Codex Dresdensis

The Codex itself con­sists of 39 double-sided writ­ten, ori­gin­ally as Leporello fol­ded leaves of fig tree bark, which are exhib­ited in two strips with a total length of 3.56 m between glass plates in the treas­ury of the lib­rary in Dresden, Ger­many. It shows hiero­glyphs, images and sym­bols, describ­ing dis­eases, har­vest times, reli­gious acts and sac­ri­fices. It also con­tains vari­ous astro­nomy alman­acs, cal­en­dars, astro­nom­ic­al tables, ritu­al reg­u­la­tions and numer­ous rep­res­ent­a­tions of gods.

In addi­tion to the oth­er May­an writ­ings in Mad­rid, Par­is and Mex­ico City,  the Dresdner doc­u­ment con­tains an apo­ca­lyptic pic­ture depict­ing a deluge accom­pan­ied by myth­ic­al dragon fig­ure. The Dresden lib­rar­ian Ernst Wil­helm För­stem­ann was able to decipher the calendric part of the codex at the end of the of the 19th Cen­tury. Moreover the com­plete work is con­sidered a key doc­u­ment for the decipher­ment of Maya hiero­glyphs, and for the study of astro­nomy, cos­mo­logy and chro­no­logy of the Maya.

Our recon­struc­tion work was focused on mer­ging the 78 pages of the cur­rent Codex (after World War II), the För­stem­ann Edi­tion (1884) and the Kings­bor­ough Rep­licat (1826). Later we super­im­posed all edi­tions as exactly as pos­sible. Next step was the adjust­ment of col­ors of the Kings­bor­ough-Edi­tion and the re-draw­ing of the red-brown bor­ders with a slight worn and round look, as well as the addi­tion of paper struc­ture. Then we cleaned up the lime-particles around the pages of the cur­rent edi­tion and transfered everything to tex­tures with trans­par­ency and bump.
Next step was the mod­el­ing and tex­ture-map­ping of the 39 sheets and the anim­a­tion of their leporello-folding.

After light­ing the scene we star­ted the blend­ing of 2 Editions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feel free to con­tact us for a copy of rendered codex-anim­a­tions or even the 3d mod­el includ­ing the accur­ate HiRes-tex­tures of the cur­rent con­di­tion, the 125 years old För­stem­ann-Edi­tion and the Kingsborough-replicat.