Ancient Rome — 3D Documentary Series
The series is produced entirely with open-source and subscription tools, with all 3D assets built from scratch or derived from openly licensed archaeological datasets. Production pipelines are documented and shared publicly for other history communicators to replicate or adapt.
This project started as a personal challenge: could a single person produce a historically rigorous, visually compelling documentary about ancient Rome using modern 3D tools and open archival data?
Each episode covers a specific moment — the assassination of Caesar, the eruption of Vesuvius, the sack of Rome in 410 AD — and is built around a combination of Blender 3D environments, photorealistic shading, and cinematic camera work.
Research & Reference
Every scene begins with a deep research phase. Primary sources — Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius — are cross-referenced with the latest archaeological records from the Capitoline Museums and the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae project.
Architectural reconstructions follow published academic proposals, with visual deviations clearly noted in episode footnotes.
Crowd & Environment Simulation
Populating ancient Rome required a procedural approach. A custom Geometry Nodes setup in Blender generates crowds of up to 80,000 instanced characters, each with randomised clothing, posture, and accessory variation drawn from a library of 200+ assets.
Vegetation is distributed using real-world topographic data from the Rome Reborn project, ensuring botanical accuracy per region and era.
