Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 6

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Comments

  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    @Dave: Your recent work is simply awesome. Your first sphere images appear taken from the 15th or 16th century, because of the material you used. I love playing around with that material. And the amp, whoa, nice.

    @Stuart: Thank you ever so much. Yes, I will have a go because I need a couple of walls in the scene I'm putting together.

    @David: Those first two images are so neat. Especially the details on the dragon.

    @Bruce: Boat and motor model are great. I've found out from past scenes, if something is completely flat Bryce doesn't play nice with it. Try rotating both of those two seats around the X axis about .01 degrees.

    @Trish: Great scene, but Don Quixote's nemesis is missing some of its arms.

    @Jay: Love the look in that scene. Spooky atmosphere, sort of like "they're here."

    @Horo: Great abstracts.

    @electro: Those are nice looking cubes, and the other thingy.

    @fran: Cute character, and it fits perfectly into that room.


    I don't remember the last time I posted my results for my fountain, without looking at previous posts, so I'll just say it's been a few days; seems more like weeks. After a few e-mails between Rashad and myself, and a lot of trials and plenty of errors, I finally achieved something I think I can live with. Comments gladly welcomed.

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  • useroperatoruseroperator Posts: 247
    edited January 2014

    not a bryce render, but I think you guys will enjoy it anyways since it has to do with funky shapes. this one was not made following any tutorials. basically like an 'X' turned into a mobius. This particular model has about 500,000 poly's.

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  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited December 1969

    @hansmar - have you tried a normal TA render? Or a common IBL one? I had investigated Obscure from the inside a while ago and found interesting applications but all suffered from noise.

    @electro-elvis - nice cubes. I like the one at left best. The Bryce one is probable the one at the right, though it's hard to say. The ball is great.

    @franontheedge - nice idea about the SnowPea. I wonder how it handles the pipe.

    @GussNemo - the fountain came a big way in the meantime. The falling water has a feel of ice.

    @user.operator - nice animation. I've also considered such an animation once but resorted to make it to an anaglyph.

  • JamahoneyJamahoney Posts: 1,791
    edited December 1969

    franontheedge...love your characters - for some unknown reason they remind me of Chagall-like sculptures.

    Guss...fountain and water certainly looks way better, but, yeah, as Horo says, it has an icicle look to the water. But that said, it is very hard to simulate movement in water - perhaps transparency, specular attributes might help, or a splash effect where the vertical-falling water is hitting the horizontal water parts. Of course, the fountain alone in the scene, as is, is the only thing to look at, so putting the whole lot in, say, a garden setting, will add a more realistic render, I'll guess. Look forward to it.

    user.operator....so good to see animation in the forum.

    Jay

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

    Graphics done (I think)... That was fun. :)

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  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited January 2014

    @Dave - that amp looks really great.

    I took an old render I made with Bryce 6.1 almost 4 years ago. IBL has indeed changed a lot and it took me quite some time to adjust everything. The building is Sector 15 and like the Toon-Bot Chomper and the Toon Alien from DAZ 3D. The semi-transparent red object is a Klein bottle made by David in Wings3D quite a while ago. IBL does not suffice with only the windows to let the light in so there is also the sun with soft shadows and a couple of radials, with soft shadows, too. What's visible through the window is from the HDRI used: a small part of the back of a 32 m/104 ft dish antenna. Rendered through the EWL emulating a 16 mm fisheye lens.

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

    Edit, very nice render Dave, also nice of you to mention our product!
    Thanks David. I've also tagged your product on these uploads to my gallery. Always like to help out where I can.

    Those leaves look great. Not sure that render time is an issue, could you do a comparison render using regular lighting settings?
    The dragon in your previous post looks great too... I'm way behind with the hyper texture exploration as I have only managed to watch one tutorial and it wasn't the forst one you did on this subject so I didn't rightly understand what was going on.
    Will catch up eventually. :)

    Thanks Dave and yes I can do a comparison (and nice work on the amp BTW).

    Three minute TA render. 16 rpp. Note the noise. Default Bryce sun (100% shadow intensity) as light source, sky hdri background providing additional light via TA optimised in IBL.

    The leaves admit light but cast a reasonable shadow, scatter light internally and do not glow. Issues... render time.

    So.. Scatter light doesn't work properly with leaves? That's a sad news.. I'll look forward to learn your sss technic when a video will be available on your YouTube channel and then to apply it on some objects, I have some ideas until I have seen it.

    OK so it sort of does and does not work. Depending on your definition of "scattering". So this I hope helps answer this question as well as Dave's request above.

    Oh but Jay, love your torus renders, the second one "Hell" in particular is just stunningly good. But I'm trying not to get distracted, as tempting as it is to experiment with effects like that I'm trying to answer the questions about the leaves. So here goes. Staying OT as much as possible...

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering leaves on trees - by David Brinnen


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  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    @user.operator: That's a bonzo object in that animation.

    @Horo: Thanks. And yeah, the water does have a ice look, but I've got it this far. I like the feel of that scene, nice.

    @Jay: Thank you. I didn't know I was a telepath, because what you've suggested is along my train of thought. After so many iterations I was very happy to end up with what you see, though it still isn't as I want it to look.

    @Dave: The final amp image is terrific. Nice work. But has the electronics been installed correctly? :-)

    @David: Another interesting, and nicely done, video.

  • useroperatoruseroperator Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    whats a bonzo lol

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited December 1969

    @David - interesting video, doing some tests at the moment. You set transparency colour = diffuse colour. If we consider there is some liquid in the cells (though there is of course none in a flat sheet), reducing saturation for transparency to 50% and at the same time up lightness by 50% would have the leaf skin darker than the liquid within. So if for diffuse S=78 set it to 39 for transparency and if L=100, set it to 150.

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

    Horo said:
    @David - interesting video, doing some tests at the moment. You set transparency colour = diffuse colour. If we consider there is some liquid in the cells (though there is of course none in a flat sheet), reducing saturation for transparency to 50% and at the same time up lightness by 50% would have the leaf skin darker than the liquid within. So if for diffuse S=78 set it to 39 for transparency and if L=100, set it to 150.

    Thanks Horo, yes I don't know what the most appropriate values are, I just tried to match the render with real world images of leaves on a tree. The transparent colour represents what is left behind after absorption presumably, but this also is influenced in intensity by the transparency setting (as can be seen in ht experiments). Another interest test is put yourself inside a Bryce primitive and set the transparency to 100 and the colour to fully black. The walls light up inside but no direct light gets inside. And then if volume is set to black, then it is truly dark inside. A lot of combinations to explore here, in light of what can be exploited with ht and TA I think.

  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    @Dave - that amp looks really great.

    I took an old render I made with Bryce 6.1 almost 4 years ago. IBL has indeed changed a lot and it took me quite some time to adjust everything. The building is Sector 15 and like the Toon-Bot Chomper and the Toon Alien from DAZ 3D. The semi-transparent red object is a Klein bottle made by David in Wings3D quite a while ago. IBL does not suffice with only the windows to let the light in so there is also the sun with soft shadows and a couple of radials, with soft shadows, too. What's visible through the window is from the HDRI used: a small part of the back of a 32 m/104 ft dish antenna. Rendered through the EWL emulating a 16 mm fisheye lens.

    I remember this render Horo, nice new touch here!

  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376
    edited December 1969

    Oups.. Forgot David in my last post : very instructive video. I already know most of those technical stuffs but that's another good didactic approach.

  • useroperatoruseroperator Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    I kind of feel like even though TA can produce some good results, it's not necessarily good for a whole scene. If bryce allowed you to selectively render certain objects with TA and others without, these techniques would be a bit more useful.

  • GoshtacGoshtac Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Hi guys;

    First off, thanks for the comments on the boat - luckily in scene I am rendering right now (12 hours so far) the boat seats and most of the other details not seen in the image.

    Love the hollow torus effects I have seen here the past few days - Gave me some fun ideas to play with once my render finishes. I have used many hollow objects in the past, but never thought of taking the view from inside. Great idea!!!

    Guss, Love the way your water fountain is coming along. I concur that maybe a little splashing at the pool would help sell the effect of the flowing water - I just did a similar splashing effect with my current render at the base of some falls and a little misting in post might also add to the look.

    Sorry guys that I often miss mentioning some members by name on some of the wonderful renders in this forum. I guess I will start having to keep a list of who is doing what here as the great work and techniques never cease to amaze me. I find this one of my favorite forum threads to check out whenever I get time to get online... Hope everyone having a great weekend - we are getting blowing snow here right now.

    Bruce

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

    c-ram said:
    Oups.. Forgot David in my last post : very instructive video. I already know most of those technical stuffs but that's another good didactic approach.

    How about this then?

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering trees on a terrain - by David Brinnen - by David Brinnen

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  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376
    edited December 1969

    David: welldone!! That's a very good trick! But I'll only use that kind of stuff for the background, because in the foreground, you can really see that these are not looking like natural trees. However, another nice demonstration of your powerful knowledge with Bryce!

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited January 2014

    c-ram said:
    David: welldone!! That's a very good trick! But I'll only use that kind of stuff for the background, because in the foreground, you can really see that these are not looking like natural trees. However, another nice demonstration of your powerful knowledge with Bryce!

    Aye, that is the drawback, so here I have hidden the foreground with some eco-trees made by Horo. And added in a bit of volume cloud made by me. Render time 30 minutes.

    Edit. Second image - twice as large, less the clouds, render time 20 minutes.

    Edit. Third image - a more subdued effect.

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  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited December 1969

    But I'm trying not to get distracted, as tempting as it is to experiment with effects like that I'm trying to answer the questions about the leaves. So here goes. Staying OT as much as possible...

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering leaves on trees - by David Brinnen


    This method does not convince me. I've prepared a video for you on your FTP.

    Thanks for the trees on terrain video. I'll got to look at that one presently.

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

    Horo said:
    But I'm trying not to get distracted, as tempting as it is to experiment with effects like that I'm trying to answer the questions about the leaves. So here goes. Staying OT as much as possible...

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering leaves on trees - by David Brinnen


    This method does not convince me. I've prepared a video for you on your FTP.

    Thanks for the trees on terrain video. I'll got to look at that one presently.

    Yes I see what you mean. The back lit leaves are much brighter than expected. The observation over the render time suggest that there is no overhead on refraction if the reflection is eliminated. Such as was also the case here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEW8o_-9klU

    I'm not sure it is possible to provide a material solution that takes account of all possible contingencies - although it may be. I will go back to the drawing board and do some more experiments.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,800
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    But I'm trying not to get distracted, as tempting as it is to experiment with effects like that I'm trying to answer the questions about the leaves. So here goes. Staying OT as much as possible...

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering leaves on trees - by David Brinnen


    This method does not convince me. I've prepared a video for you on your FTP.

    Thanks for the trees on terrain video. I'll got to look at that one presently.

    Yes I see what you mean. The back lit leaves are much brighter than expected. The observation over the render time suggest that there is no overhead on refraction if the reflection is eliminated. Such as was also the case here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEW8o_-9klU

    I'm not sure it is possible to provide a material solution that takes account of all possible contingencies - although it may be. I will go back to the drawing board and do some more experiments.

    Interesting results with the landscapes David. It looks great. I think however the "Nothing" Procedural approach might still win out over the new arrangement you've discovered. My own tests years ago revealed to me that the instant you increase the transparency slider above 0, no matter what the refraction setting, you will initiate a small degree of Internal Reflection. Typical optical transparency will always cause the effect where the inside facing geometry suddenly receives light and reflects it. The Nothing procedural approach allows the object to take on light admittance properties, but to circumvent all internal reflection which prevents the leaves from behaving like glass.

    I'm wondering what hypertextured Nothing procedural might look like. No time to test now off to work but please do keep up the experiments, David!

    Guss,
    Looks great. I do agree that for some reason it has taken on an ice like appearance. For next winter you've already got your icicles worked out. To make this look more like water, you might need to add some blue tint color to the water, for some reason in my own experiments I found this helped. Thanks for taking the time to implement a suggestion of mine. Keep it up!

    Savage,
    Sweetness all around. You are amazing as always.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited January 2014

    Horo said:
    But I'm trying not to get distracted, as tempting as it is to experiment with effects like that I'm trying to answer the questions about the leaves. So here goes. Staying OT as much as possible...

    Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - rendering leaves on trees - by David Brinnen


    This method does not convince me. I've prepared a video for you on your FTP.

    Thanks for the trees on terrain video. I'll got to look at that one presently.

    Yes I see what you mean. The back lit leaves are much brighter than expected. The observation over the render time suggest that there is no overhead on refraction if the reflection is eliminated. Such as was also the case here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEW8o_-9klU

    I'm not sure it is possible to provide a material solution that takes account of all possible contingencies - although it may be. I will go back to the drawing board and do some more experiments.

    Interesting results with the landscapes David. It looks great. I think however the "Nothing" Procedural approach might still win out over the new arrangement you've discovered. My own tests years ago revealed to me that the instant you increase the transparency slider above 0, no matter what the refraction setting, you will initiate a small degree of Internal Reflection. Typical optical transparency will always cause the effect where the inside facing geometry suddenly receives light and reflects it. The Nothing procedural approach allows the object to take on light admittance properties, but to circumvent all internal reflection which prevents the leaves from behaving like glass.

    I'm wondering what hypertextured Nothing procedural might look like. No time to test now off to work but please do keep up the experiments, David!

    It is not so much a discovery, just an experiment which came about due to fiddling with the surface scattering materials. The nothing approach is Horo's favorite, and it may well be the best, but I wanted to look at this from another angle. The introduction of nothing removes the reflective properties that are inherent with applying refraction - which in itself is an interesting thing - but when this is applied to a 2d object as opposed to a 3d object it has strange effects on the response of the transparency and diffusion. I've tinkered with this a bit, but I can't find a happy balance between front lit and back lit. So if a material has to be fine tuned for whatever lighting, then I thought I would try and eliminate the need for refraction altogether - if possible. I knew, which is why I stated this twice, that some people would not like this idea. But it is something I thought might be worth experimenting with. And it seems to work for the terrains - although maybe the nothing approach might work better for those as well? Something else to test!

    Anyway, as prompted I'm looking at the back lit situation now.

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  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Me again with a random render drop.

    This one has a story to it, as it is basically Fan Art. and you have to follow the series to really understand

    The Final Confrontation

    It is in my Gallery, with a quick resumé of the story behind the image http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/19404

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  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,929
    edited December 1969

    Ok, I tried a simple fill light in my room: no grain. So it must have something to do with the obscure methode. See the result (very simple render, default AA) in the picture.

    @Jamahoney: Forgot to mention that your hell looks nice.

    @horo. Nice abstracts from within the torus. And cute scifi scene.

    @electro-elvis: see above: indeed, it is the obscure method itself.
    I like your top wing-things a lot.

    @Fran. Your SnowPea could be an important character in a movie. Looks good.

    @GussNemo: Great fountain now. I think, however, it has frozen. Was that the look you were looking for?

    @TheSavage64: great AMP!

    @David: Very good work on the terrains. And I like the last tree render a lot. Maybe too much light on the backside, but looks convincing to me.

    @chohole: I guess the drop was random. The render is very well organised and executed.

    Finally, next to the picture of my animal without grain, an abstract that is actually from the same scene as my entry to the new H2O contest! Just put the camera below the surface and zoomed out a little. I like it. By the way, my entry can be found here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/35283/#528456

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  • Electro-ElvisElectro-Elvis Posts: 883
    edited January 2014

    @David: I think these are the best looking distant trees I have seen so far by Bryce. I have threw together a little scene.

    @hansmar: A good method to light things I have learnt by watching a scene of DocSavage64. Maybe you could try e.g. 3 radial lights and you give them a maximum soft shadow.

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  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,929
    edited December 1969

    @electro-elvis. Thanks for the advice. I'll keep trying different things. Great scene!

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,800
    edited December 1969

    Hansmar,

    3D Fill Lights are in essence point lights that fire rays from multiple points. The exact number of points is determined by the Quality slider. A setting of 32 means there are 32 virtual radial lights in the Fill. The best way to use a 3D Fill is to enlarge it to the size of the room itself. 3D Fills can do an awesome job of indirect lighting in a room, but indirect light doesnt look right if you dont also use some sort of a key light to provide the direct illumination. You should be using the fill to provide indirect light instead of ambience glow for instance. What you will find with 3D Fills is similar to what you find with IBL, the issue of shadow banding. Each point in the fill emits lights and casts a shadow. The only way to smooth out the shadows is to increase the quality of the Fill. You can also engage Soft Shadows from the light source, but this can lead to terrible render times. As is using a single radial in a scene adds substantially to a render time, imagine a 3D Fill with quality 100, means there are now 100 soft shadow radials in your scene leading to very slow renders. So either correct the banding with higher quality, or use lower quality but with soft shadows. Either way, 3D Fills have issues as well.

    True Ambience is another beast all together, and it operates in a statistical manner. The noise of TA renders is the same noise you get from most any render engine producing GI. Noise is unavoidable, but it can often be reduced to the point where it isnt very visible.

    Ta has noise, 3D Fills have shadow bands, Neither method is without benefits and caveats.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,800
    edited December 1969

    I kind of feel like even though TA can produce some good results, it's not necessarily good for a whole scene. If bryce allowed you to selectively render certain objects with TA and others without, these techniques would be a bit more useful.

    True Ambience is good for entire scenes. But it requires understanding. TA isnt nearly as user friendly as it should be and needs to be to pull in more new users.

    Do you know about TA in Legacy Mode?

    TA can be applied to the models you select and can be instructed to disregard other surfaces. In the original True Ambience of Bryce 5 and Bryce 6, TA got its intensity input from the Ambience Channel instead of from the Diffuse Channel as it does now. Hence the name...True Ambience.

    The theory was well intended but fundamentally flawed in practice. In order for a surface to participate in the TA process the surface needed the Ambience slider to be moved above 0. The problem with this method is that any amount of glow from a material works against the TA inter-reflection process, as Ambience itself is a uniform light covering a model without any interaction with anything else in the scene. TA is all about interaction, so in a sense glow cancels out the subtle TA effect. The only way to get TA to produce correct results was to make Skylab Ambience color to fully black. Since Material ambience gets its intensity from the Skylab Ambience color, if the sky lab swatch had any degree of color in it the TA of the material was greatly affected. Black sky ambience solves the problem to a point. But what if your scene has fire in it? Doesnt the fire require some degree of Ambience glow to look right? But if your sky ambience color is black, then your fire material will not glow. So you have to make a choice, either items that glow or TA based on the ambience channel as an input.

    It was for this reason that TA in Bryce 7 now uses the Diffuse Channel as its input, which is the way every other software on the planet also does it.

    In the Render Settings, select Legacy Mode and have at it.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,800
    edited December 1969

    Nice sense of action in that render, Chohole!

    ElectroElvis: That landscape looks awesome!

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited January 2014

    just dropped in to let you know that Faverals store is 60% off......I got Hacienda Hermosa (this is huge) came into Bryce easy the only thing I changed was the water material.... http://www.daz3d.com/faveral

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