image of a decent size.
There are several ways. One of the most used is using sculpt tool to do a rough sculpt and then retopologize it adding vertices and faces that are proyected on the sculpt using snap to face.
My own method is to create lines of edges that follow the convex and concave parts of the reference I want to model. Then I simply fill with polygons. Then I correct with sculpt tool and retopologize the corrections.
Be aware that all is just only concave parts and convex parts so the problem only reduces to find the correct lines along those parts and then fill with the correct circles. Also when some part is “difficult” you only need split the problem in several simpler parts.
For the statues in your palladian house you could just use planes with the photos. Seems too much to model them. I was just joking, not really saying you must to model them. Just a png with mask will do the work. Or perhaps a very rude sculpt of them without any detail, nobody will note anything if the camera is so far as you posted in your renders.