Is There Something SPECIAL About Bryce Renders?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,038
in The Commons
I've noticed when I've been looking at art in the galleries, here and at other sites, that some artists - those that are specifically doing human figures (not just landscapes) - use Bryce to render their art - which they often create in software other than Bryce. I don't know if they do the scene lighting AND the render, or just the renders. Does Bryce give a certain LOOK to renders? Or is there something special about lighting in Bryce?
Thanks!
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If I was going to guess, Bryce was pretty much the only way you could get that lovely diffuse light that we now take for granted as welllas instancing... It had the first (I think) and best utilization of hdri's... Also, it was great with terrain and could be used as a very crude modeler... When Bryce came out, Poser's redering was bit more primitive... Noiwadays, it is expected to have all the bells and whistles of hardware accelerration... but people get used to their workflow and have no reason to change it.
I always liked the lighting in Bryce, but had really long render times. Hmm, maybe I should try it again as it has been 2 computers past since I used it. It produces some great landscapes!
THANKS for responding! That's exactly what I'm talking about - "that lovely diffuse light that we now take for granted" - that's the etherial quality I see in those old Bryce renders. It's somehow different than the diffuse light I see in DAZ Studio or Poser renders. How was it achieved? Can it be duplicated in other software?
Bruce renders?
Nip in here or here to see what can be done in Bryce.
Like this (Image by @c-ram )
Click on image for full size
Yes any version of vue from Eon software can produce such renders better
than bryce and signifigantly faster as bryce is stuck in a 32bit time warp.
(see here) http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/?page=gallery
Bryce is a vestigial brute force ray tracer.
the HDRI implementation is one of the slowest
I have ever used in any program ( I have Bryce 7 pro)
Now people will croon about the price of DAZ bryce compared to vue
But most people $$buy$$ modern hardware with lots of RAM so that they
will not have to wait days for a single image.
Not to have a program that ignores most of the RAM they have payed
to have available for rendering.
I like Bryce a lot, but to achieve best renders, one need to wait for days and sometimes weeks to complete them.
Can you link to some examples of the old Bryce renders you're referring to? Old renders (well, depending on how old old is ;-)) probably wouldn't have used any special features.
Bryce doesn't import lighting so the scenes will have been lit and rendered in Bryce, perhaps with some Bryce materials (surfaces).
Bryce is often said to have a "look", but that is pretty much down to most users not straying too far from the preset skies and atmospheres. Bryce versions up to 4 had one render engine - a good, straight forward raytracer. Results could be made to look like any other ray trace engine. Version 5 introduced a second render engine (alongside but separate from the old one) with some advanced global illumination features. It was poorly implemented at first but version 7 is fairly well sorted and quite clever. But again, there is no special "Bryce look" beyond presets. Users have full control to create their own style.
I have used Bryce since it was first availalbe for the Windows platform (1997) I only bought Poser to use it as a plugin for Bryce. I still think Bryce is the best, regardless of other peoples comments.
This is one I did earlier (2011) Click for biggerer.
That is a really beautiful picture.
I like Bryce a lot, and when I see work like that it reminds me that I should make the effort to learn to use it better.
When Bryce came out, Poser didn't exist yet.
The original Bryce came out commercially in 1994 and Poser in 1995, so there wasn't much in it.
Maybe it was because some users didn't "stray far from the presets" as Fulford stated above, but it seemed to me that a large percentage of Bryce renders had a "blue" cast to them. Not quite a "haze" as the details were always razor sharp, but a general "hue" of azure to everything.
Sincerely,
Bill
The best exaples I can find are:
https://www.daz3d.com/jepe-s-double-feature-leo-plus-madoc
(the 2 exaples on the bottom row on the left by VAPO - are rendered in Bryce) This artist VAPO who has gone by different names on different sites seems to have rendered all his art in Bryce. Most of the images have been removed from DevianArt and the Rendo gallery. And https://www.daz3d.com/jepes-adrian
I emailed this artist and asked him how he got that specific look, and he told me it was a result of rendering in Bryce.
Another artist who rendered a lot in Bryce is frogdot in the Rosity galleries. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/mr-lawsons-room/883149/?p
The caption on that image says: "52 radials, 35 spots, 1 negative square spot and a parallel light. Made all except the chair, guitar and dresser (various freestuff)." The image from 2005, and is in the Bryce Gallery. 52???? Radials???? He used almost a HUNDRED lights????
Also from him in 2005 https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/peppers-bottles/930266/?p
There is some unreal, etherial quality to the light that I'd like to duplicate. The closest I've seen to that sort of light effect in the real world is in West Hollywood CA where there is so much air pollution and such intense sun that the particles in the air give everything a timeless, unreal look - like it's shimmering, but not moving, like if you could capture shimmering light in a still image.
It's possibly because Bryce has real volumetric atmosphere options, so you get reasonably real, fairly accurate, distance haze and color shifting when you render big landscape scenes. VUE has this too and has more options for it I believe, but Bryce had it first.
Each renderer tends to produce renders with a particular 'look' (or perhaps a range of looks, given that individual artists will often develop their own style within the range of possibilities supported by any given renderer). Bryce has a distinctive look, a product of the materials system used, and the atmospheric and lighting models.
It's also getting a bit long in the tooth, as it's been a while since the engine was updated, and the engine in the most recent versions has its roots in a renderer that was written a very, very long time ago. This means that it tends to be slow, and -- in any hands except those of experts like Horo or David Brinnen or estevez -- will struggle to produce photorealistic results.
As with any artistic project, there's no "right or wrong": the 'look' that appeals to you is a matter of personal taste.
Incidentally, Rodney L'Ongnion, a Bryce pioneer artist who is sadly no longer with us, used to claim that the Bryce renderer was v1.0 on Mac based on Motorola 68K processors. This was based on Eric Wenger's original rendering engine, of course (if I remember correctly, the renderer was rewritten for v2.0, and the look of the resulting images changed noticeably). Rodney was insistent that it had to be v1.0 on 68K, because it used 96 bits of precision, whereas on PowerPC (which was supported from v1.0.1), only 80-bit floating point numbers were used. Rodney claimed that this affected the appearance of the sky, and that the PPC version was incapable of rendering the particularly smooth, dreamlike sky colors that he liked.
I could never quite see it myself (although the difference between v1.0 and Bryce 2 is very noticeable), but I don't doubt that he could.
@Fauvist Bryce 7 now has additional lights and light set ups, which make needing to hand place 50+ radials uneccessary for some images. It also now has HDRI. But yes we used lights in multiples in renders prior to Daz 3D adding the new light set ups.
And many still do because of keeping the nice soft look. I personally do not want my images to look like photos, I would rather they look like paintings or illustrations.
Yeah, that's my fondest (?) memory of Bryce, what little I recall of it. And that constant blue haze in just about every render from Bryce was one thing I hated about it, though I recall only trying it a few times many years ago.
But the worst part was the lack of anything close to a rendered viewport. Not even a shaded or textured viewport, just this ridiculous wireframe view against a gray background. I know I'll get jumped on for saying a negative, but I hated having to do a dreadfully slow render just to see what my scene looked like. And I recall the renders were DREADFULLY slow. Painfully, and dreadfully slow.
But I don't think I used it more than a few times, and each time I quit in frustration. So don't pay attention to anything I say about it. But given the stuff you can do in Blender, or in the apps specfically designed for environments like that, I don't see any reason to try it again.
Oh, and the shadows. Or lack of them. Seemed like most of the renders looked kinda fake and without real shadows.
Personally, I can't imagine how it could be considered as a relevant application, considering the newer surfacing/shading and rendering and modelling and other apps out there.
But again, ignore everything I say because I haven't used it in forever. Though have they even updated it since forever?
I'll still stick with the notion of most images from Bryce having a distinctive look because most users kept close to the defaults. But the two render engines (ray trace and global illumination) are capable of giving other looks.
This one uses Stonemason's Backstreets.
It was made to see how close I could get to this Thea render (Thea being a fancy specialist render engine):
https://www.thearender.com/site/images/igallery/resized/1-100/Old_City-95-1200-1000-100.jpg
Not a pixel perfect match, but not exactly shouting "Bryce!".
The haze can be disabled completely, or altered in density and color, so that's a non-issue for anybody who wants to use Bryce. Perhaps some blue haze was a default setting that a lot of people never bothered to change? Can't remember.
Actually there is a textured shaded viewport, you don't have to use wireframe. Click the display modes icon near the lower right, and select "textured shaded".
Slow renders compared to other applications... yep. Won't argue that. However there are a lot of tricks and tips that the experts can provide, from incredibly simple all the way through highly in-depth, to speed up your renders. The quick summary is to not use the defaults as they may not be appropriate for many situations, and take at least a brief moment to learn about at least the basic speed boosts, which will help dramatically and pay off immediately, even if they won't make Bryce a render speed demon compared to other applications. Plus as a bonus PCs have gotten much faster over the years, although Bryce is limited to 8 cores.
I'm not sure about the shadow thing. Shadows work fine for me. Once again note that I'm not using the default settings, can't remember what those were (I'm thinking the default was actually having them unnaturally dark?, or having multiple shadows with certain lighting options I've chosen not to use for that exact reason), I set up a basic empty scene with my desired typical starting point for lighting and have then just used that as the default for typical sunlight daytime lighting for so many years I've forgotten what I even had to set up. If anybody is having shadow problems, ask for help and they should be easily eliminated.
I cannot say whether Bryce is relevant or not as compared to other landscaping applications, as I don't have any others I have used significantly to compare against. As it hasn't been updated in a very long time, it is doubtless lagging other options. My only comparison point is DAZ Studio. While I prefer Studio for it's 64-bit-ness and ability to pose figures and other handy tools, to this very day I'm constantly wishing it could do a bunch of the things Bryce can do, and if I want to do something beyond the basics with water or smoke/fog, I will immediately turn to Bryce. While I can't speak for other people, despite it's limitations it is a very relevant part of my artistry toolkit. Obviously if you are just starting explore the other options and use those if appropriate or better for your needs, but don't immediately discount Bryce as an option, as it is still highly useful depending on what you are doing.
Does anyone know what this means "with no anti-aliasing to keep a sparkle in the image" ? It's for this image https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/paddlestone-castle/736830/?p
Is this "anti-aliasing" some setting in Bryce? Maybe that's what gives these renders their special quality.
If you really want to replicate no anti-aliasing, render an image, enlarge it in Photoshop (Image Size) but don't icrease the pixel size to make it grainier, reduce it in size, apply a slight gaussian blur... Here is some discussion: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/43755/anti-aliasing-setting
...+1
...my one issue is I like to blend characters with nice scenery. Daz is pretty limited in this respect as it is not designed to handle large scale environments.
Unfortunately, neither Bryce or Vue have the ability to pose/morph characters so all posing and morphing must be done in another 3D programme (like Daz or Poser) and then import the character into the scene. If your character is say, supposed to be standing or walking on an uneven surface like stairs or a rough trail, it can be real challenge to make sure his/her feet are actually in contact with the surface and not floating above or submerged below. .
No ..not entirely true for poser users at least.
Vue has had the ability to repose figures imported from poser, inside
the program since I paid $48 USD for my copy of vue 6 "Easel" Back in 2006
Even back then it supported HDR image based lighting and was an order of magnitude faster
Than Bryce ever was on My Mac back then
My first 3D program was Bryce 2 back in late 1994 I was a die hard "Brycer"
I never used the poser4 render for ANY final render, it was always exported to bryce as .obj files
But alas today, nearly 12 years later , Bryce simply can not compete with even the most basic version of vue
due to the 32 bit RAM limitations, to say nothing of Vue's vast "ecosystem" or carbon scatter and other modern technologies.
Bryce has the ability to snap to ground or snap to land
Indeed there is a FREE plugin for Blender called "Dynamic Skies"
with one can click and load outdoor environments much like bryce and Vue
but have cycles PBR view port rendering to see the results before committing to a final render.
I used the free teleblend script to send this Stone Mason Cloud temple set to
Blender with one click with all Daz material auto converted for cycles
another click to load a Dynamic sky Environment here we are after about 11 minutes of preview
rendering.
I still use Bryce for landscapes. Great for large atmospheric landscapes and backgrounds. The interface and editing the topography is relatively easy. And because it's low-end, I can have it running in the background, whether on my 32 or 64 lappies without worrying whether it will either melt the hardware or get stuck at half render.
In computer graphics "anti-aliasing" is a processing technique that removes the appearance of artificially jagged edges on high contrast transitions (typically, the edges of objects; complex patterns and detail). Many render engines have it. As a sort of smoothing process, it can be said to squash desired detail. Bryce can disable anti-aliasing for the whole render or on a per-object basis.
I think it unlikely that anti-aliasing, or the lack thereof, is what is producing the quality you are enjoying in Bryce renders. But then I'm still not sure what that particular quality is.