Digital Art Zone

Bryce – easy to use, a bit buggy and slow to render.
Bryce can do some amazing stuff and as Horo said treat it like a game and explore. It is fun to use I must admit. Trying to compare Bryce to anything is like apples and oranges.

Cararra 8 Pro – not as easy to use as Bryce but still fairly straight forward, too buggy for me to use and will not be paying for an upgrade so for me Carrara is no longer an option unless I go back to 7 Pro or 6 Pro. But as a full package goes not too bad at all.

Vue - well I love Vue for many reasons. If making detailed landscapes etc is your bag then Vue is the way to go in my opinion. But you do need a powerful computer to get the best out of it.

But consider the price differences between them all.  For its price Bryce is one hell of a program if you are prepared to learn it.

Vue was designed with Environments in mind and that is what it is good at. Bryce can do them but IMHO not as well compared to Vue. Carrara on the other hand is capable of giving some great results and with the added benefit of the modelling room which Vue and Bryce don’t have. Plus it has particles and physics.

So it all depends what you want, what you want out of it and how much money you want to spend. Are you prepared to work had to learn etc etc.

Geeze, how did I miss this thread all this time??

That said, I don’t think I need to tell you what I think of your renders, as I’ve seen pretty much all of them over at Dreamlight. 

Great work, and I look forward to seeing more in the future. 

Aew shucks, thanks Miss B. I am in the middle of a new test now. Testing Uber Surface 2 in making viens grey blue and making them apprear as though there are under the skin. I think I am getting close.

Ok here is something I have been working for a couple of weeks. This is just a test, quick render using 3 Area lights and Uber Environment for a little fill. Nothing spacial just Occlusion with soft shadows.

What I am testing is using the second layer blend mode in Uber Surface 2. Using the Displacement maps for the vien that came with M5 (Phillip texture), plugging them in the Mask layer and using a de-saturated blue/grey for the diffuse channel. I think it works ok. Given I didn’t spend much time on this I think I could get better results with better displacement/mask maps. Morris and Jepe have some nice vien displacement maps in my runtime so I will test them out. I couldn’t use them with this one as the UV’s don’t match. Given more time I would expect to be able to adjust them in GIMP to suit.

Well you did a good job, as they look pretty realistic. 

IIIIIII thank you. I think I will do another one but better in a couple of weeks. I have been cajoled into getting an image done within the week, I won’t mention any names.

What you talking about Willis? But really you will need to share that viens trick when your ready. Looks very very good to me.

Yep will do and I intended to share when I have it all working properly. I did think though of keeping it to myself as in the monkey never teaching the tiger to climb. But the thought only lasted for about 5 seconds. LOL

I got the Willis reference. Man that is going back some years now.

I’m not any spring chicken Szark. I can pull older ones out of my hat but I’ll keep them for another time. Still love those viens, great work so far.

Those veins look really good. Wow.

Thanks Frank. You should have seen my earlier tests. But those tests have given me some idea on what to test out after this.

Jaderail yeah I got that. LOL

Szark - 21 July 2012 09:02 AM

I have been cajoled into getting an image done within the week, I won’t mention any names.

Oh gee, I wonder who that could be? ~she says as she bats her eyelashes innocently~

Hehehe

Oh I wish I had a tablet. I have been promising myself one for near on 3 years. I can do a lot of fine work with a mouse but this latest task is becoming a task. LOL Anyways after more tests I am coming to the conclusion to get the best effect of blur/grey veins under the skin will take some fine work in GIMP/Photoshop. I know what is needed to get the job done. I am using ny own skickie out viens as my template. So I am off to get a tablet.

These renders, especially the DAZ ones are truely inspiring! I hate rendering in DAZ because most of my skin and etc. come out shiny and plastic looking. I Do have Uber’s lighting sets and etc though, So maybe I aught to get to studying them more! A Film student I knew during college once said “It’s all about the lighting”.