Digital Art Zone

LordHardDriven - 30 August 2012 09:14 AM

David Brinnen - 30 August 2012 03:21 AM

Digging deeper - here are some half unexpected findings Bryce “Nuts and Bolts” - TA RGB response - a 15 minute tutorial by David Brinnen

I love the richness of the colors.

Bryce 5 minute scene - TA hue saturation shift trick - a tutorial by David Brinnen

David Brinnen - 30 August 2012 09:08 AM

Thanks Rashad, yes the inconsistency you correctly observed is central to the topic of RGB response.

Here’s another Bryce 20 scene lighting project - Using IBL with boost light and TA gels - by David Brinnen

Here this issue with noise, disproportionate RGB response, IBL incompatibility and boost light, is overcome - by quite a devious strategy.

Watched the video. I am speechless. Now ask yourself how often I is it that I don’t have a word to say? I am really excited by this find and I think your steps in this video might be just what the doctor ordered. Brilliant work, David as always. You must be feeling good about yourself. This bit of cleverness is quite high. Wicked work around. Thanks so much for sharing this insight. You clever one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am not sure if you are planning products around these new discoveries. I am of the mind that these processes that require lots of steps and understanding of nuts and bolts are sometimes best presented as mature features within the next release of the application, if there ever is one. Here’s hoping!

Thank you Rashad for your kind and enthusiastic remarks.

Well, thing is, the uptake of the more advanced products Horo and I have produced has not been sufficient to even cover the costs of the electricity used in making them - not that we begrudge making them (it is our chosen hobby after all - we are not forced to do this), but now we recognise that we need to educate our potential customers to the point where they recognise the value of our products for themselves.

Hence this Bryce Mentoring DVD  and the continued commitment to making tutorials and offering guidance.

And in that vein, here is another offering, Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - the Xyzrgb Stanford Dragon - a tutorial by David Brinnen

If you’ve had chance to digest that… then this is easy… Bryce 5 minute scene project - turn your Xyzrgb dragon scene into a Vicky scene - by David Brinnen

David Brinnen - 31 August 2012 05:06 AM

Thank you Rashad for your kind and enthusiastic remarks.

Well, thing is, the uptake of the more advanced products Horo and I have produced has not been sufficient to even cover the costs of the electricity used in making them - not that we begrudge making them (it is our chosen hobby after all - we are not forced to do this), but now we recognise that we need to educate our potential customers to the point where they recognise the value of our products for themselves.

Hence this Bryce Mentoring DVD  and the continued commitment to making tutorials and offering guidance.

And in that vein, here is another offering, Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - the Xyzrgb Stanford Dragon - a tutorial by David Brinnen

Well educating your customers is definitely a smart move and should ultimately be to your benefit but recognizing value is only half the battle. I imagine a great many are like me and are blocked by the high price points Daz places on your products to cover their share. Like I just did the capsules tutorial yesterday and was frustrated when it came to adding the HDRI image and I didn’t own the particular product of Horo’s that you got the HDRI from. I would have bought it but alas for someone on disability with a fixed income $35 for HDRI lights is never going to happen regardless of how much value I recognize in them. Same with the mentoring DVD. I know it’s load with useful info I’d love to have and that would make me a better Brycer because at $80 it’s almost half of mine and my wife’s monthly grocery budget.

Now that’s not to say your’s and Horo’s products aren’t worth every penny. Unlike alot of vendors before you, with your products I know it’s going to be done right and deliver as promised. Other products I’ve bought here for Poser, Bryce Cararra and even Studio were defective out of the box and nothing has been done to recognize those problems let alone fix them.

Anyway enough of that, I’m sure these points are things you and Horo have debated long and hard over and drawn your own conclusions. On to the capsules. Fortunately while I don’t own the particular product of Horo’s you referenced I did find one that appeared to be based on the same image but maybe set up for a different resolution. I noticed in your video the name and found an HDRI in Bryce from Horo that had a very similar name Pfaffort.hdr. I think it was a lower resolution though because everything seemed grainier then it should be especially since I didn’t turn down any settings to speed up my render. Below is the final result and as you can see this time rather then just following it to the letter I made some changes of my own and added a pill bottle as an additional element. Now if only I had a tutorial to show me how to put a label on the bottle.

PS I see you switched over to the other Stanford dragon, any chance of getting a version of that and any of the other free to the public stanford models you have? I ask because so far none of the conversions on the ones I got have worked in Bryce?

The “pills” look excellent, and your HDRI image works well - since it is not visible in the render as such, low resolution versions are fine.

Oh and do check your email…

David Brinnen - 31 August 2012 09:51 AM

The “pills” look excellent, and your HDRI image works well - since it is not visible in the render as such, low resolution versions are fine.

Oh and do check your email…

Thanks and will do

Mark - we know that not everyone can purchase every product that comes in the store. That’s why a few HDRIs are supplied with Bryce. I also have a few others on my website for free. There are so many HDRIs because each one has another quality to it, but this doesn’t mean that only the one shown can be used. There will be differences and those make your render stand apart.

As for the Stanford models: I downloaded all a few weeks ago but couldn’t find a reliable program to convert them. Most programs that claimed to be able tried to instal crap on my machine and I had a busy time to clean it up. Lost a full afternoon on this and finally gave up frustrated.

We need to pester Graham to do a tutorial for us!  He seems to have mastered this process.

As for pricing, well it very much depends where you are in the world as to what you’d consider expensive.  Here in the UK for example $80 would not fill my car up with petrol.  And don’t think my car has an exceptionally large fuel tank, it doesn’t.

Mark,  Bryce 5 minute project - put a label on a jar - a tutorial by David Brinnen

Dummies?  Aye, that’s right, I had to record this video again because I spelt “label” wrong when used it as text for the label.  What an idiot at spelling I am.

Caustics?  I’ll upload a video once it’s edited… in the end it took twice as long as I’d hoped.

David,

I was just thinking from your other tests that you should be arriving at some Caustics soon. Glad to see that happen so soon after it struck my mind. Caustics are somethign Bryce has needed for along time so if this indeed works as it should we are in business. Excellent!!

Rashad Carter - 01 September 2012 03:18 PM

David,

I was just thinking from your other tests that you should be arriving at some Caustics soon. Glad to see that happen so soon after it struck my mind. Caustics are somethign Bryce has needed for along time so if this indeed works as it should we are in business. Excellent!!

It indeed works as it should - I think… well, the image you have seen is the result of the video.  Beyond that I cannot say.  This is as far as I’ve got.  Bryce 20 minute experiment - TA generated caustics - a video by David Brinnen

Haven’t watched the video yet but I like what I see very much. I really wish Len was around the forums to see what you are discovering using Boost Light. Caustics would simply not be possible without Boost Light. I am so pleased to see Boost Light finally being recognized for the TA fix that it really is. Boost Light gets us much closer to unbiased rendering that default TA ever could. Vasily was right. Excellent David.

Rashad Carter - 01 September 2012 05:31 PM

Haven’t watched the video yet but I like what I see very much. I really wish Len was around the forums to see what you are discovering using Boost Light. Caustics would simply not be possible without Boost Light. I am so pleased to see Boost Light finally being recognized for the TA fix that it really is. Boost Light gets us much closer to unbiased rendering that default TA ever could. Vasily was right. Excellent David.

Your faith in the system has been justified by recent testing - I was I recall more sceptical.  The issue of the noise remains.

My conclusion…

What is needed is some system which allows the surface luminance information to be distributed across the local geometry and then interact with material properties (rather than afterwords which would result in surface blurring).