Update on Architectural Animation

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

You will see the world where Eleanor Dare spent her last 10 years!

If our original readers may recall, it was always my dream to get the newest version of the French software, Artlantis, in order to bring my hundreds of three dimensional computer models of ancient places in the Americas to life . . . via animation. It turns out that back in 2002, I was one of the first people, if not the first person in the United States to buy the original version of Artlantis. Yes, all those architectural renderings you have seen since then were made with software created in the year 2000!

Last summer, one of you generously donated to me the moolah to buy an upgrade of the newest version of Artlantis that can make people walk, canoes paddle, birds fly, water flow and smoke blow. I paid the dealer in Texas for an upgrade. He never emailed the activation code to me. I finally was able to talk to his wife. The man had died shortly after I purchased the upgrade. Eventually, I received my money back.

Then I was electrofried by two bolts of lightning that came up from the concrete floor of my office. It was much worse than I let on. I no longer have purple spider webs on my legs and hands, but still have dead blood under my toe nails. LOL

Then I ordered an upgrade from a dealer in California. Two days later, the dealer sent me an email stating that Abvent de France, the owner of Artlantis, refused to give me an upgrade since I owned too old of a version of Artlantis.

So what I had to do was first purchase a newer version of Atlantis without the animation to get my software to the level where Abvent would update it. With that software I created a computer model of the entire of the Nacoochee Valley as it looked in 1590 AD. Then I had a $760 roof repair bill and soon thereafter replaced a defunct HVAC system.

The good news is that I sold a lot of books in December and was able to purchase the upgrade to a 2019 version of Artlantis. Later on this year I can upgrade to 2020 or 2021. I then then shot videos of the landscape around the site of Eleanor Dare’s hilltop home.

So what I am working on (in between translating several hundred Native American place names) is an animated film of the Nacoochee Valley at the time that the survivors of the Roanoke Colony survivors lived there. It will probably be early spring before the project is finished.

Our friend, Dr. Don Yates of DNA Consultants, Inc., has translated the letter that Edward Graeves, a director of the Melilot Colony, wrote in French to the Rev. Charles De Rochefort on January 6, 1660. It is a detailed description of the landscape, flora and wildlife in Northeast Georgia at that time. I had French in high school, but this was Late Medieval French, which I had a lot of trouble understanding.