Ok, I am back. Fluffy's model is remarkable. I'd love to have it and stitch it with my work, it would spare me a lot of sweat.
I am facing the problem of filling in the gaps, residentrial areas that we don't know much about, and must be somehow be filled with believable buildings. In some cases it's just a matter of putting in generic volumes and cubes, maybe with a roof. But in some cases I'd want to put in some believable buildings, as in the case of the road that goes towards the arch of Constantine. We know it was a straight road, about 11 meters wide, with sidewalks of maybe 4 m., lined with housings with shops at the floor level. I am making some meccano like thing, building blocks that can be assembled. I am posting one of such, and a pic of one of thousands of possible assemblies.

domus_3.skp

Ok, Csaba won't agree, but I wanted to amuse myself some. I centered the whole building around the circular underground hall, the only known element, and I referred to some paintings from Pompei as a reference. So this is my version of the house of the Domitii as refurbished by Nero before the fire. The main point is that the whole thing happens on a hillside.

I am trying to figure out what Nero's Domus Transitoria might have looked like. I placed the two villas that I suppose were there at the time. Of the center one with the round room, only the part to the left is known by documents. The part to the right stepping down three levels is a supposition, but a rather logical one, if there were baths and a palestra (gym area) you expect also a residential area. It could only be in that direction, and that's on a steep slope, and a rather unstable one too. The villas almost link with the house of the Domitii, that is known by that crosslike hall, supposedly underground also at the time it was built and used (fresh hall in summer). So now I have to imagine what the above ground building might have looked like if, as is very probable, Nero bought the two villas and somehow welded the whole thing somehow ...

And I just found in some nook of my hard disk a column with the capital I posted the other day, here it goes ...

coloncap.skp

And add to all that the fact that a lot of the older plans have drawing and prospection errors. Total stations and GPS are rather recent, and not even those are always used correctly ... I have that sort of problem in the roman villa I am working on, destroyed when Via dei Fori Imperiali was created by Mussolini, in the 1930's. The plan and prospection was made in a hurry, they had just three months to dig and measure, I can't trust the plans the whole way ...

To Pichuneke and Fluffy82. Of course you can (link my animation or use my capitel). I am not by any means jealous about my work ...

Beautiful model. I have a fixation on the Paraguay war (1865/70) and have been playing with the idea of modeling some of the ships and ironclads that fought in it. But I don't have your skills, and I don't have the complete plans either. I enclose some images of one of the ironclads, before and after entering in battle. The "Brazil" was built in France. It was ballasted for battle so that it offered less of a target, and the masts were also removed before entering the fray.
Advice welcome.

I do use bump maps, but in Poser. There goes Pichuneke's chariots ...

[quote="pichuneke"] ... continue working on my roman theatre. I have a problem with those corinthian capitals...[quote]
I don't know if it can help, but I made up a very simplified one for the Pantheon, and I think it looks good ...
The model of the pantheon needs an explanation, it is not as it is, but as it was planned. The king size columns didn't arrive in time, so they had to settle for lower ones, that's why the actual entrance looks a bit squat. This is what it was meant to be.

capitello.skp

Yahhh ... ok I'll have to go and try some textures on my work, your models look quite good, but also time consuming ...

Ecuador was a holiday, but nobody goes to Haiti for a holiday, that was work ...
I tried an animation, rather poor and no sound for the time being, the mike in my computer doesn't seem to work. I loaded it on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAw8KnnK6Vg
comments and advice welcome ...

At any rate, the house that's supposed to be Augustu's birthplace looks like this in my model. At the back of the Curiae Veteres, and with shops along the front on the Sacra Via.

Island of Bequia, Caribbean, several years ago ...

You know, reporters are always looking for something sensational, and my wife gave them that. But it is quite likely true, what she found is the remains of a large house of the right age, with some luxury details, mosaics and wall paintings, just behind the temple that has been identified as the Curiae Veteres, and the sources say that Augustus birthplace was near the Curiae Veteres. It all fits, and probably the small flavian temple built after Nero's death was dedicated to the memory of Augustus, and was also possibly used as an archive for his personal documents, something like the US presidential museums of nowadays. All this was known for a while, but newspapers must gloss it over to attract attention.

Ah! Es por eso que las ruinas estàn tan arruinadas....

Muy divertido. Contra quien hay que tirar? Arqueologos o huaqueros?

And this is the Claudianum in the flavian version, with the temple of Claudius and the grand staircase that replaces the diagonal one of Nero's project (perpendicular to the lake).

Well, I've been off for a while (Ecuador and Haiti as a matter of fact) but now I am back at it. I had posted a thanks reply to Aaronfeld, Danik and Pilou, but it seems to have gone lost in the mail.
Anyway, I am trying to fill up the area on the Velia hill in Nero's project. It seems that the small temple of the goddess Tellus was preserved, and I suppose that there were buildings joining the Termae of Titus to the rest, with something important on the highest point of the hill. The problem is there are three orientations: the Atrium/lake; the Oppio wing; and a third one, in the area of interest, given by some large substructures that create an artificial hill that joins the Velia and the Oppio (filling up what was probably the valley of the Carinae).
The chamfer in the Termae of Titus seems to indicate that on that line the orientation changed to give place to the lake orientation, with a street in betweeen (the present street of the Termae of Titus), but the substructures tell a different story ... I tried a compromise ...

Well, Tom, as we say in Italy, you are putting too much meat on the fire. But since I am trying to unravel those points, I'll try to answer.
First, I think that overpass connections were pretty usual, but since they don't leave any foundation footprint they usually are overlooked. We have lots of evidence for cryptoporticus, for the obvious reasons, and none for overpasses. Which doesn't mean they didn't exist.
The image I enclose is what I am trying to reconstruct about the "day before the great fire". The best defined buildings are those for which we have some evidence. The temple at the side of the Meta fountain has been identified with the Curiae Veteres, and the house that was the birthplace of Augustus was probably in the area of the buildings at its back, and it is probable that in the rebuilding by Claudius before the fire of 64 aD it was rededicated to Augustus. The small Flavian temple is just a keepsake, and doesn't mean that there wasn't another more important temple to Augustus somewhere else.
I think that the house of the Domitii was the hub of the Domus Transitoria in this area, with no connection with the Domus Tiberiana (or what existed before the fire) that was probably the official residence of the emperor.
I am not satisfied with the reconstruction of Carandini on the the house of the Domitii, I am just pondering about it, but it must phisically be extended in the directions indicated by the arrows, and one section, that I painted green in the image, could have been an open garden, giving some light to the system. Just ideas ...

WIP