Digital Art Zone

yeah this could be dangerous

David Brinnen - 02 December 2012 04:59 AM

The knotty issue of wool… well, on the left, a Bryce primitive which can handle volumetric material, on the right, a mesh object (one of the additional primitives by Rashad) which can’t.  The same material is applied to each.

In order to make Vickies jacket act like the material on the left, multiple shells are needed stacked about 20 deep with an equivalent 2D blended transparency material applied (world space mapped).  This is possible… but not practical because, one 50 pixel by 50 pixel square of this material in the same light environment as shown would take days to render.  The reason being that each layer requires a +1 increase in maximum ray depth which in turn sends the TA render mode off looking ever deeper into the scene for more light.

This suggest several improvements, the obvious being better handling of volumetric materials with meshes - which is already well represented in Bugtracker by Clay and myself.  (note also the clipping issue where the volume material touches the ground you see some light pixels)

Also… Len’s idea for more selective render settings, so a max ray depth for TA and another for other types of light simulation.  That would be super.

On a different topic… back in the world of hard edged materials.  I’ve remade the handle somewhat.

nice job on the fur/wool texture,  I had two shells stacked to try and get the fuzz feel, but its very prohibitive, even trying to combine dispalcement on one shell and volumemetrics on another had issues (not to mention killing render times)  I even tried two volumes stacked, still not right…  I think what is truly needed for proper fabrics is as was stated earlier is thickness which from what I can tell alot of clothes objects just don’t have.  being able to do layered mats/shaders would help too..

The Knives look fantastic by the way,

Rareth - 02 December 2012 07:30 AM

yeah this could be dangerous

Guess so. Nice prop.

Horo - 02 December 2012 09:02 AM

Rareth - 02 December 2012 07:30 AM

yeah this could be dangerous

Guess so. Nice prop.

the dangerous part is I can make my own props.. 

anywho, another bryce render, no post work, just a wings3D object imported in there somewhere..

Plodding along with my Wings3D experiments.  Here the blade curves in two dimensions.  One along the grid perpendicular to the blade and the other - more obvious direction.  Double curvy…

@eireann.sg
I really only posted it for David in case it came in useful for his mechanism modeling, it’a a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program, not a 3D modeler.  It’s only a 3D modeler in what results from the designs you feed it.  It would be ideal, for example, if you wanted to take measurements from a real-world object and then feed it to the program to make a precise 3D model of it.  But it’s main purpose is for precision design, as with any CAD program.  That’s why I told Rareth not to pin his hopes on it being anything like Wings or Hexagon, it’s a different sort of thing entirely.

@Rareth
Very true, but to honest, whenever I’ve played around with Bryce, render times have never come into it.  Render times are a limit of convenience, not a limit of what the program can do if you push it.  I look at the results of the Angora and think, who gives a crap if it takes so long, at least we know it can be done convincingly!  The longest render I ever did in Bryce took about two whole days if I recall, but learning the techniques to do it took no time at all for each test thanks to the spot rendering.

PS: I agree with the others on the jewelry, I like the middle one best.

@David
That’s absolutely superb, dammit!

I notice it’s elongated and I’m assuming that’s the result of “20 high”.
But why on one axis?

Have to say I really like the knotting effect, and on the left it seems to have longer flowing fibers while on the right, it even appears to have a stray fiber on the edge just below half-way.  Did you add the stray fiber separately for effect or is it a direct result of the technique?  Either way that’s great work, I knew you’d do it, but even so I’d say that’s better than I expected.

As for the knife render, I’m as interested in the surface you have them laid on.  Is that actual geometry for the grooves or is that Bryce’s new improved bump-mapping kicking arse?  In earlier versions be both know those shadows would have covered the entire groove.  But as for the knives themselves, love the attention to detail on the edges where the metal has been cut.  That’s exactly what it looks like, as if it’s been cut by a machine, very nice!

Bloody crossposter!

Cross posting again Len!  OK well, I can post you the file easy enough.  I elongated it a bit to look more like the mesh which came in slightly elongated.  No stray fibres were added, that’s just the result of the volumetric material.  It is a variant of one of the “fluffs” I provided with the free Pro Materials that come with Bryce 7.1 Pro.

I’m glad you like the little knife models.  They are fun to make.  Although as you may detect, somewhat basic in terms of geometry - hence my interest in getting curves running in two directions at once.

Edit, the groves are just bump mapping - the trick is to figure out where you can get away with bump and what has to be “real” geometry to be convincing.  The bevelling down of the sharpest edges is I have learned critical and requires geometry, softer transitions can be simulated with bump and it is possible to get away with that.  one thing bump does not like at all is a hard edge - maybe if we have normal or parallax mapping… But that’s another story.

Those knives look really dangerous. Good they are only models, though they do looks real.

David Brinnen - 02 December 2012 10:46 AM

Plodding along with my Wings3D experiments.  Here the blade curves in two dimensions.  One along the grid perpendicular to the blade and the other - more obvious direction.  Double curvy…

very nice,

This is the first full scene I am working on with bryce. Still learning the DTE but am reasonably happy with the terrain I came out with, though I still need to get a better balance so the “forrest” areas are not quite so transparent yet blend in well with the rest of the surrounding terrain. I had some trouble with the moon (big one) and have not yet gotten the result I was looking for, the atmosphere around the moon should be more transparent but if I increase this setting in the DTE then it becomes to bright… I’ve tried many things to overcome this but this is the best so far. I am planning on adding soe more details like some ground activity and a airship and or space craft….still designing those.

tips, suggestions advice welcome…..criticism is ok to I guess

Here is the bryce5 link for the full tiff:
http://www.bryce5.com/data/tmp_media/Alien_City_1.0.jpg

nreed - 02 December 2012 12:05 PM

This is the first full scene I am working on with bryce. Still learning the DTE but am reasonably happy with the terrain I came out with, though I still need to get a better balance so the “forrest” areas are not quite so transparent yet blend in well with the rest of the surrounding terrain. I had some trouble with the moon (big one) and have not yet gotten the result I was looking for, the atmosphere around the moon should be more transparent but if I increase this setting in the DTE then it becomes to bright… I’ve tried many things to overcome this but this is the best so far. I am planning on adding soe more details like some ground activity and a airship and or space craft….still designing those.

tips, suggestions advice welcome…..criticism is ok to I guess

Here is the bryce5 link for the full tiff:
http://www.bryce5.com/data/tmp_media/Alien_City_1.0.jpg

it looks great,  if you want a suggestion for “forested” areas this tutorial by David might give you some ideas

http://www.bryce-tutorials.info/bryce-tutorials/realistic-grass-terrains.html

mermaid010 - 01 December 2012 02:46 AM

@Dave– you mentioned somewhere in this thread, that you could no longer open your beach scene –Bryce crashes. I can no longer open this scene too, Bryce crashes and I wanted to save the modified materials. Did you solve the issue about opening your beach scene?

I don’t know if this is the case in your situation but you mentioned using HDRI’s and there was something I remembered from one of David or Horo’s tutorials invloving HDRI’s and crashes. Basically it had to do with using really high resolution HDRI’s that due to their size saving them could cause a crash and so the work around was to save the scene with a lower resolution HDRI but when you want to render it switch out the lower resolution for a higher resolution version of the HDRI. I don’t know if that’s what is going on in your case but it might be given how you described things?

LordHardDriven is right. HDRIs can be a problem. Always use a small one (1280 pixel diameter or so), develop your scene and save the scene. The size of the loaded HDRI has no impact on the light cast onto the scene, only on the blurriness or sharpness of the backdrop. Bryce, being a 32 bit application and doing everything in memory, can exhaust that memory rather soon if a large HDRI is loaded.

I recommend: develop with a small HDRI, save the file several times while working on the scene and give it another name - e.g. myrender1, myrender2, etc. Once you load the large HDRI, render and save the rendered image first before you attempt to save the scene (with yet another name, of course). If Bryce crashes, the rendered image is save, the Bryce scene file lost - but only the one using the large HDRI. The one with the small one can still be loaded. And the large HDRI loaded, rendered and the render saved.

nreed - 02 December 2012 12:05 PM

This is the first full scene I am working on with bryce. Still learning the DTE but am reasonably happy with the terrain I came out with, though I still need to get a better balance so the “forrest” areas are not quite so transparent yet blend in well with the rest of the surrounding terrain. I had some trouble with the moon (big one) and have not yet gotten the result I was looking for, the atmosphere around the moon should be more transparent but if I increase this setting in the DTE then it becomes to bright… I’ve tried many things to overcome this but this is the best so far. I am planning on adding soe more details like some ground activity and a airship and or space craft….still designing those.

tips, suggestions advice welcome…..criticism is ok to I guess

Here is the bryce5 link for the full tiff:
http://www.bryce5.com/data/tmp_media/Alien_City_1.0.jpg

This is a great start. I like the use of the fog in the depressions. Keep it up.