Bryce cloud/smoke/fog interacting with scene elements examples
sriesch
Posts: 4,241
Bryce has some fantastic cloud/smoke/fog materials that I have not yet been able to duplicate in DAZ Studio. I would like to collect some of the best Bryce examples here, then create a DAZ Studio forum cloud shader product suggestion thread that points to this thread for examples of cloud products and effects that might be wanted in the form of a new DS shader product (or even just sharing ways of making additional use of the existing UberVolume or other products), hopefully to spur creation of such products (or sharing of existing products and their settings) by the experts out there.
I'm specifically looking for clouds/smoke/fog that interacts with objects in your scenes in ways that cannot be easily duplicated with 2D planes and skydomes or the basic UberVolume shader settings, since those already can be done in DAZ Studio right now.
So, time to start showing off! Can be complete renders, or even just a select piece of a render that provides a good example of some particular aspect.
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Comments
Heres a few
I don't know what DAZ Studio is capable of because I don't ever use it.
But here's a volumetric fog.
Here are some of mine, even using DAZ stuff.
And here two very old ones from Bryce 6.1.
Wow! You two! Wow!
@orbital - Such unique ideas. I like your "motivational poster" theme. Your use of characters in metal and black, and even with holes in them, to make them look robotic, is inspiring. (I don't have a lot of clothes for my characters, so I avoid using them, but, hey, Bryce allows a lot of colors and textures once the imagination is set free.) The mist and haze, along with your lighting techniques, really add to the "dream" theme. Though there are so many, um, abstract elements, you bring them together in an imaginable way. I think my favorite of the bunch is Where Dreams are Made. As I was looking these over, I somehow fell back into reality, and started to think of render times. You're a patient artist.
@TheSavage64 - I'll bet you spent a few minutes arranging that. The haze really adds depth to it. I can see you have some buildings duplicated, but, it's arranged so tight and immense, at first glance I didn't notice at all. Once I started looking close I saw a few instances of the same building turned different directions, then realized several were. However there are so many that don't seem to be duplicated anywhere. All in all, how many actual different buildings did you build for this?
BTW, I got nothing. Sorry, Mr. Riesch. I'm starting to work with volumetric clouds. I'm hoping Mr. Brinnen is going to post something here, as he wrote the book a lot of us have been trying to follow on clouds, both as objects and cloud plains. Underwater scenes benefit from Bryce's fog and haze effects as well, and, once again, Mr. Brinnen is leading us all to those places. As far as that goes, nebulae are essentially clouds ... of gas and solids, and I've seen a lot of impressive work in that realm. I'm sure your request will be more than fulfilled.
And an even older one using Bryce 5
@Horo - I'm sure glad you got in here with those. You were posting them while I was typing my above comments. Of these, I think Rime and Creek in Haze make best use of for, haze, and lighting.
@chohole - Aye, matey. That's the booty we came to find. A treasure chest of foggy seas and rain. Argh, argh, argh.
Another old one using Bryce 5. The figures are David 3, so gives some idea how old.
Here are another two, Bryce 5.5, from 2006. The artist is Nibor. Nibor is David Brinnen and myself. 2005 we started doing a couple of round robins. These are 14 and 15. What we did and how we progressed can be followed on Nibor's website http://nibor.horo.ch/.
YES! That's the kind of underwater scene I was referring to. Thank you for posting that in this thread, Horo.
About the "purist" thing. I appreciate that you are, but some of the details in these two images you posted here remind me of other peoples' work, where they say something like, "Bryce just didn't have all the little things I needed in this scene that I Photoshopped in." Well, why didn't they just take those "little things", and make 2D faces, keeping their work all Bryce?
As far as that goes, all of us use some sort of other program to enhance Bryce, if for nothing more than doing a non-procedural texture, or using a lattice to make text that's not hand drawn, looking like a child did it. Even taking an object that was not created in Bryce, (such as Victoria or a snake), one could argue that the results is not pure Bryce. To me, if the final render to the image came out of Bryce, it's a "pure" Bryce image. (Um, assuming they didn't just take a photograph, make a 2D face, render it, and say it's all "Bryce". That would be all "cheating".)
However, having said that, this is why I have nothing to offer this thread. I'm still learning Bryce clouds. My best images involving nice clouds use a 2D face for the clouds. By what I said above, that makes them "pure" Bryce. I know even you have some of those, too. Yet that, of course, is not the intent of this thread. What you offer TOTALLY is.
The short answer is "none" :-)
It's the Dystopia City Blocks set. ( http://www.daz3d.com/dystopia-city-blocks-011-020-poser )
Exported from Poser as .obj and imported into Bryce.
Dave- I just clicked on the link for fun and see it is 0.00 the type I can afford, is there any way to take it directly into Bryce without going to Poser
Edited: I'm checking it out anyways
Btw all the renders are awesome.
A few examples from my own studies.
Images 1 and 2
Cement Jungle
Image 3
Arid (This is an aerial view of an instancing study)
Image 4
Cloud Cover
Image 5
Above the Clouds
Image 6, 7, 8
teK Arnaso teK Arnaso is an imaginary planet developed for a project several years ago. The planet is entirely built in Bryce. The continents are terrains arranged on the surface of a sphere with a real atmosphere and real cloud layers. One can travel to the planet surface and produce renders as if they were at the center of Bryce world
teK Arnaso from Space
teK Arnaso just before you enter the atmosphere
teK Arnaso as seen from the planet surface.
I think I used Fuzzys for the atmosphere and at ground level the result looks almost equivalent to haze. I find it very comforting that Bryce is so consistent in this way.
continued...
There are some renders on here that I could only dream about. I have a long way to go to get that good :-)
@Rashad - You sure know how to make Bryce look good, don't you? I didn't have my socks sewed to my pant legs, so now I have to go find them.
@Fishtales - I second that.
Hi, a little contribution to the thread, all the below were done in Bryce 7.1 Pro. :)
Bythe Spirit
City Street
Foggy Forest
Foggy Forest 2
All except Blythe Spirit, the credit has to go to David Brinnen for his wonderful tutorials :)
Oh I just re-found this one as well.
This one was an accident in the making using stacked terrains.
@IanzThingz - I really like how those trees break up the light. I was reminded of one of the opening scenes in The Exorcist.
@TheSavage64 - Spooky spider. BTW, why am I not surprised your Jello material was originally blood material? Ah, the Macabre...
@GussNemo - Excellent use of haze. I've been meaning to do something like that, but as more of desert dunes, ever since I saw the movie Jar Heads. Thank you for the inspiration.
@CTippetts - desert dunes? You can have them with Approaching Sandstorm, below. The first is Morning fog in the Valles Marineris (that's on Mars), a five year old render.
Very nice renders, everybody, and thanks for the examples!
DAZ Studio can do basic fog and haze (although I haven't worked with it much yet, and I think you have to be careful to avoid getting the camera inside it or something, which might make forground haze tricky.) I haven't yet seen if I can create ground fog that's thicker near the ground and thins out as you move up.
Here's just a quick Bryce test, not an actual quality render, showing some things that I was thinking of. Top left is a solid cylinder embedded in a a sphere with a cloud material, which gives fuzzy cloud chunks scattered in a ring about it. I don't know if a way to do this in DS yet. Below that is a torus with a cloud material, same idea. To the right of that is a 2nd torus, this time both partly wrapped in clouds and also with the cloud shadows (can't do that with a 2D plane generally.)
While a lot of clouds could be done as skydomes and 2D planes, that won't work if you wanted birds/dragons/aircraft/mountain peaks/buildings/etc. within their volume.
This didn't take long. I guess I should have spent more time on it. It's called "...and Can't Turn Back".
You both are too kind!
There seems to be no shortage of impressive examples of Bryce's volumetric capabilities in this thread.
@C Tippetts: Nice image, especially the sky.
I think I've got some, though maybe you were looking for something else?
The first one you might be able to do with 2D faces? The second one will be difficult because of the light through the clouds. Number 3 has a dragon and flight machine in the clouds. Fourth one: top of the mountain in the clouds. Fifth one is from the tutorial on 'spooky woods' from which there also was a contribution by someone else in this thread already.
Hope this is the type of interaction you might be looking for?
I am presently working on another with a cloud slab where the camera is 'in' the slab. That makes for very slow rendering, but interesting results, I hope.
@Hansmar - such diverse and unique ideas. No shortage of creativity in you, is there?
I call this one "Foggy Bay". (Go figure.)
I ignored the fact that, though these are sea birds, and the lighthouse indicates a sea or ocean bay, (thus a salty body of water), and chose to use Cattails as vegetation, which are only found near fresh water. I didn't like the grass I used for the Cattail fronds. The fronds of Cattails are stiffer and grow more straight up. I didn't like that I couldn't keep the fronds color from being too bright without having them seem like mere outlines. I didn't like the fact that the Cattail fruit and their stems refused to show their color, making them look like mere outlines. Had some hint of their color right up until the anti-aliasing stage, where it dropped away.
The beach was a constant problem, and, in fact, the last thing I worked on. Still too much green in the lighter bands. The last sand material I used before this one was yellow in the preview, but army green in the render. That was the same sand I used in the render a few posts back.
I did not take the time to make some of the trees less than round ... should have. Also should have made them all of the same type of tree instead of the diversity I chose. I wanted diversity, with some the same. 500 some odd meshes later, I had to stop and get on with the birds. Plop renders were taking over 5 minutes. This final render was 54 minutes on my old computer ... probably would have been 15 for anyone reading this far.
I could not get the fog and haze to behave. I wanted less lighthouse details visible. Tried enlarging it all so the lighthouse was further back in the haze, but it only meant readjusting the haze and fog to right about back to where it was. I had to turn the fog way blue to keep it from looking like toxic fumes, but really wanted the "red sky at morning, sailors take warning" look. I wanted the fog to hide the boats facet flaws, but could not without hiding the boat. I wanted the fog higher up, but, from where it is, for some reason, raising it just 1 in the thickness value took it almost to the sun. I also wanted the fog to float as a layer up above the ground. No go.
I spent a lot of time making wake around the boat, only to have it hidden with the compromise of boat visability. In fact I also spent a lot of time making slight waves coming to shore, with larger waves heading toward the far side of the lighthouse. I only see one wave coming toward the boat. When the haze was right in relation to the lighthouse, the sun could not break through it at all. I wanted the sun even brighter than this, but it's at full brightness.
The bird closest to the viewer was a compromise. After careful cropping of the original image to place it on a 2D face, I still ended up with too much blue from the original image in its tail feathers. I tried a color swap from blue to the purple-pink of the sky behind it, but that looked too much like a malfunction of the birds genes, instead of sky showing through the transparancy of the feathers. Lightening of area also looked like the feathers changed colors half way down. This final lightening of the entire tail, hoping it would look lit by the sun, failed due to the lack of sun brightness. Still see blue, too. Should have added more birds, too.
At first I was happy with using Victroia's hair for freyed rope on the mooring poles, but I could not thin them any more, or they lost the freyed look, and looked like I just used cylinders.
In case you can't read between the lines, I'm not pleased with the result. Wanted to be the critic here, since you folks are all too kind.
This was inspired by a painting I saw in my lawyers office.
@C Tippetts. Real thanks. I do have a multitude of ideas, but not enough technique, time, and speediness of computer.
And I see, that you are like most of us: very critical for our own work, never satisfied, this could be better, that is not perfect, Etc. As an amateur painter, many years active in the same club, I know this effect very well. Other people's work always looks much better!
So, to help you a bit: Your work is awful! (yeah really, as if mine is any better http://www.daz3d.com/forums/smileys/#).
No honestly, it's not half bad. Ok, there are things that an be improved, of course. Most 'problematic' to me is the plants that not only have their stem in the sand, but also the tip of the leaves, which is strange. And the bird on the pole looks too small compared to the one with the nice light through the tail, or the sense of depth is not sufficient.
On the good side: I really like the colours! Even the beach. Who cares that it is a bit green? It fits very well to the blue and the purple. And the general scene set up is also quite good in my view.
All-in-all: I like it!
As an aside: You think 15 minutes rendering is long? I am used to days of rendering and then seeing the stupid errors, so I have to do it all again!
I am still working on more renders with interesting use of clouds and will show them when ready.
Yup, Yup, and Yup. Oh, and nope.
I need to ditch the Cattails. I should look at a few real shoreline images and see what kind of vegetation I could try. The painting that inspired this had something that looked like Babies Breath, only taller ... white-ish ... almost as if frosted. Not gonna' do it. The camera angle belies the fact that the beach is quite steep, which is both why I had a hard time getting the leaves out of the sand without the plant floating, and why there are any bands at all in the sand. That's the old Buff Sandstone material from Bryce 5.5 with the "spackel" procedural from the Desert Sands material by HSI added for bump.
The small bird was due to the mooring poles being too skinny to begin with. When I had it in scale with the other birds, it looked like it was perched on a twig. The mooring poles should be three times as thick at least. If it was not such a royal pain to get the rope to the boat in place, (it's a HUGE, skinny torus with a negative cube on the top 7/8 of it), I would have changed the poles. Too lazy. Even without that, the sense of scale is off, because the closest, biggest looking bird seems to be over the Cattails instead of right in front of the viewer.
I think, for a good image, 15 minutes is a good render time, with premium on for soft shadows. I wish mine was 15 minutes, but it was 54, and that's in Regular mode with the sun casting no shadows. Neither were the square spotlights on each of the birds. Had to use Ranged drop off with a value of 22 for those, or other things got lit. I can imagine this taking 8 hours in Premium. Fact is; with sun shadows on, the Cattail shadows were so weird and long it was a major distraction to the viewer ... worse than the leave tips in the sand ... even drew attention to those.
This was all really an exercise to work with fog and haze, and I failed that as well. Looking forward to your clouds.
@CTippetts: I think as such the cattails are nice. But it is often a good idea to look at real examples. And maybe you can use something like Plant Studio or NGplant to make what you actually need?
Is there a need to have the beach bank so steep? You might make it less steep to allow the cattails to keep their leaves free from the sand?
Creating things like a line in Bryce is quite the challenge. I respect those that are able to do such complicated things. But I turn to other software, such as Hexagon (others use Wings or Blender) to create models I need and cannot find. Making ropes is relatively easy in such a tool.
And indeed, I did think the large bird was over the plants and not much closer.
You can use lights to influence only one object if you want to. Use the 'exclude' option in the light module to define what is in or out of the influence of the lights. If you just include one bird under this button, the light will only influence that bird.
Anyway, there is always much to improve, as we all know. Just keep trying!