Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 7
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The meshes are being overly smoothed in Bryce. Try pressing the letter E and instead of the assumed 90 degree value try something smaller like 45 degrees.
@hansmar: Yeah, those would be a grand treat if only they contained what was once in the originals.
@Rashad: Hmmm...what an interesting observation, one that totally escaped me. I'll have to give it a go if for no other reason than to learn to tell the difference between the 90 and 45 degree settings. Thanks.
Edit: Okay, I tried Rashad's suggestion and set mesh edit to 45. In the first image the box on the left is unedited, the one on the right unsmoothed with a setting of 45. Then I wondered about something and created another image, this time smoothing the left box and unsmoothing the right box, using a setting of 45 for both.
To my eye the right image in both renders is a sharper image, with truer colors. Comparing the left objects, the first image has the original, washed out looking image. While I think the left object in the second image is much sharper, it still doesn't have the same truer color as both right objects. Lesson: Next time I use one of these uv mapped boxes in a scene, unsmooth it using a setting of 45.
Nice videos, David. I am not sure how far you wanted to go with the study of these particular lighting tools. The Sphere Dome video does a nice job of explaining the basic functions of the controls. And you did also discover the bug with rotating the domes, it doesn't work in the Distant mode but it does work in the regular mode. I think it was just never completed during the last cycle. Too much time was being spent on lighting and we needed to move on to other things.
As you know I am passionate about these particular lights, so please accept this feedback knowing how important I see these demonstrations.
What is missing from this video is an explanation of WHY we NEED Domes and 3D Fills when we already have TA and IBL at our disposal. What territory do these lights cover that IBL and TA do not? A Light Dome in distant mode is essentially the same as a whitesphere HDRI. You can use domes as Skylight and they perform brilliantly. This point of equivalence between Domes and IBL needs to be noted at some point in the video. It takes nothing away from IBL to admit that Domes are essentially the same trick just without the high dynamic range specification.
When to use a Light Dome
Use Light Domes whenever you need general purpose indirect lighting which is actually 99% of situations. Domes are generic, and that makes them extremely flexible and accurate. Using the controls provided, one can tweak a Dome to suit the needs of the scene. It's my opinion that lot of people are using overusing IBL in situations where they should actually be using generic light domes because they think IBL is the only option. This is partially due to the fact that we often encourage people to use IBL but we dont often encourage them to use Domes and 3D Fills. We have numerous products in the store that sell hdri related content, but none that demonstrate the abilities of Domes and 3d fills which makes many people wonder if there is something wrong with these lights. Sadly, unless David gives the "permission," a lot of people are afraid to try things until they see how someone else uses it. It's not a conspiracy, but the time has come for us to correct this a little bit. We havent explained to people that IBL is not the only option for providing virtual radial configurations...we have Domes and 3D Fills as well and they work fantastically so people really should start putting these lights to more use. But to do so means to rethink the automatic "let me load an hdri" mindset.
Technically speaking, most HDRI have areas which emit more light and areas which emit less causing some areas of a render to be too bright or too dark. After playing with IBl for a time you eventually learn that hdris with lower dynamic ranges do a much better job of creating even looking skylight than those hdri that have huge disparities in brightness. Dramatic hdri suck as skylight, more bland ones are better. A Dome is nothing but a super low dynamic range IBL and that is why it does such a great job of representing general Skylight for outdoor renders. There is no need to spend time searching for an hdri with the colors you want in your scene, just use a dome with the colors you assign to it and move on to the next thing.
When to use IBL
Use IBL when you want to be specific about the environment. In all other applications you will only see the light from an hdri if you apply the image as the background as well. No background, no light. This ensures there is no mismatch between the specifics. Since Bryce cleverly allows us to use Images as light without enabling the background, people often forget that IBL isnt a generic form of lighting.Typically, IBL is a means of re-creating some real world situation that was specific. The colors and intensities of the virtual lights in an hdri relate directly to the image seen in the background. In most apps, if a given hdri doesnt provide an appropriate looking environment, we will simply keep searching until we find an hdri that matches what we want to do. But in Bryce, I think we sometimes tend to use inappropriate hdri images just because we can....sometimes not even realizing that IBL might not have been the best choice to begin with. Another way to think of it is that the realism from IBL renders usually comes from the matching of the colors arriving on the model with the colors seen in the backdrop as well as the reflections on the model matching the light sources of the backdrop. Simply throwing in IBL lighting doesnt mean the render will be realistic, it usually needs the backdrop as well to truly pop.
In total what I am saying is that if the backdrop isnt going to be visible in the render anyhow, then there is no real necessity for usage of IBL in the first place. Another way...if you dont want us to see the hdri in the backdrop, why then would you want to use the light emitted from that image to light your scene? If you wanted to be general, then why not use the tool designed for being general? Why abuse an hdri for light without its accompanying image? I'd say its because you really wanted to use a dome but didn't realize it.
If you wanted to recreate a specific situation, then use IBL because a dome wont cut it. If however you are not attempting to recreate any particular real world moment, use a dome.
The 3D Fill video is good as well, but for my tastes the scenario while compelling, isn't necessarily the best way to demonstrate the purpose of the 3d Fill.
First, I'd say we should get accustomed to referring to them as 3D Fill Lights instead of just "fill lights" because the term Fill Light has a very specific meaning in real world photography. Anyone attempting to use the 3d Fill with the mindset that it is similar to a real world fill light will be confused.
Rather than an open outdoor scene with little geometry, a more fitting demonstration for the 3D Fill would have been an enclosed interior occupied with a few bits of furniture, maybe with a window on one side. (That is the reason for the Cube shaped domes because most interiors are cubes with six walls.) To represent the light coming in from the window one would bias the dome upward and then would tilt the dome so that end with the most light sources is now near the window casting light into the rest of the room. This is where the Distribution slider becomes important. To use a 3d fill as interior indirect light you need to fit the 3dfill to roughly the size of the room. You then use the distribution slider to determine how close to the outer walls or how close the the center point you want the virtual radials to pool. The results can be hugely divergent between settings so this light tool can be very powerful and can be tweaked until the user is perfectly happy. What we want to see is how the 3d fill provides light rays from lots of directions meaning the models in the room always receive some light from all sides especially from underneath which most artists overlook. Showing how well the 3d fill exposes the geometry of the objects in the room, is what we need in the next video if one is on the way.
Lingo alert. If a Daz Studio user says he is looking for equivalent advanced lighting tools in Bryce as they find in DS here is what I'd say
Ambient Occlusion: There are three ways. True Ambience with a super low ray depth setting or a Whitesphere hdri or a standard Light Dome or 3D Fill in Distant mode will do the trick accurately.
UberEnvironment: Light Domes and 3D Fills because UberLights are generic and that makes them extremely flexible. Most DS users swear by Uber because it gets used so often. That's the kind of usage Domes and 3D Fills should be getting in Bryce as well.
UE is also the means by which IBL is implemented in DS.
IDL (Indirect LIght): True Ambience is the only way to get this degree of surface interaction in Bryce and it looks really good in Bryce.
All done. Hopefully you had the two hours needed to read all of that,, sorry for the extensiveness. Regardless of the things I'd like to see added at least you made the video in the first place. With all the things I'm requesting you'd think I'd do the video myself and I always intended to do them but somehow never fell in love with Camtasia. Anyhow, keep up the great work and thanks for reading this.
For those less experienced with the technical details of what I wrote above I figured I should show an example of what I mean in the post above. The render below is nothing new, but the reasons why I did it as I did are because of what's stated above.
In the scene below I created an hdri based off a render I made previously. The hdri has areas near windows that are extremely bright and other areas which are really dark. This did not look the way I wanted it to on the target models. I knew for realism sake that I needed a more generic indirect lighting that wouldnt be a distraction from the target models.
So in this case I used an hdri backdrop, but for the illumination I applied a Light Dome. The hdri backdrop has too much blue in it, I wanted warmer colors on the food so the Dome has a slight orange tint. The result in my opinion is acceptably realistic. This just shows how these tools can be used in combination to produce results which might exceed simply using one or the other.
The second example is of the 3D Fill as used in an interior. To produce a scene like this in Bryce without TA your only option is the 3d fill and domes made small enough to fit inside the room. Realize that there is no ambience glow on any of the materials. all of the illumination is coming from these radial light configs. Much care has been taken to fake realism and it worked in a noiseless way. The 3D fill gets the job done with no noise and it is many times faster than True Ambience would have been at a setting that isnt extremely noisy. There are many practical reasons to get familiar with 3D Fill lights.
Fun fun!
Rashad: Love those renders! Very realistic.
Thank you for the feedback Rashad. The thing is, even though the new lights were added four years ago now, I've only just got around to playing with them. I've no excuse for that, it's just that I've been focused on finding out about other things.
It would be a shame to see your advice become buried in the ever building layers of the forum posts. How about making a lighting pdf with what you have begun here? Horo I'm sure could host it and I could put a link in with my videos and future videos so people can read about lighting at their leisure.
Edit. @hansmar, beautiful render, in particular the way the mountains go through the clouds - very nice indeed. Well to answer your question, I use a i7 920 processor and have the advantage of being very familiar with the Bryce render engine and as a result can be very efficient in the way I put my scenes together. I know a costly choice when I see one coming and then debate on if it's contribution to the scene is sufficient to warrant the time it will take to implement and execute.
For the previous terrains renders of which I've made somewhere in the region of one hundred in the last fortnight. Before I embarked on that I spent many hours just working on the lighting and sky setup, with the single purpose of getting a balance of atmosphere effects, indirect IBL light and Bryce sunlight that would offer the best render performance for the best render result I could achieve. So many more renders were completed and compared over and again for testing until I was satisfied with that and then moving onto the terrains and solving the issue with the delay in swapping between labs and finally working on the curvature filtering and materials which to some extent also contribute to the effect of lighting - but on "local" level as far as the geometry is concerned.
There are no "secrets" as such, I try to document everything as I go along, the more general stuff I put up on my youtube, and the more specific stuff to the product we are making, goes in with the product itself. So these ten terrains you've seen made by Horo we have turned into two sets of five, with then materials each to go with them and videos that explain every aspect that we can think needs explaining. Horo has the stats, but essentially we like to see people get their monies worth.
Yeah, the lava. I was in two minds about, it's a bit grim, but at the same time, it's a bit different. And it most clearly makes use of the curvature filtering. In the other materials the curvature filtering is a subtle effect that is probably quite tricky to isolate for some people, but the lava, that's a dead give away. It is like a little tutorial in itself. Which is why I included it. As with most of the things we make now, we try to provide something that is complete and can be used as is, then also components to reuse and finally the underlying ideas that people can take for themselves and make their own stuff from scratch. If they so desire.
That's the idea anyway.
In answer to a question put on my youtube channel.
Bryce 7.1 Pro - putting more than one sun in the sky - by David Brinnen
Edit. Yes that's one of Horo's high resolution terrains, well spotted!
@David - cool idea with the little planet render. As Sean observes, the Moon is distorted but we understand why. An alternative would be to use a sphere with a Moon texture and a light. The sphere can then be squashed so it looks round. Nice scene with the 2 suns. I've once made one with three (starting with an idea of yours and your material), see below and what the suns really are.
@GussNemo - nice collection of boxes, look very convincing.
@mermaid010 - nice gel render. The HDRI used brings back memories.
@Dave - cool blue render, interesting effect.
@dragonsbain - I like this one, I first saw it in the galleries.
@hansmar - very nice landscape. Sorry about your laptop. They do tend to overheat, particularly so if high priority is used (if it features a multi-core or hyperthreaded CPU).
@Rashad - you're the light guru, and rightly so, we remember the time in the SC. I also use fill lights for interiors and not exteriors, what I saw in the video was a new application and it didn't convince me completely. However, it's always good to see things used with out-of-the-box thinking because it inspires to look beyond and discover new things. You may laugh but I still use multireplicated lights with a negative gradient as in Bryce 6 because the fill lights refuse to work for me - or rather, I refuse to understand them and know why there is a Random option.
Dome lights and IBL only seem to be the same at first glance. There are both types because none of them provides the ultimate lighting solution. IBL gives multiple colours and for RNL (rendering with natural light) the key light (or several in an indoor) while the dome provides uniformly coloured ambient light. Using a light probe made in a close space indoors may look nice but it cannot provide light and shadows correctly because the lights are at infinite distance but the light bulb is only 1 m (3 ft) above the scene. The IBL sphere cannot be downscaled so it works like distant lights - which is great in one case and crap in another.
IBL can never replace fill lights - except somewhat if we disable IBL shadows, which impairs the nice definition of geometry IBL is so good at. IB lights originate far away and cannot penetrate into small gaps. If ambience in the material is no option (which is usually the case) and IBL and Sun shadows are at full intensity (which they usually should be), the gap stays pitch black without a bit of loving care from one or more additional light sources.
When we discus lighting, it is mandatory that we specify whether we talk about a natural looking scene as the eye would perceive it, a photorealistic scene (and specifying the film speed used), or an artwork that isn't aimed at anything particularly realistic. Art is freedom. Considering the more or less real looking scene we must be aware that we can only approach a feel of realness by employing cheats. As you're well aware, we have no proper atmosphere that scatters light, neither proper materials that are multi-layered and can let part of light through and scatter it from a lower partly reflecting surface outward - something we call sub-surface scattering, or even proper translucency. All these and many other effects have to be cheated into a scene. Lucky if we've got the tools and the imagination to accomplish this.
What is often misunderstood in IBL, or HDRI in general, is that a high dynamic range doesn't necessarily mean that a very bright light source is in it and the rest is comperatively dark. A high dynamic range can also mean that there is a lot of definition in the dark areas of the image. As far as ambient light is concerned, the important thing is that the bright parts occupy a large area, not small like a sun for instance. IBL in Bryce can provide a nice backdrop, reflection, specular. The backdrop needs not be directly visible in the scene, it suffices if it is visible in the reflection or its strong lights on a glossy surface. A surrounding sphere with a LDRI mapped on it can provide the reflection, but it cannot provide the specular.
Unfortunately, the Bryce 7.1 documentation was never finished but the new Light Lab and IBL are covered, we know who wrote them up. Here's the link http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/artzone/pub/software/bryce/bryce_7_ag_wip_0204.pdf. As for Camtesia and tutorials: you can always write up a tutorial. Some people learn better by videos, others by reading. Doing a video means for me at least the same amount of time as writing up a tutorial. In fact, my videos are not as entertaining as David's. Watching them makes one feel to be next to him and get a private lecture. My videos are boring and dry as bone. I need around a week to get everything together, test to make sure I'm not going to tell tales, preparing test scenes, illustrations, the manuscript, and what not. Writing up a tutorial doesn't take me more time. Instead of recording and then painstaikingly cutting out the "uhs", "ahs" and pauses and adding callouts with corrections, I can easily format text and images and either print it out as postscript or putting some html tags around it.
Rashad, I do encourage you to cover the new lights. You know them best. And you know David is right about PDF, hosting and things.
@ David, Rashad, Horo
Thanks for the info on the Dome and 3D fill lights, it does answer many questions for me mostly on use and practicality for some reason it never occurred to me to use them as David showed in his tutorial with the gradient and Bias coming into play, It's very exciting for me to learn something this cool about a program I have had for years, Still so much to learn, This will work for a few renders I have been working on for a while but could never figure out the right lighting.
Here's something else. Bryce Basics - adding a photo sky - by David Brinnen
Thanks for the tutorial David, every time I have tried to use a picture as a sky, it comes out looking cheesy and unconvincing, I give it another try soon
A sandstorm is coming up rapidly. The camera FOV is quite high at 150° and the sun at that position is a patato. Therefore, a transparent sphere with the same transparency colour and diffuse colour as the sun is put in front of the sun and squashed so that it appears round. The light comes still from the sun, the ambient from an HDRI.
Nice lighting and sand dune shapes. I notice you got to correcting the sun's shape a recent topic of conversation.
@ Horo, the dunes look really nice, how many terrains in the image ?
@David: Those are two very helpful videos, thanks for the work. Your new terrains are very nice.
@Horo: Thanks. Nice looking terrain and dunes. The on coming dust storm is very convincing.
Thanks David, Guss, Pagsovation, Hansmar and Horo
Pagsovation – I can relate to this “and decided it was “done.” :)
Dave -cool render.
Hansmar-beautiful landscape. Thanks for your explanation about merging files.
Rashad-the renders are beautiful. I hope David will eventually make videos showing us what you and Horo discussed/explained, these days I learn more from seeing than reading. :red:
Guss-the new set of boxes look very nice.
David - thanks for the new tutorials
Horo-I like your renders especially the dunes.
Playing with lights using Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - sphere dome light - by David Brinnen
I used a gel – for the 1st one I used the water material for the ground plane and the sphere, for the 2nd image I used the Level adjustment in Photoshop and for the 3rd I used transparent material for the ground plane and sphere.
Thanks Jamie! And well done Mermaid.
So here's a quick remix, I used a high resolution terrain and a low resolution version of itself with different materials applied to each to create what I think is called "talus" geologically. But essentially smoother slopes of stuff that's supposed to have broken off the steeper stuff.
Yup, that's the way I've done it for years.
Cloud image is quite dramatic but fits the landscape. I haven't had the time to watch the video yet. I had used backdrop photos several times in the past but usually got unfavourable comments so I'm keen to know what you do differently. Because of the bad peer reviews, I decided to use panoramas as backdrops only.
That remix is an interesting concept of doing it. On the dunes, I had generated the same terrain twice but with different random noise maximum levels but keeping the seed value and then processed each terrain as 96 bit TIFF and finally added them together and converted the result back to 16 bit TIFFs for Bryce.
@dragonsbain - thank you. I used one terrain in planetary (4096) resolution in the foreground, two gigantic (2048) resolution ones on both sides of it but flipped so they tile, then in the distance another five in massive (1024) resolution.
@GussNemo - thank you.
@mermaid010 - thank you. Excellent renders, I particularly like the second and third ones.
Rashad Carter:
great tips as always, I agree with David that if you could find the time and put your notes in a pdf that would be great, I find that i copy and paste the text to save it my self, because remembering where everything is on the forums is difficult, and there has been so many great bits of information.
those lighting examples are inspirational to say the least, when realism is my on going battle, as many would agree.
GussNemo:
well done on the boxes, the unsmooth thing kind of thru me off when I first saw how to do it, it seemed backwards to me to make something less smooth to make it more clear or brighter, but I think I am starting to get it now. thanks to your examples
Horo:
re: "Doing a video means for me at least the same amount of time as writing up a tutorial. In fact, my videos are not as entertaining as David’s"
Your videos have a great flow, and your lectures are very engaging, a kind of excitement in your voice when your covering details that interest you, and that makes it more exciting for me. don't take this the wrong way, I like the way you say gigabyte, hehehe
David:
thanks again for the incredible amount of video and information ! there's just not enough hours in a day, as I am sure every Bryce addict will agree!
Thanks David and Horo
David the remix is looking great, nice concept.
My attempt at ….. ... Bryce and DS - sphere fill light and Moon Gate - by David Brinnen
Had lots of fun playing with lights and enjoyed doing this tutorial as well. Thanks David, all your hard work is appreciated.
Nice to see you are keeping pace with the video's!
Something else to try?
Bryce quick scene project - space pyramid - by David Brinnen
Yeah, I hate when I get carried away, I can't control ze accent anymore. I know that cat is yawning but when I read your post, it looked to me as if you were laughing - and that made me really laugh out loud. Thank you for giving me that fun.
@mermaid010 - stargate looks nice. I think the foreground light is a bit on the even side, making the stones appear flat.
@David - the space pyramid looks nice. Great idea above about the double terrain.
I took up this idea but used the same terrain trice with each one a lower resolution and material. So the red and grey parts are from the planetary resolution terrain, the pale green and stronger brown from the gigantic resolution one and the strong green from the massive resolution one. The last terrain was excluded from the AA-pass to make the green look like a bit of vegetation. This can't be fully appreciated in this down scaled version but it is obvious in the larger version in the gallery. Sky and ambient light by an HDRI, key light by the sun.
Now I used 23% soft shadows for the sun and rendered premium only to discover that the AA-pass exclusion doesn't work here. So I had to render regular. The quality of the soft shadows are about as good as when rendered Premium with 36 rpp.
I am doing strange (for me) things again. I terrain, several rocks with David's volumetric fire on them and an M4/creature Creator type devil. Only postwork was to add a frame in Filer Forge.
Did this one for a render the song lyrics challenge in MO forum
Fire on the Mountain, run boys, run
The Devil’s in the House of the Rising Sun
What a contrast between images, Pam, Horo. Just goes to show how flexible Bryce can be in the right hands. Pam's has a sort of Tales of the Unexpected 1970's vibe maybe? Horo's is pin sharp more real than real. Both good, but in different ways.
Just a bit of fun from me. Using some of the techniques from my videos and Horo's high resolution terrain. If anyone other than Horo (I know he will know) can identify the model for what it is I will be impressed.
@David Brinnen: I can never keep up with all those videos.
I am not such a pro at rendering, like you. And my old laptop simply is a lot slower.
Thanks. The clouds around the mountaintops is based on your tutorial of a cloud slab and chosing the height of the slap to just overlap the clouds. I now have a very slow rendering scene with very high density of clouds; looks like lots of snow coming. Hope I can show this in a couple of days....
Maybe next time I will start fiddling with lights and sky, before making a scene. I usually start with the scene and later worry about light, clouds, colours, etc.
@Horo: I actually like PDF tutorials, because you don't have to stop - go back - see and hear again when you want to follow along.
My laptop is OK. Maybe indeed overheated for a while. You use multiple resolutions of the same terrain in the same place? Nice idea! And I really like your three sun scene and your sandstorm.
And thanks!
@Rashad + Horo: What a lot of information to take in. I will start looking at fill lights and dome lights in the future. Maybe they can lower my render time.
And fantastic renders!
@mermaid010: nice work! specifically number two and three (number one is a bit dark)
@chohole: what the devil are you doing there? Don't play with matches! That must be the reason for my laptop overheating!
@David Brinnen: the object in your last render must be a ring of some kind, although a spaceship might also be the source.
@David: Finally was able to watch your space HDRI video all the way through. What wonderful results, I used you lens idea on one of my earlier objects just to see the results. They are interesting. The object in you last scene reminds me of a very large ring, with a missing stone.
@Horo: Beautiful terrain, I'll have to check out the larger version.
@Pam: That scene is a real deviation for you. Still, looks really good. And I love the song you used as an inspiration.
After watching David's space HDRI video, I wanted to see what you happen if I used the lens with one of the objects I created following one of David's Wings 3D tutorials. The image below is the result.
@Pam - that's an incredible scene. Great use of the volumetric fire. I like how the landscape and fire look 3D, and sun and devil 2D. I wouldn't say that's a Bryce scene at first glance. Very special, indeed.
@David - thank you and yes, I recognised the object immediately - the one I had surprised you a long time ago by cutting it up. Great use here and the fiery glow looks very good, too. The HDRI in the backdrop fits in nicely, it looks as if there were huge snow covered mountains in the background.
@hansmar - thank you. An alternative way to set up a render would be to keep everything default grey and set up the lighting so everything is lit as you want it, then give the object their material. I seldom go this way but it is a great help to get to grips with the light.
@GussNemo - thank you. Great idea of using the flat lens. Pulls the viewer directly to the main object.
Horo- thanks for the feedback.
Chohole- amazing render.
David - I also think it is a big ring which lost it's stone, but after reading Horo's message.......not sure now
Guss- nice render with the lens.
Edited: thanks Hansmar - the 1st one is dark, I could not add additional lights in Bryce to make a nice scene, thus the 2nd is a postwork in Photoshop of the same image
Beautiful render Jamie!
Here, as Horo knows is the answer to the little mystery.
Wings 3D - Klein bottle - by David Brinnen
Edit. The curious nature of this geometry soon becomes apparent when you have a go at UV mapping it!
Inspired by David's use of the Deep Sky HDRIs, I gave it a try, too. The sun is in the centre of the galaxy and provides the main light. HDRI Effect is negative to suck light off and this is compensated by a parallel light with infinite width to simulate the sky light from behind the camera. Jay will probably immediately see M42 within NGC1300. I have a transparent 2D-face with 25% reflection to mix in the opposite side of the HDRI to get the greenish clouds contrasting the very dark mountains. The two guys are Michael 3's with space suits from DAZ 3D. This size rendered in 1 minute 20 seconds in normal priority with HDRI quality 128.