Digital Art Zone

Thanks Horo, Jamahoney and Atlantis for your comments.

I’m going to try what you suggested Jamahoney – lowering the mountain and combining the 1st and 4th pics, but 1st I want to try David’s grass tutorial.

Jamahoney - 02 September 2012 02:14 PM

Experience has told me that one can be forever changing this and that in a picture, and getting nowhere fast – particularly with the unlimited variances that Bryce has to offer. However, one has to STOP eventually, and take the plunge.

 

I agree with you. I worked on this Bryce scene for 3 weeks. I still have no clue how one aspect relates to another for eg. the ambience color in the material with the global ambience color. I’m still in the ABC stage. I appreciate your feedback. Thanks

@ Jamahoney – I like the scene——are you going to share the animation here?

@Atlantis – lovely render. poor kitty.

In a nutshell: Global Ambience is a global control. Set it black and no matter how you set it in a material, there won’t be any. Same for the sun shadows. Set it to 0 and no light source will ever cast shadows, no matter how you set it. Best is to set global ambience to white and sun shadows to 100. Then control the ambience effect for each material and the shadows for each light source.

A relighting project.  This old scene http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=3134&mode=search relit with new TA lighting following the method described here Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - Using IBL with boost light and TA gels - by David Brinnen

Edit.  Oh yes, shockingly, the boost light is giving me so much contrast I’m having to use material ambient to take the edge of it!  Image that, me using material ambient for ambient light?  Boost light - all the old rules are turned on their head.

Ufo Encounters….

I always liked “Close encounters of the third kind ” and one of my favorite scene’s is right after Roy Neary had its encounter at the railroad crossing… You see a country side landscape with roads..and Neary speeding to the location where more UFO’s are sighted… in this scene you suddenly see a big round shadow gliding over the landscape….

This render is inspired by it….

@David…  awesome… could be a picture from my bathroom..

regards: Atlantis

In that case Erich, you keep your bathroom sink a lot cleaner than I keep mine.

Nice render, I like the spaceship model in particular but on my monitor many details are lost.

@ David… Yes its a very dark render… but that’s how it has to be.. The space ship is built with bryce torus ubjects stretched X-axis flattend and twist Y-axis then ctrl-d 10 times…material is misc / Funky / weird

Fair enough Erich, I can’t argue with that, and the space ship really does look excellent.  OK a bit of a departure for me, I’ve dug out Wings3D and been mucking around with it while test scenes render in the background.  Again TA optimised radial lights (actually, no here I used cylindrical lights) and boost light all wrapped up in one of Rashad’s fine additional primitives working here as a state for my floating “thingy”.

David Brinnen - 03 September 2012 10:40 AM

A relighting project.  This old scene http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=3134&mode=search relit with new TA lighting following the method described here Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - Using IBL with boost light and TA gels - by David Brinnen

Edit.  Oh yes, shockingly, the boost light is giving me so much contrast I’m having to use material ambient to take the edge of it!  Image that, me using material ambient for ambient light?  Boost light - all the old rules are turned on their head.

The render looks awesome, David!

Using material ambience to take the edge off is just fine. In fact, that is exactly what material ambience should be used for, that little minor tweak at the end of the calculation to fill in those places the GI has still managed to shortcut. TA isn’t unbiased so it will still arrive at the wrong answer sometimes even visibly wrong such that a little extra help is needed.

All the rules have their proper exceptions. Ambience is only evil if it prevents people from digging deeper into indirect lighting effects. Once one figures out how to get going in the right direction material ambience becomes indispensable.

@Mermaid

”are you going to share the animation here?”

Yep, eventually when finalised – usually as a link to a YouTube vid (for some unknown reason, including the YouTube-view option that was enabled in the last Bryce forum setup has been turned off in the current forum setup. I think?).

Animations are a different animal to still renders – in that, if you use fancy lighting techniques (lights, soft shadows setups…etc.,), models, primitives, increased resolution, then they will never be finished as they take just too much time. No offence to renderer’s here, however, when I see some waiting some 5 to 10 hours for their Bryce creations to finish; with animations, however, it’s usually in the 20 to 24 hours for an ani’ to finish. And that’s just one section of a fly-through, of a much longer, final animation. Like all renders, however – still or ani’ – the rewards are always revealing, if not unusual and unexpected.

That’s the attraction of animations, I think, because while stills – as in, one final rendered image only - can give you a scene from the best angle that the renderer has chosen, the animation option can sometimes give one an all-round view of a scene – in effect, a real 3D. I’m sure that there are renderers here who would like to present several angled views of a single Bryce work they’ve worked on. But don’t, because they aren’t into animation, or, additional views might look repetitive or boring. For this forum member, anyway, they wouldn’t be, as I would love to see several-viewed aspects of many of the wonderful renders so far presented – including your own.

As to suggestions for your own work(s): please don’t feel like they are the correct options; as all works – presented by both amateur or professional – eventually comes down to how one feels about them as finalised. That’s the hard part, I think, because it really is in experience of looking at other renders, images, paintings…etc., that one decides to present a work ‘as is’, or at the level one ‘is at’. Either way, it gives one confidence, and better’s one into making further works for the future. The creative process is so addictive, and so much a release into the sub-conscious.

Hope this helps? And look forward to seeing further works by you, and, of course, others, too! Wish I could contribute more images myself, but the slow, ani’ bug (‘monsters inside me’) has got a hold, I’m afraid
Jay

@tlantis - 03 September 2012 10:48 AM

Ufo Encounters….

I always liked “Close encounters of the third kind ” and one of my favorite scene’s is right after Roy Neary had its encounter at the railroad crossing… You see a country side landscape with roads..and Neary speeding to the location where more UFO’s are sighted… in this scene you suddenly see a big round shadow gliding over the landscape….

This render is inspired by it….

@David…  awesome… could be a picture from my bathroom..

regards: Atlantis

Erich,

Very nice but not a set piece.

That film had a major influence on my work.

I love it absolutely.

Also i like your render which tends toward true realism rather than staged drama.

Your render is perhaps as it should be, if it was a frame in an animation. Not high contrast [dark] - so i need to tilt the screen of my laptop see all the details.

I have to use my laptop because my workstation is rendering out a MegaScene right now [ i have only one wireless broadband stick and it aint now on the other puter]. It is good to have 2 puters - actually 4 because when Bryce renders it uses on half of one computer [ 2 threads out of 4 ].

OK, have fun and kind regards form OZ.

Peter

As a Bryce render contribution, here’s one of my my Comic Rhino scenes: “A rhino came by…....”  Tired of waiting for man to explore the universe with their hulking, troublesome machines, bureaucratic bumbling and infighting, the black rhino as taken matters into his own hands and set out to find new worlds….

[inspired partly by the Album cover of “Surfing with the Alien”  http://www.satriani.com/discography/Surfing_With_The_Alien/
(song can be head at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-OK7sS855M ),

But I much prefer the Satriani song “Flying in a Blue Dream”, which suits the exploring rhino more:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOsgv_X_cV8&feature=related

HDRI from Horo (Tech probe corridor lights)
I will be working through those materials tutorials some more as the wonderful models of Richard Jeferies - rj001 (Deep Space Explorers 2008) are not being shown off to their best by the standard Bryce textures even with tweaking. Even with IBL the ship looks somewhat plastic!
Thanks for all the Great Bruce tips and info in the Bryce Forum , folks!
Keryn

The curiosity probe should have landed in the Cydonia region of Mars, close to the giant mars face, cause in a remote hole these creatures live.. lol…

creatures made with wings3d

slick work guys

keryna - 04 September 2012 01:42 AM

As a Bryce render contribution, here’s one of my my Comic Rhino scenes: “A rhino came by…....”  Tired of waiting for man to explore the universe with their hulking, troublesome machines, bureaucratic bumbling and infighting, the black rhino as taken matters into his own hands and set out to find new worlds….

[inspired partly by the Album cover of “Surfing with the Alien”  http://www.satriani.com/discography/Surfing_With_The_Alien/
(song can be head at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-OK7sS855M ),

But I much prefer the Satriani song “Flying in a Blue Dream”, which suits the exploring rhino more:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOsgv_X_cV8&feature=related

HDRI from Horo (Tech probe corridor lights)
I will be working through those materials tutorials some more as the wonderful models of Richard Jeferies - rj001 (Deep Space Explorers 2008) are not being shown off to their best by the standard Bryce textures even with tweaking. Even with IBL the ship looks somewhat plastic!
Thanks for all the Great Bruce tips and info in the Bryce Forum , folks!
Keryn

Oh I do like this, love the humour

@ Horo – thanks for your explanation about ambience and especially the shadows. I was playing with the preset objects and sky in one scene and found that I had no shadows and wondered by. I will check the sky lab for that scene.

Jamahoney - 03 September 2012 04:01 PM

@Mermaid

As to suggestions for your own work(s): please don’t feel like they are the correct options; as all works – presented by both amateur or professional – eventually comes down to how one feels about them as finalised. That’s the hard part, I think, because it really is in experience of looking at other renders, images, paintings…etc., that one decides to present a work ‘as is’, or at the level one ‘is at’. Either way, it gives one confidence, and better’s one into making further works for the future. The creative process is so addictive, and so much a release into the sub-conscious.

Hope this helps? And look forward to seeing further works by you, and, of course, others, too! Wish I could contribute more images myself, but the slow, ani’ bug (‘monsters inside me’) has got a hold, I’m afraid
Jay

It’s always cool when one gets feedback and suggestions even criticisms as they are the only way to learn anything. I welcome, appreciate and look forward to any comments on my work and thank those who take the time to do so. One learns from ones mistakes and the mistakes of others too.

I would one day like to try animation in Bryce.  I look forward to seeing your animations and from the others too.