Material testing, curvature filtering and specular response - also anisotropic reflection. Stanford dragon, Bryce sun, one diffuse radial light, 3x TA gel lights, one TA firewall, HDRI for reflection, boost light, TA render, soft shadows, DOF and blurred reflection. 64 rpp render time twelve minutes.
The beach look flat.
This is a lot to do with the lighting. The texture on it seems to be about right, but if you wanted to improve on it, I can recommend David Brinnen's 'Wetter Sand' material, which you will find in the Pro Materials folder in the Materials library. Scroll down the sub sections until you find the one called 'Water Surfaces' (don't let that put you off, it's not water, but sand with streaks of reflectivity so it looks like wet sand).
You should have the Pro Materials if you are using Bryce Pro7
The Sun is too small
This is easily altered in the Sky Lab (click the little cloud icon with a rainbow in the Sky & Fog tab)
Then you need to go to the Sun & Moon tab. In this window you will find the sun size control.
But, can not seems to get the sun to glow.
No you can't, this is one of the shortfalls of Bryce (especially when you consider the really advanced lighting options Bryce does provide).
Well when I agree that you can't get the sun to glow, I mean there is no control for the sun to make it brighter, but it can be faked in several ways. :)
@David: I'm agreeing with the others, smashing image. The blurred reflection gives it the look of a reflection on still water. Nicely done.
@Fhalo: I agree with Jay, it's a nice style. David Brinnen did a tutorial on how to make the sun glow. I can't remember if it's in this thread or Part 1 of Show us your renders. In it he explains what to use and how to position it so the sun appears to glow.
Len, to bring you up to speed, I've been presumptuous and started making up names for things.
TA firewall: Is a radial light set to TA optimised, set to gel light, with the material modified to "normal" black. The role of this is to mop up fireflies from the IBL backdrop when using boost light with TA. As Rashad had said, boost light gives much better results, but is plagued by noise. The firewall is part of the noise solution. IBL can still provide reflection, which is very handy, but no fireflies - which are bad news as far as noise is concerned.
TA gel light: Is a radial light set to TA optimised, set to gel light, with material modified to "normal" made fully transparent and having only ambient output. This light is also "included" only on the "background" in other words it excludes everything. In other words it shouldn't do anything at all - but it does - if driven through the global ambient. This provides a very - er... dry(?) light - of any colour you put in the material ambient channel. I generally use spherical maps of the HDRI background I'm using and align them according to that.
In keeping with the title of this thread, I thought I would put this scene up for comment before adding it to my gallery over at Rendo. Thanks for the great tutorial on volumetric clouds David.
Background trees are Foleypro's filler forest
Bulls are by noggin.
Uploaded my first attempt at doing a Sunset based on David tutorial.
The beach look flat.
The Sun is too small
But, can not seems to get the sun to glow.
Maybe do post work in GIMP
Got alot of work to do!
If you wish you can always post me this scene (if it is less than 10mb) and I can show you how to modify - if you also provide a reference image that would be a great help too - to show where you want to end up. I recommend always working towards some kind of reference image anyway.
In keeping with the title of this thread, I thought I would put this scene up for comment before adding it to my gallery over at Rendo. Thanks for the great tutorial on volumetric clouds David.
Background trees are Foleypro's filler forest
Bulls are by noggin.
Cheers
GG
The clouds work a treat, I get the impression of them really "lowering" over the landscape. A dark scene. Very impressive.
I used a different model... it took a bit longer to render than the dragon, I don't know if this is due to the higher complexity of the model or the way it leaned over the ground - and so exchanging more rays with the ground than the HDRI (which acts as a backstop and speeds up TA rendering).
Also, I should probably have lowered the luminance of the Specular Halo for the infinite plane to reduce the anisotropic blurring effect somewhat... But it is pretty close otherwise to the previous render of the Stanford Dragon.
Lord...didn’t know about the raindrop mat in Bryce..very handy to know - could easy get away in using this mat, generally, but, again, I’m a stickler for realism (well, to an achievable point using just Bryce). As you observed in your own experiment – “the ripples are too perfect” – aren’t they, and appear not to be adapting to real-time, physical effects. Several pictures of ripples, rain, drops...etc., I gleaned (I would publish them here, but didn't take the credits of the photographers) from the network, show cancellation effects between separate ripple events (as expected), and so you get a variety of resultant ripple effects that don’t look like those others unaffected. So, creating the bump gave me more control as to the effects I wanted.
Exactly, too perfect and a bit too pronounced although I guess that really comes down to the size of the raindrop? Seems to me though in the real world the ripples would intersect and wouldn't necessarily be evenly spaced or perfectly circular.
@David
Thanks for the explanation, sounds very interesting and it's just as well you listed some videos because I still don't know what you meant, especially the term "modified to normal".
Off to see the new Bond film tonight but will watch the videos for sure when I get back, cheers!
@David
Thanks for the explanation, sounds very interesting and it's just as well you listed some videos because I still don't know what you meant, especially the term "modified to normal".
Off to see the new Bond film tonight but will watch the videos for sure when I get back, cheers!
Oh, well, I should have said, "normal" in the material options, as opposed to being "light". Anyhow the latest video cuts to the chase and just describes - more or less - the settings used in the last Stanford Dragon render.
Here is a sunset render after following David's excellent tutorials.
Good results, the sky has got a real glow and depth to it! Thank's for the mention. These are the tutorials I'm guessing from the layout of the scene...
@David yes those are the tutorials. although I did not get quite the results you did, still experimenting,
not having the HDRI programs/tools I've attempted to work around them with just what is available in Bryce
@David yes those are the tutorials. although I did not get quite the results you did, still experimenting,
not having the HDRI programs/tools I've attempted to work around them with just what is available in Bryce
Well, from the results, clearly your work around worked. I just tried to mix things up a bit to show there are more options. Doing it all in Bryce, well I think you gain extra kudos.
@Fhalo - Jamahoney is right, your sunset has style even though you haven't accomplished what you set out for. In all that haze and clouds, the sun-glow may well get strongly attenuated. It still looks real.
@kiwi_gg - That's a very nice render. I like the dust stirred up by the beasts. The clouds are excellent. Just the trees at right seem a bit bright to me.
@David - Outstanding renders. I like the dragon more but the Armadillo also came out excellent. Looking forward to the video.
@Rareth - Very nice result. Just the dark foreground clouds don't look very convincing, they are too small to be so dark. The sky turned out very nicely.
Here's another render working with David Brinnen's seashore tutorial. I decided to eliminate dealing with rocks---I like rocks and rocky coasts but it was distracting my eyes from the surf effect I was after. This is a standard Bryce sky preset, Glorius Morning I think. Vicky's wearing Steampunk Lady Blaze jacket and Cute3d My princes skit. Jacket texture from Silver Leif textture pack I got in last year's Vault sale. The birds are close enough to curlews or sandpipers, but they are Ken Gilliands "snipes". Lkse fom DP's Mercantile.Hair default Deeta by AprilYsh.
The foamy terrain does not have the fractal added, just basic noise and the same texture as the other terrain and the plane, It's Waves13 from the Pro Materials. I took out the turquoise ambience and made it more olive. I think the combers turned out well. The shore is textured with David's Wetter Sand. No postwork, well except for one itty bitty area of a comber to soften the terain edge a pixel or 2.
Even without the more photo realistic approach in the tutorial the sky does affect the appearnce of the waves a great deal. Adjusted reflectivity a tad to unite the 2 terrains and water plane basic "color".
I also tried out the newer foamy island coast tutorial. Zoomed in as close as possible but the "foam" is badly faceted and unconvincing any closer than from some"miles" away. I noticed in the email ad for StoneMason's Lava planet that there was orange "lava" very similiar I thought to the island foam, which has me thinking in yet another direction. But I'll stick with this seashore and the tree trucks for a bit. Iv'e been recuperating from dental surgery so I've had time on my hands to fidget with these.
@Fhalo - Jamahoney is right, your sunset has style even though you haven't accomplished what you set out for. In all that haze and clouds, the sun-glow may well get strongly attenuated. It still looks real.
@kiwi_gg - That's a very nice render. I like the dust stirred up by the beasts. The clouds are excellent. Just the trees at right seem a bit bright to me.
@David - Outstanding renders. I like the dragon more but the Armadillo also came out excellent. Looking forward to the video.
@Rareth - Very nice result. Just the dark foreground clouds don't look very convincing, they are too small to be so dark. The sky turned out very nicely.
yes the clouds are a work in progress, the spot light at the sun position is not doing what it is supposed to be doing which is illuminating the underside of the clouds and the shore. I probably missed a setting somwhere.. however a distance liight at the sun position is giving positive results, still tweaking settings... will having something to post shortly
The sky is a result of my not leaving well enough alone. I had wanted to regenerate the HDRI for the sky as per David's tutorial, but I turned off ALL atmospheric effects by accident (had meant to leave the haze on) and cranked up the sun settings, (disk and glow)
it was an oops moment but I ran with it, the glow around the sun turned our really nice, and changing the haze to a neutral color and the sky color to a very dark blue just enhanced things. needless to say I have it saved to the library for future use
Here's another render working with David Brinnen's seashore tutorial. I decided to eliminate dealing with rocks---I like rocks and rocky coasts but it was distracting my eyes from the surf effect I was after. This is a standard Bryce sky preset, Glorius Morning I think. Vicky's wearing Steampunk Lady Blaze jacket and Cute3d My princes skit. Jacket texture from Silver Leif textture pack I got in last year's Vault sale. The birds are close enough to curlews or sandpipers, but they are Ken Gilliands "snipes". Lkse fom DP's Mercantile.Hair default Deeta by AprilYsh.
The foamy terrain does not have the fractal added, just basic noise and the same texture as the other terrain and the plane, It's Waves13 from the Pro Materials. I took out the turquoise ambience and made it more olive. I think the combers turned out well. The shore is textured with David's Wetter Sand. No postwork, well except for one itty bitty area of a comber to soften the terain edge a pixel or 2.
Even without the more photo realistic approach in the tutorial the sky does affect the appearnce of the waves a great deal. Adjusted reflectivity a tad to unite the 2 terrains and water plane basic "color".
I also tried out the newer foamy island coast tutorial. Zoomed in as close as possible but the "foam" is badly faceted and unconvincing any closer than from some"miles" away. I noticed in the email ad for StoneMason's Lava planet that there was orange "lava" very similiar I thought to the island foam, which has me thinking in yet another direction. But I'll stick with this seashore and the tree trucks for a bit. Iv'e been recuperating from dental surgery so I've had time on my hands to fidget with these.
You did an outstanding job with these distant waves, and the whole distant water area where it meets the sky. I was convinced it was a photograph this bit until I read your description.
The foreground wave area I think suffers a bit from the scaling of the foam component. I would suggest using the transformation tools in the mat lab to lower the frequency of that texture component by adjusting the scale. Just an idea.
Good to see you are getting to grips with this tricky subject. I hope your teeth are not giving you too much grief. From my own dental experiences, it can hurt the wallet as much as the gums!
ok same scene tweaked abit, ambience on the clouds adjusted so they are not quite so dark, terrain texture settings tweaked to show some more depth, distant light just in front of the sun globe, set to lightly light up the shore and clouds,
ok same scene tweaked abit, ambience on the clouds adjusted so they are not quite so dark, terrain texture settings tweaked to show some more depth, distant light just in front of the sun globe, set to lightly light up the shore and clouds,
Stunning. I should be following your tutorials not the other way around! This is a beautiful render.
The Stanford xyz dragon converted by Horo in Meshlab.
About four hours to render. Another curvature controlled material lit with Treppenhalle2 HDRI. With a mixture of reflection and gel lights. Instead of a blach cube black haze was used to hide the horizon. View it full sized if you like, it was rendered to large to show the details on the forum.
Like wise for the Happy Buddha, only this time I used a cube instead of haze.
The Stanford xyz dragon converted by Horo in Meshlab.
About four hours to render. Another curvature controlled material lit with Treppenhalle2 HDRI. With a mixture of reflection and gel lights. Instead of a blach cube black haze was used to hide the horizon. View it full sized if you like, it was rendered to large to show the details on the forum.
Like wise for the Happy Buddha, only this time I used a cube instead of haze.
Comments
Material testing, curvature filtering and specular response - also anisotropic reflection. Stanford dragon, Bryce sun, one diffuse radial light, 3x TA gel lights, one TA firewall, HDRI for reflection, boost light, TA render, soft shadows, DOF and blurred reflection. 64 rpp render time twelve minutes.
Simple Sunset WIP at 600 resolution.
Uploaded my first attempt at doing a Sunset based on David tutorial.
The beach look flat.
The Sun is too small
But, can not seems to get the sun to glow.
Maybe do post work in GIMP
Got alot of work to do!
David...oh yeah...mmmm...so crisp, wonderful lighting, shadows to die for. C'mon admit it, it's a photo, not a render ;)
Defintely recommend looking at it in the large view to others.
Fhalo...very nice as is, wouldn't change a thing in it - has a certain style to it.
Jay.
I remember when a forum picture would take that long to download (via an old dial up modem) to the monitor. :cheese:
Rendering it in Bryce at that time would be measured in days... It looks really great and greatly real.
I agree, that looks absolutely super, David!
I feel a back-reading session coming on cause I haven't got a bloody clue what a TA firewall is.
I've got to stop skimming posts in a hurry.
But yes, that's very nice, and whatever it is has made it look as if Bryce has a new shading model - very diffuse :coolsmile:
This is easily altered in the Sky Lab (click the little cloud icon with a rainbow in the Sky & Fog tab)
Then you need to go to the Sun & Moon tab. In this window you will find the sun size control.
@David: I'm agreeing with the others, smashing image. The blurred reflection gives it the look of a reflection on still water. Nicely done.
@Fhalo: I agree with Jay, it's a nice style. David Brinnen did a tutorial on how to make the sun glow. I can't remember if it's in this thread or Part 1 of Show us your renders. In it he explains what to use and how to position it so the sun appears to glow.
Thank you Jay, Dave, Len and Jamie.
Len, to bring you up to speed, I've been presumptuous and started making up names for things.
TA firewall: Is a radial light set to TA optimised, set to gel light, with the material modified to "normal" black. The role of this is to mop up fireflies from the IBL backdrop when using boost light with TA. As Rashad had said, boost light gives much better results, but is plagued by noise. The firewall is part of the noise solution. IBL can still provide reflection, which is very handy, but no fireflies - which are bad news as far as noise is concerned.
TA gel light: Is a radial light set to TA optimised, set to gel light, with material modified to "normal" made fully transparent and having only ambient output. This light is also "included" only on the "background" in other words it excludes everything. In other words it shouldn't do anything at all - but it does - if driven through the global ambient. This provides a very - er... dry(?) light - of any colour you put in the material ambient channel. I generally use spherical maps of the HDRI background I'm using and align them according to that.
Here are a few related video's
Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - TA optimised radial lights advanced - a 15 minute tutorial by David Brinnen
Bryce 25 minute lighting project - upgrading advanced lighting - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - TA RGB response - a 15 minute tutorial by David Brinnen
Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - Using IBL with boost light and TA gels - by David Brinnen
Bryce 5 minute scene - TA hue saturation shift trick - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Bryce 20 minute scene lighting project - the Xyzrgb Stanford Dragon - a tutorial by David Brinnen
In keeping with the title of this thread, I thought I would put this scene up for comment before adding it to my gallery over at Rendo. Thanks for the great tutorial on volumetric clouds David.
Background trees are Foleypro's filler forest
Bulls are by noggin.
Cheers
GG
If you wish you can always post me this scene (if it is less than 10mb) and I can show you how to modify - if you also provide a reference image that would be a great help too - to show where you want to end up. I recommend always working towards some kind of reference image anyway.
The clouds work a treat, I get the impression of them really "lowering" over the landscape. A dark scene. Very impressive.
Since a few expressed an interest.
Bryce 15 minute scene - nice light setup using premium rendering - a tutorial by David Brinnen
I used a different model... it took a bit longer to render than the dragon, I don't know if this is due to the higher complexity of the model or the way it leaned over the ground - and so exchanging more rays with the ground than the HDRI (which acts as a backstop and speeds up TA rendering).
Also, I should probably have lowered the luminance of the Specular Halo for the infinite plane to reduce the anisotropic blurring effect somewhat... But it is pretty close otherwise to the previous render of the Stanford Dragon.
Exactly, too perfect and a bit too pronounced although I guess that really comes down to the size of the raindrop? Seems to me though in the real world the ripples would intersect and wouldn't necessarily be evenly spaced or perfectly circular.
Here is a sunset render after following David's excellent tutorials.
@David
Thanks for the explanation, sounds very interesting and it's just as well you listed some videos because I still don't know what you meant, especially the term "modified to normal".
Off to see the new Bond film tonight but will watch the videos for sure when I get back, cheers!
Oh, well, I should have said, "normal" in the material options, as opposed to being "light". Anyhow the latest video cuts to the chase and just describes - more or less - the settings used in the last Stanford Dragon render.
Good results, the sky has got a real glow and depth to it! Thank's for the mention. These are the tutorials I'm guessing from the layout of the scene...
Bryce 10 minute skylab project - basic sunset effect - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Bryce 25 minute skylab project - adding volume clouds to basic sunset effect - by David Brinnen
Bryce 10 minute skylab project - sunset effect, with clouds and put in a scene - by David Brinnen
@David yes those are the tutorials. although I did not get quite the results you did, still experimenting,
not having the HDRI programs/tools I've attempted to work around them with just what is available in Bryce
Well, from the results, clearly your work around worked. I just tried to mix things up a bit to show there are more options. Doing it all in Bryce, well I think you gain extra kudos.
@David: That armadillo turned out nice. I like the results.
@Fhalo - Jamahoney is right, your sunset has style even though you haven't accomplished what you set out for. In all that haze and clouds, the sun-glow may well get strongly attenuated. It still looks real.
@kiwi_gg - That's a very nice render. I like the dust stirred up by the beasts. The clouds are excellent. Just the trees at right seem a bit bright to me.
@David - Outstanding renders. I like the dragon more but the Armadillo also came out excellent. Looking forward to the video.
@Rareth - Very nice result. Just the dark foreground clouds don't look very convincing, they are too small to be so dark. The sky turned out very nicely.
Here's another render working with David Brinnen's seashore tutorial. I decided to eliminate dealing with rocks---I like rocks and rocky coasts but it was distracting my eyes from the surf effect I was after. This is a standard Bryce sky preset, Glorius Morning I think. Vicky's wearing Steampunk Lady Blaze jacket and Cute3d My princes skit. Jacket texture from Silver Leif textture pack I got in last year's Vault sale. The birds are close enough to curlews or sandpipers, but they are Ken Gilliands "snipes". Lkse fom DP's Mercantile.Hair default Deeta by AprilYsh.
The foamy terrain does not have the fractal added, just basic noise and the same texture as the other terrain and the plane, It's Waves13 from the Pro Materials. I took out the turquoise ambience and made it more olive. I think the combers turned out well. The shore is textured with David's Wetter Sand. No postwork, well except for one itty bitty area of a comber to soften the terain edge a pixel or 2.
Even without the more photo realistic approach in the tutorial the sky does affect the appearnce of the waves a great deal. Adjusted reflectivity a tad to unite the 2 terrains and water plane basic "color".
I also tried out the newer foamy island coast tutorial. Zoomed in as close as possible but the "foam" is badly faceted and unconvincing any closer than from some"miles" away. I noticed in the email ad for StoneMason's Lava planet that there was orange "lava" very similiar I thought to the island foam, which has me thinking in yet another direction. But I'll stick with this seashore and the tree trucks for a bit. Iv'e been recuperating from dental surgery so I've had time on my hands to fidget with these.
yes the clouds are a work in progress, the spot light at the sun position is not doing what it is supposed to be doing which is illuminating the underside of the clouds and the shore. I probably missed a setting somwhere.. however a distance liight at the sun position is giving positive results, still tweaking settings... will having something to post shortly
The sky is a result of my not leaving well enough alone. I had wanted to regenerate the HDRI for the sky as per David's tutorial, but I turned off ALL atmospheric effects by accident (had meant to leave the haze on) and cranked up the sun settings, (disk and glow)
it was an oops moment but I ran with it, the glow around the sun turned our really nice, and changing the haze to a neutral color and the sky color to a very dark blue just enhanced things. needless to say I have it saved to the library for future use
You did an outstanding job with these distant waves, and the whole distant water area where it meets the sky. I was convinced it was a photograph this bit until I read your description.
The foreground wave area I think suffers a bit from the scaling of the foam component. I would suggest using the transformation tools in the mat lab to lower the frequency of that texture component by adjusting the scale. Just an idea.
Good to see you are getting to grips with this tricky subject. I hope your teeth are not giving you too much grief. From my own dental experiences, it can hurt the wallet as much as the gums!
ok same scene tweaked abit, ambience on the clouds adjusted so they are not quite so dark, terrain texture settings tweaked to show some more depth, distant light just in front of the sun globe, set to lightly light up the shore and clouds,
Ok
Second version:
Reduce ray per pixel to 4.
Increate the size of the sun and made it glow.
Change beach texture to wet sand.
Add radial light over the beach
Stunning. I should be following your tutorials not the other way around! This is a beautiful render.
A mix and match. The lighting from here
Bryce 15 minute scene - nice light setup using premium rendering - a tutorial by David Brinnen
and the ground surface from here.
Bryce 25 minute scene - anisotropic reflection in a landscape - a tutorial by David Brinnen
The Stanford xyz dragon converted by Horo in Meshlab.
About four hours to render. Another curvature controlled material lit with Treppenhalle2 HDRI. With a mixture of reflection and gel lights. Instead of a blach cube black haze was used to hide the horizon. View it full sized if you like, it was rendered to large to show the details on the forum.
Like wise for the Happy Buddha, only this time I used a cube instead of haze.
just awesome renders,
ok I had to do it, the obligatory mirror ball on a terrain