I really didn’t like the way the huts were straying from the boundaries in my ecosystem. There was a solution, but it cost me a week. I completed a hut-zone map in Illustrator to keep the huts from wandering into the roads and hanging over the canals. Each of the thousands of hut-zones is more than a hut’s length from any road or canal. I split the map into manageable parts and created an invisible terrain to hold the hut ecosystem.  

A tree element was added to the ecosystem and the results were pretty acceptable.  

Good work! That's massive.

Looking forward to see more!

WOW.

Wow, indeed... that's really impressive stuff!

Great googly-moogly that's a huge terrain.  Very impressive

fantastic!  please keep us up to date with your progress, this is a really interesting project :)

Very impressive. You have the patience of a saint!
In the image you posted with the trees, there arnt any huts in it, are there? Or maybe my eyesight isnt that good enough... I'm wondering if you solved the problem with orientation. Although from this hight it will be hard to tell which way they were oriented.  You couldnt get awya with round huts could you? (my historical knowledge is abismal).
I really admire you for this undertaking - I couldnt do it in a million years.

Hi. Did you click on the image with the trees? It enlarges to a size that should be adequate for showing the huts (not in great detail, but clear enough to identify them.) I used the gif format to retain sharpness, though at the expense of the actual color. 

William H. Prescott describes the Tenochtitlan huts as being like Mayan huts. When I searched for Mayan huts, I found mainly rectangular huts, and also some that were partially rounded. I modeled the rectangular and loaded two huts, facing two different directions into the ecosystem. It worked pretty well since the huts are in sections of arable land and not locked into an inflexible grid of streets and yards.  

The next major step is to model the buildings of significance, but I spent some time placing Tenochtitlan into a terrain map of Mexico combined with a recreation of Lake Texcoco. I still need to create the roads through the water, tweak the landscape materials and find the best atmosphere settings and scale but I’ll leave that for later. 

Very nice work.  Sorry you had to spend so much figuring it all out.  I made a video tutorial over at G@P on just this very thing several months ago.

Thanks. I’ll have to get a high-speed Internet connection one of these days. One of the benefits would be that I could finally make use of the video training out there.
 
 

 This is a hell of a project! Hats off!

Hello Paloth, which has happened with your project, many we are anxious and attentive to your work, do not leave us, certainly, do you know where a model could obtain of tenochtitlan in 3D for 3Dmax?. Thank you friend, continues with your project.

Hello Rubetzin. The Tenochtitlan project is finished for the time being. Two of the better renders are currently posted in my gallery. I haven't created the perfect render of the subject, so I might return to the project at some point in the future. Currently I've split my time between organic modeling  in Zbrush and 2d work in Painter 11.

As far as I know there isn't any available model of Tenochtitlan for 3Dmax. If I ever purchase 3Dmax, maybe I'll create one.

Anyway, thanks for your interest.

Hi Paloth,
i was following your project, good stuff. I dont know if your Tenochtitlan was one-off project or you are really into archeological visualization, but anyways..i found this neat little software called CityEngine, check it out, it works with GIS layers so you can recreate real cities etc, or you can produce vast purely fictious urban landscapes...quite complex stuff really.

http://www.procedural.com/showcase/industries/archeology.html

Have fun

Ailig

Hi, Alig68. I'm fond of architecture and will probably return to more cities in the future. I was checking out the CityEngine videos the other day. It is fascinating. The price has come down from the stratosphere. It is tempting at this point, but I'm currently rigging a figure for Poser. My plate will be full for months to come (worst case scenario.)