Democritus proposed that matter was made up from atoms. There was no real evidence for this idea (which was not completely new), but is explained why change was possible. The atoms were always moving and clustering in various, temporary combinations. Therefore, things seemed to change, but 'not being' never changed into 'being'. (It was assumed that 'not being' was a vacuum, which means that it is in fact not a 'not being' because a vacuum exists in at least four dimensions.) The consequence of this idea is that we are allowed to use our senses, although Democritus warns us to be careful.

I do not agree.
This node system is very artistic Pilou.
It's a kind of magic. It's the easiest and the more spontaneous UI I had so far.
A two pages presentation-tutorial is all you need. Everything else is simple logic. Possibilities are endless.
As you plug all these nodes, you have a real time progressive preview running. A dream came true.

It looks complicated.
But what you really see is a combination of simple shaders and some Pshop-like controllers. It isn't a post pros though. But you may start thinking like it. This coloramp for instance controls a B&W map used as value (works like the levels in Ps) . A value to control how two images are mixing together. So, if I have one texture node, split it in two hue-staturation nodes, make one green and the other red. Then, use a dirt vertexpainting node to control (plug it as factor, we can have greener texture as cavity.
It's a way to combine lot of shaders. It's quite easy after learning the basics.

Thanks.
No videos, I don't feel comfortable when video capturing is running.
Here's a screengrab.

Thank you PHUONG_HEHE.
Not a master though.
Another one. One eye man.

These old stones are a lot. It's the whole parthenon down in pieces.
What you saw in this video was an extreme example. Most pieces are 80% there.
More speedy to to rebuild a new parthenon? Where? There is only one place to do this.
Parthenon fits in the hill of acropolis, nowhere else. You have to watch the lines of the Attic hills around, and see what relation they have with the lines of Parthenon. This isn't a roman building. It's close or even better to the wonderful Egyptian architecture. Scale! We had to wait for seeing such beauty till 20th century architectural masterpieces. The great ones I mean. Still not even close to Parthenon. It's a kind of magic.

Jean Corteau visited acropolis, joined by his greek friend and artist Iannis Tsarouhis.
"what a perversity, he said, greeks made their temples looking like cages with all these columns around"
The answer from Iannis Tsarouhis was "exactly, this is all about, greeks turned their perversity into virtue"
Corteau never forgot this answer.

@gilles
This is one of the few methods. Try to be precise in large scale with this method. I'm not sure. They needed precision.
@Pilou.
Aged and new marble together. Not that bad. What other options? To leave them on the ground? To make new marble looking old?
Something you may not know. The new marble looks fatter in this video. It is, then comes the fine tuning. Only when all the column is builded up. The same method as in ancient masonry. In fact, there aren't any modern methods. You can see today the weights they were using on their machines. The same you can find on today's elevators. Sometimes, it's so easy to say "they used slaves for the job". As saying, today, there aren't any slaves.

@Pilou
I have some questions on what we see in the Parthenon restoration video.
It's well known that Parthenon doesn't use golden ratio only.
As for the curvature, the "entasis"(=tension) of the columns, they didn't use the sun of course. The idea came from this, maybe, but not the method. The geometrical solution propose on this video is questionable also. It's not an arc then, it's a part of an ellipse. Or the opposite. They had to draw an ellipse. I wander what method they used.

Fibonacci Gauge doesn't mean golden ratio only. Neither golden ratio is The key to beauty or something.
1,2,3,5,8,13,21...

I couldn't find any better, but this video has some interesting information.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLCW0zKR4xk&feature=related
It seems that they hadn't any autocad or sketchup app, but they were clever and very experienced.

Well, I watched most of the videos of Menchner. IMO he says something wrong in every few sentences, especially when he comes into technical details. In fresco particularly. As he knows a little in byzantine art, as most western people, he also doesn't know that you can keep fresco workable for three days. So, in byzantine art, we don't see seams around a figure. He called it secco, but this isn't true. I learned how to achieve this. Fresco is a wonderful medium, the best. It's like painting in watercolor and oil, the same time. Unfortunately, it remains on a wall LOL.
But I liked the part on roman sculpting. It's the first time in the history of art that we see real portraits. Not only sculpting but painting as well (fayum portraits) (OK these last are more greek than roman but we usually call them grecoroman).

Simon, I started reading Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.
It will take me some time and it seems very interesting.
Thank you.

It's the language barrier again.

I just meant that I found a kind of a key hidden in these excellent byzantine art of ~1300.
Such frescos that are described as caricatures in these Kenney Mencher's videos.
Their draperies, the portraits, all these are wrong in front of his eyes, wrong anatomy, etc.
He possibly don't understand. Actually, he doesn't understand why we use color in painting, how to organize it. How to organize the light, to capture it on a sculpt. How to draw exactly what we need and nothing more.
But when he comes to modern art, suddenly remembers all these. Good for him, it's never too late.

Thank you
But, why do you propose me all these sites?
LOL

@unknownuser said:

a key to unlock this mystery

This is a quite personal game and has little to do with the history of art.
History of art... after a long period of my life in studying art (university of athens, school of fine arts) three years in history of art, etc... I can have my personal opinion on such matters.

Kenney Mencher, no, I don't follow. I don't agree on almost all of what this man says. Sorry.
IMO, he doesn't have any idea of what he is talking about. In fact, he just talks.
A great idea, lol, was to edit this masterpiece in Ps. He tried to edit anatomy. He didn't realize that this wrong anatomy he was talking about, wasn't wrong at all. He even draw some lines from eye to ear to prove it. He didn't notice the pose though...

There're much much better books in history of art.

Don't buy either, especially this MACPRO. It's old.
from a macpro happy user.
MacPros are in general very powerful but a 2008 model...
Some thoughts on general Ghz counts are for the birds actually.
Hyperthreading works perfectly, especially on xeons. To just count GHz is wrong. Count the speed of memory instead. Indicates the speed of motherboard in general.
On the other hand a dual Xeon (a new hypethreading one) can beat any i7. Especially on rendering. Of course, a proper OS is needed. A Linux 64bit or OSX 10.6.8 or later is the appropriate choice.
Try to have a good GPU. Nvidia or ATI, depends on your software. In general, ATIs are better under OGL. Nvidias have the CUDA though. A must under GPU based renderers.
Whatever display you use, ATIs will make it look much better. Video will be better.
Nvidias for CUDA only.
All these tested under 3dcoat, zbrush, blender-cycles, octane etc. Under sketchup, I doubt if there's any significant difference in performance.

@unknownuser said:

Over The last five years I often tried to learn Blender but I refused everytime. I always hope to get a good beginner Tutorial to learn the basics.

http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/content.php?223
http://cgcookie.com/blender/
http://www.blenderguru.com/
http://blenderdiplom.com/
http://www.cgmasters.net/
http://www.blendernerd.com/
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/default_dvds.php

Thank you Simon. So much!
Nice hellenistic - grecoroman sculpting.
Living in athens, I use to visit great places of art, like the archeological national museum. (even the ambiguous new acropolis museum). Sculpture of archaic or classic period is, by far, superior though.
Recently, I have this idea, this obsession: a key to unlock this mystery; how ancient greek sculptors were approaching the shapes, the drawing. It sounds weird but I found it in byzantine wall painting of ~1300.
It's a game of knowledge to me. This is why I virtually sculpt in a 3d environment.

Marble. Difficult to approach it as a shader on a decent, pathtrace based renderer. Especially archaic, aged marbles, full of red oxides and the remains of the colors they had.

Regarding colors. Some approach from archeologists to show us how the ancient sculpture could look like are a bit ridiculous. So, straight to the source. Terracottas figurines demonstrate it.

A humble wacom, bamboo wide. Three years now.
I may buy a better one, soon.
For sculpting mostly.
In blender, in edit mode, I use my old favorite logitech G5, usb.

Oh, SImon, you're too kind.
I'm trying hard for a more simple and spontaneous way to sculpt in a 3d environment.
To do, to draw, what you really need and nothing more, this is art IMO. Very difficult, though simple.
These days, we havea lot of apps that let us press some buttons and have some more or less impressive results.
More or less predictable results though. (Prometheus movie, demonstrates such art)
Zbrush is the winner. Though, sculpting there, under a render preview that only lies, you don't have any idea how your work looks under a decent render. A pathtraycer for instance.
That's why I prefer to work in blender. These few, from a 4 years zbrusher.

@unknownuser said:

Grecian 2000

Watchout Mr global moderator,
You're violating the rules of this forum.
Joking of course

@Pilou

Horrible sculpting BTW. A full macaroni.

Thanks Oli.
Pilou said that blender is a black hole that eats everything.
Not quite true, because it loses blood as well. Most developers find a work, sooner or later, and leave unfinished parts. It's a true war. Who will be the winner, we can't say. For every dev blender loses, three new are taking his place.
Interesting, isn't it?

We have to pay for the software we use. If not, this turns us to a cockroach or something.
In case of blender we should start donating.