Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 6

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Comments

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,750
    edited December 1969

    HI,

    Long time since I posted here. I've seen too many great renders in the last twenty or so pages to even consider reacting. Sorry for that.
    Just wanted to show one of mine.
    Started out as an attempt to get the pseudo subsurface scattering to work, because a candle has this nice feature. Cannot get it to look like a real candle yet. Perhaps I should have used more fall-off of the lights?
    Anyway, once I had one candle (made with metaballs, except for the flame that was made in Hexagon) I wanted to make the render slightly more interesting. So I used just two candles, with this result.

    Any feedback or ideas how to get the effect that the lightness quickly drops from a certain distance from the flame?

    candles3.jpg
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  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited February 2014

    hansmar said:
    Any feedback or ideas how to get the effect that the lightness quickly drops from a certain distance from the flame?

    I'm not sure what kind of lighting you are using, but in the Light Lab look at the settings for Falloff. You probably want the "Squared" radio button selected, that's the way light actually works, meaning the light level decreases with the square of the distance of an object from the light source. If you had it set to linear, it wouldn't fall off as quickly. You can also set it to ranged to make it stop completely at a certain distance; a bit abrupt, but it might help you.

    EDITED TO ADD: It kind of looks like the solid part of the candle isn't casting a shadow at all from the flame.

    Post edited by sriesch on
  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,750
    edited December 1969

    @Sean Riesch: thanks for your reaction. I noted indeed that the candles do not appear to throw any shadows. No idea why. I'll look into the falloff settings. Maybe 'squared' is better indeed.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    Because I know how much David loves a bit of lens flare. :lol:

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  • TLBKlausTLBKlaus Posts: 70
    edited February 2014

    Greetings gentlebeings, sorry it's been so long since I stopped by... looking forward to doing so more often.
    The shirt business is puttering along, and I've also opened a CafePress store to try to branch out... http://www.cafepress.com/tlbklaus
    :D

    But what you're here for is the art, of course. Some recents:

    See you soon!

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    Post edited by TLBKlaus on
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,069
    edited December 1969

    @hansmar - good start with the candles. Sean gave you good advise. Missing shadows: once you have verified that they are set in the Light Lab for the lights, make sure Sun/Moon Shadows in the Sky Lab is set to 100%. This is a global control.

    @Dave - nicely lit. Though there are some liking lens flare, I hate it. Cost me a small fortune to buy Watten gel filters for my fisheye - which I finally upgraded with a higher grade one just to get rid of them darn flares. Which, by the way, look completely different than what graphics applications produce. After this rant, I do agree that this artifact can have some charm if not used excessively. Yours looks certainly good.

    @TLBKlaus - nice to see your artwork again. Very nice. Hope your business is a success.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    @Dave - nicely lit. Though there are some liking lens flare, I hate it. Cost me a small fortune to buy Watten gel filters for my fisheye - which I finally upgraded with a higher grade one just to get rid of them darn flares. Which, by the way, look completely different than what graphics applications produce. After this rant, I do agree that this artifact can have some charm if not used excessively. Yours looks certainly good.

    Thanks Horo.
    Yes, I think the real trick with using Lens Flare is to have some understanding of what causes it and under what conditions.
    I have seen fake lens flare added to pictures that would never have flare on them.

    Anyway, moving on, here's today's doodle.

    HighlandShroomCastl.jpg
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  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,750
    edited December 1969

    @Sean Riesch. I modified the light settings to 'ranged' and this looks quite OK. However, still no shadow underneath. Have no clue what causes this and how to change it. I did have to add somewhat more light from the cube fill light that is also in my cube, otherwise either the scene would be too dark or the flames too light.

    @Horo: thanks. aaargh! I forgot to check the sky lab settings! Next thing to try for the shadows.
    Actually, I'm kinda hoping that your buddy David will have a great suggestion ....

    @TheSavage64: nice water scene with really wonderful lighting! The 'doodle' looks like from a children's book. I think the dwarves are just behind that bush!

    @TLBKlaus: great set of colourful abstracts.

    Here is my new candle render

    candles4.jpg
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  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    hansmar said:
    @Horo: thanks. aaargh! I forgot to check the sky lab settings! Next thing to try for the shadows.
    Actually, I'm kinda hoping that your buddy David will have a great suggestion ....

    Hmn... SSS is very tricky to setup, sometimes it works sometimes not. If you post me the scene I will have a go with what I know. My email is [email protected]

    if the scene is smaller that 10mb it should email fine. If not, dropbox me a link. If I can get it setup for SSS I will post you back a solution. When I get the time I intend to make a video to cover this topic, but been kinda busy of late, so that's not happened yet.

    Nice doodle Dave. As for lens flare... hmn... sometimes yes, but not often.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    hansmar said:
    @Sean Riesch. I modified the light settings to 'ranged' and this looks quite OK. However, still no shadow underneath. Have no clue what causes this and how to change it. I did have to add somewhat more light from the cube fill light that is also in my cube, otherwise either the scene would be too dark or the flames too light.
    I wonder if it's the same problem you get from transparent leaves when you use soft shadows... The shadows just disappear unless you render in Premium with TA.
    Either that or the floor material may be set to not accept shadows, or the lights in the flame are set to exclude the ground plane, or they are simply too low and create such a weak and blurred shadow that you can't see it... Or the ground plane could have a lot of ambient in the Mat Lab settings... There are quite a lot of possibilities.

    @TheSavage64: nice water scene with really wonderful lighting! The 'doodle' looks like from a children's book. I think the dwarves are just behind that bush!


    Thanks... I was actually thinking about adding some sort of person climbing up the hillside towards the castle but decided to render as is. Maybe I'll do another version, but don't think I have any Dwarves in my collection. :)
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,069
    edited December 1969

    @Dave - isn't that the Shroom castle? Looking good. Ah, the foliage on the bushes look great. The clouds look very natural. The whole render could be a photograph. Very nicely done.

    @hansmar - just place a default grey cylinder in your scene and watch where you find shadows. When the problem is solved, delete the cylinder. Or put a grey 2D-face on the table temporarily. Such small helpers are handy to finding the cause for such lighting problems.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    Thanks and yes, Horo, it is the Shroom Castle. :)

    So this morning I've been looking once again at Arbaro (that Horo suggested in an other thread).
    It's very much like Ivy Generator inasmuch as it takes a long while to see what all the parameters are altering, though Arbaro has many many more parameters to alter.

    But it's great for creating trees and plants that can then be textured up in Bryce.
    For this one, I only altered the default Wheat plant slightly in Arbaro and then set up a more "pop art" render in Bryce.

    Wheat.jpg
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  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Thanks and yes, Horo, it is the Shroom Castle. :)

    So this morning I've been looking once again at Arbaro (that Horo suggested in an other thread).
    It's very much like Ivy Generator inasmuch as it takes a long while to see what all the parameters are altering, though Arbaro has many many more parameters to alter.

    But it's great for creating trees and plants that can then be textured up in Bryce.
    For this one, I only altered the default Wheat plant slightly in Arbaro and then set up a more "pop art" render in Bryce.

    Effective. After the comment above about the candles I decided to return to sss experiments once more. This took about five hours to complete.

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  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    Awesome David!!....Trish

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Awesome David!!....Trish

    Thanks Trish, here's another little experiment along the same lines.

    Fuzzy4_purple_d2.jpg
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  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376
    edited December 1969

    Awesome David!!....Trish

    Thanks Trish, here's another little experiment along the same lines.

    Agree with Trish, that's incredible... I wonder how you can make such fantastic effect by using fuzzy factor in Bryce.

  • orbitalorbital Posts: 120
    edited December 1969

    wip. This is the raw render ready for the post work. Everything apart from the figures modelled in Bryce 5, then opened the file with some trepidation in Bryce 7 pro to add the figures and adjust the diffuse/ specularity in the sky lab. I don't use Bryce 7 much because of issues with handling large scene files. I noticed that just moving something slightly would take about 30 seconds in each case. Another problem I encountered is locking models in the scene. When this was done the individual models would lock but rotate themselves 90 degrees. Ctrl z wouldn't reset so I had to do it manually. Anybody know why?
    Anyway back to the image. The postwork will be adding a couple of planets and maybe a nebula, Plus I need to add some detail to the ship and maybe darken the shadows in the foreground. I going to play around with the dof as well although how much will depend on how it looks.

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  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,750
    edited December 1969

    Hmn... SSS is very tricky to setup, sometimes it works sometimes not. If you post me the scene I will have a go with what I know.

    Thanks David, you should have the scene soon. It is rather simple!


    I wonder if it's the same problem you get from transparent leaves when you use soft shadows... The shadows just disappear unless you render in Premium with TA.
    Either that or the floor material may be set to not accept shadows, or the lights in the flame are set to exclude the ground plane, or they are simply too low and create such a weak and blurred shadow that you can't see it... Or the ground plane could have a lot of ambient in the Mat Lab settings... There are quite a lot of possibilities.

    Thanks for all the suggestions. I might try some. I actually guess the issue is the limited light in the flames, but could be something else too.

    @hansmar - just place a default grey cylinder in your scene and watch where you find shadows. When the problem is solved, delete the cylinder. Or put a grey 2D-face on the table temporarily. Such small helpers are handy to finding the cause for such lighting problems.

    Thanks Horo, That is a good suggestion, I'll try something like that!

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,069
    edited December 1969

    @Dave - you made better use of Arbora than I have yet. The wheet looks quite convincing.

    @David - dragon and Amadillo look great.

    @orbital - that's going to become a very interesting scene. I haven't experienced this rotation yet. There was a time in earlier 7 versions when objects jumped but that has been resolved.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,798
    edited December 1969

    hansmar said:
    @Sean Riesch. I modified the light settings to 'ranged' and this looks quite OK. However, still no shadow underneath. Have no clue what causes this and how to change it. I did have to add somewhat more light from the cube fill light that is also in my cube, otherwise either the scene would be too dark or the flames too light.
    I wonder if it's the same problem you get from transparent leaves when you use soft shadows... The shadows just disappear unless you render in Premium with TA.
    Either that or the floor material may be set to not accept shadows, or the lights in the flame are set to exclude the ground plane, or they are simply too low and create such a weak and blurred shadow that you can't see it... Or the ground plane could have a lot of ambient in the Mat Lab settings... There are quite a lot of possibilities.

    @TheSavage64: nice water scene with really wonderful lighting! The 'doodle' looks like from a children's book. I think the dwarves are just behind that bush!


    Thanks... I was actually thinking about adding some sort of person climbing up the hillside towards the castle but decided to render as is. Maybe I'll do another version, but don't think I have any Dwarves in my collection. :)

    Self shadows get cancelled, not global shadows. Meaning the item itself wont occlude within itself, but it does cast shadows onto other models. If you test it on a leaf with soft shadows you will find that the tree looks terrible with no shadows from the leaves but there are still shadows found on the ground plane. At least that has been my experience.

    David B,
    Looking very very very good.

    Orbital,
    Bryce 7 shouldn't be doing that stuff to scenes you import from earlier versions of Bryce. I must admit I build most of my scenes in Bryce 7 so I don't have any experience with the issues you've named. I know you also work on a Mac with means you don't have the LAA option to increase your ram. It makes me sad that you are still stuck in Bryce 5 especially when rendering is so much faster in Bryce 7. Best of luck and as always your work is amazing.

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 4,956
    edited December 1969

    Great renders from everyone.

    Still learning from David’s tutorial my attempt at following his Geocrafting guide and the Importance of lighting tutorials.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go8vjGW-9sM

    The other tutorials are listed at http://www.bryce-tutorials.info/bryce-tutorials.html

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  • orbitalorbital Posts: 120
    edited December 1969

    hansmar said:
    @Sean Riesch. I modified the light settings to 'ranged' and this looks quite OK. However, still no shadow underneath. Have no clue what causes this and how to change it. I did have to add somewhat more light from the cube fill light that is also in my cube, otherwise either the scene would be too dark or the flames too light.
    I wonder if it's the same problem you get from transparent leaves when you use soft shadows... The shadows just disappear unless you render in Premium with TA.
    Either that or the floor material may be set to not accept shadows, or the lights in the flame are set to exclude the ground plane, or they are simply too low and create such a weak and blurred shadow that you can't see it... Or the ground plane could have a lot of ambient in the Mat Lab settings... There are quite a lot of possibilities.

    @TheSavage64: nice water scene with really wonderful lighting! The 'doodle' looks like from a children's book. I think the dwarves are just behind that bush!


    Thanks... I was actually thinking about adding some sort of person climbing up the hillside towards the castle but decided to render as is. Maybe I'll do another version, but don't think I have any Dwarves in my collection. :)

    Self shadows get cancelled, not global shadows. Meaning the item itself wont occlude within itself, but it does cast shadows onto other models. If you test it on a leaf with soft shadows you will find that the tree looks terrible with no shadows from the leaves but there are still shadows found on the ground plane. At least that has been my experience.

    David B,
    Looking very very very good.

    Orbital,
    Bryce 7 shouldn't be doing that stuff to scenes you import from earlier versions of Bryce. I must admit I build most of my scenes in Bryce 7 so I don't have any experience with the issues you've named. I know you also work on a Mac with means you don't have the LAA option to increase your ram. It makes me sad that you are still stuck in Bryce 5 especially when rendering is so much faster in Bryce 7. Best of luck and as always your work is amazing.

    Hi Rashad,
    I work on a pc, albeit a fairly old one but I find Bryce 5 far more stable. The scene file is not that big compared to some of my others. I find Bryce5 starts to slow down with anything over 500mb. This scene is only 155mb yet as mentioned Bryce 7 was really struggling to cope, whereas I had no problem with Bryce 5.
    As for rendering well it may be moved a little quicker in 7 when just doing a basic test render, but on the final render to disk it took over 2 hrs to do a basic object mask, whereas with 5 it was done in 20 minutes. Maybe my system isn't compatible with Bryce 7 at the moment, it obviously doesn't like something. To be honest it's not a major problem right now, the additions to Bryce 7 are good, but for the type of work I do I don't really need them. I find photoshop can come to the rescue if needs be anyhow.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    Mermaid: That is really Beautiful!!....Trish

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 4,956
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Trish.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,069
    edited December 1969

    @mermaid010 - the sun/shadow rays look awesome.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    c-ram said:
    Awesome David!!....Trish

    Thanks Trish, here's another little experiment along the same lines.

    Agree with Trish, that's incredible... I wonder how you can make such fantastic effect by using fuzzy factor in Bryce.

    Maybe this will help?

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - SSS effect for mesh models - by David Brinnen

    Also, Mermaid, looking good! Always nice to see the tutorials getting used.

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  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 4,956
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Horo and David.

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,750
    edited December 1969

    New attempt with candles. Still not completely satisfied. However, it is getting better.
    Thanks to David Brinnen for showing my mistake with fill light (no shadow).
    The light in the flames is too limited to provide good shadows. I tried: no light on the floor.
    This render is with meshes made in Hexagon.
    I still need to improve. I copied the candles and made them somewhat smaller. However, because of the opening at the top of the candle, this needs to be done differently. I then made new outer candles, but these are not perfect. I will have to redo with a candle in two layers, made in Hexagon.
    However, I like the purple one very much. So that is where I want to be going.
    Lights in the flames are now 'ranged'. Perhaps I will try 'squared' again too.

    candles9.jpg
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  • StuartBStuartB Posts: 596
    edited February 2014

    Not really important but has anyone noticed the Comments" counter on their gallery pages.
    It still reads "0" even when there are comments.

    Screenshot.

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    Post edited by StuartB on
  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited February 2014

    Stuart: I must say I have never noticed that before ....Weird....Trish
    David: you are just too good for any words that I could say.....Great Work
    Hansmar: I am not trying to be silly... but I don't see a purple one in that group....maybe its me....but your candles are really taking shape...nice modeling job

    Post edited by Trish on
This discussion has been closed.