Show Us Your Bryce Renders Part 11
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Another Waterfall, I started this one with the idea of creating a Bryce tree with snow on the leaves & branches. " First Snow "
adbc - thank you. The castle and plants look more natural this way (though I somehow liked the previous versions better).
mermaid - than you. Your landscape came out very nice. HDRShop is very powerful but also a bit tricky. I have some information about it on my website: Raytracing > IBL and HDRI > HDRShop if you have the time ...
R Ray - great waterfall, not the easiest to get right.
mermaid : thank you. Beautiful landscape, with a very nice atmosphere.
Horo : Thanks. Oh ... yes the landscape, a few reworks is always good to learn to do something better and in the end see the differences.
S Ray : Waterfalls look great, very difficult to make that work, I certainly won't try.
adbc, I ask you to forgive me for not immediately expressing all the complaints about your picture. I am writing this to you because your paintings show some progress in terms of mastering three-dimensional graphics. Textures, materials, atmosphere are all present. You lack realism in the construction of the landscape. Imagine that you are in this place and filming this castle with your camera. Where are you in this case? Are you shooting this view from a helicopter, or are you standing on a higher mountain than in the background?
Realism in the construction of a landscape is to imagine that you are nearby and observe it at the level of your eyes. This is the most familiar view from the point of view of human psychology. Place the camera on the level of the first floor of the building, and then the castle will appear in a majestic form, in all its splendor, despite the fact that it is dilapidated. Place plants around it in the near and middle ground. And most importantly: how can you approach it if there is no road or path, and the castle itself is surrounded by sheer cliffs. You can't even take a picture. And how did the builders deliver materials in the Middle Ages to build it? Ask yourself these questions and you will understand what is realism and beauty. Browse the internet for photos and paintings of artists on the subject for inspiration.
Now about what to do. Level the area under and around the castle in TE. There should be no hills or elevations in front of the camera so that they do not obstruct the view from the camera. But there may be water. First, instead of a castle, place a cube of similar size in the scene. Customize the camera view. Make a test render. Then start planting trees. Use top and director's views for proper placement of objects. If you choose the director's view, then select the object of interest, use the "Center Celection" command and rotate the trackball to inspect the object from all sides. You can do a quick render at the same time and make sure that the object does not hang in the air or is not sunk too much in the ground. After all, switch to the camera view and do your work further, adjust and clarify the atmosphere, lighting, etc. Or make the final render.
Good luck to you.
The mist from the waterfall looks very good. The winter scene makes me shiver because it looks so cold. I especially like the snow in the foreground and the snow on the trees. Mermaid, the haze in your scene reminds me of a volcanic planet the spews sulfur dioxide and other poisonous gasses.
I'm going to venture posting a couple of images that I made while following David Brinnen's tutorials. The images are not my designs, they are David's designs from his tutorials that can be found on YouTube by searching for Bryce quick scene project - plane and terrain - by David Brinnen and Bryce shoreline - a 15 minute tutorial by David Brinnen.
Edit: I do have a couple of questions. I realize that in the water valley image that the hills don't come across as being large because of the teradactyls' size and maybe the material but I didn't know how to fix it. What I do have an issue with, and in other scenes, is the reflection in the water. It seems too big. If I reduce the size of the water material it does help but then the water can look too small in scale compared to the hills. I had this issue with the sea shore picture too. The hills in the distance on the left side left a reflection that came almost all the way to the shore. Not realistic. I ended up putting the hills way, way in the back but now they hardly matter to the image. What is the secret to water reflections?
NGartplay - first, I think both your renders look quite good. Some want to make something that looks natural, real and possible, others want to play with their imagination and the result may not look realistic and that may not even be desired. The artist decides whether the result is a success, not the beholders.
For terrains, it depends on the size. The default size of a terrain 81.92 x 20.48 x 81.92 is seldom good, and the area to height ratio of 4:1 is often exaggerated. The bigger the terrain, the easier is it to get haze right. Haze is important because it is a clue to distance. Depending on the terrain (or any object) size, the texture in the Materials Lab may or may not fit. Click in the upper left button of a texture to open the Edit Texture window. It lets you adjust the texture size (top), the rotation (middle) and offset (bottom) for X, Y and Z. You can also enter the deep texture editor (DTE) to adjust but this is more elaborate.
Water is colourless and transparent (if it's not dirty). But the light is slowed in the water compared to the air and this is described by the refraction index - in the Bryce Materials Lab Refraction is the index x 100, so water has a refraction index of 1.33 and in Bryce this is 133. Between the air and the water the light rays are bent and this also makes the water reflecting. If you look down into the water you see the ground (if the water is not too deep) but if you look out over the water, you see the sky reflected - refraction is responsible for that.
Some use a 3D slab for the water, I just use a 2D-face or an infinite plane, I have it (most of the time) 99.7% transparent, 0.3% reflecting and 133 refraction - and bump makes the waves. The size of the bump texture depends on whether this is the water of a pond, a lake or the sea. If you have a violent wavy sea shore, bump may not be enough and you have to use a terrain.
Strong reflections of a bright light (e.g. the sun) can be added by Speculartity and additionally adjusted with Specular Halo.
In a nutshell: experiment and have fun.
Horo, the suggestions are taken to heart, thank you. The settings I will note, for sure. I'm not sure that I strive for complete realism but I do want something that ends up being pleasing to the eye. Maybe that's more about composition? I have a lot of tutorials to get through before I start making my own compositions. The sea shore tutorial took me the longest to get a somewhat nice image. David made it look easy in 15 minutes but I had to revisit his video numerous times just to finish my render. Also, David will have something on his screen that looks perfectly good to me but then he ends up redoing it or tweaking it. Maybe that's what a pro user does and why they exel.
Thank you again for the support and information. I am having fun. I missed working with Bryce.
The terrain and the copy in the distance were made with Gasclouds_B09 and the HDRI is also used as sky and ambient light. The object in the inner crater was made with Incendia.
Slepalex : Your comment is somehow a wake up call, although I should leave landscape experiments (except fantasy) to the experts. Realism : you are right about that. Now just to trying to find some kind of explanation : it could be a very old castle (ruin) build very long time ago, overgrown with vegetation with new rock formations etc.. Answering all the questions I think the replies may not be satsifactory. Seeing a landscape from your point of view : starting with the terrain, adding object(s) and plant vegetation around it, fiddle with the camera and the different views I think I follow that workflow also but "differently" since the obvious results. I never thought in terms of taking a photo and to produce a realistic landscape, that happens sometimes (by accident). Anyway I came with some answers and reworked it accordingly, probably not good enough, to me it looks acceptable.
Horo : very good results with the gasclouds, great choice of colours. Your explanation to NGartPlay is very useful to me as well.
Horo, your image has an ominous look to it. The terrain looks like teeth that are going to swallow up the ship/boat. Your materials are always 'spot on'.
Adbc, that ruined castle is pretty cool. Also like the haze on the heather.
adbc - thank you. The new incarnation of the castle looks very good.
NGartplay - thank you.
Horo: Very well made terrains from the Gasclouda and spectacular skies (of course). I think I like the one from Gasclouds_B05 best followed by the one from Gascloud_09.
Spuddy: I agree, better with the lurker and without the car.
Mermaid010: Very well done. The first one looks like some Mayan or Inca or whatever temples. The second looks like dried out rice fields, with all vegetation gone. The one from gascloud is very realistic, I think.
Adbc: Your experiments with gasclouds also look very good. The final version of the landscape with the ruins of the castle is indeed the best. And you should not leave landscapes to the experts only. If we left all the difficult work to the experts, we would never show anything to anyone.
S Ray: Your waterfall and the water underneath already look quite good. Perhaps a bit too much light at the bottom of the waterfall. The second one looks light just the spray to me. But the snow looks amazing.
NGartplay: Both renders look very good to me. Keep following tutorials and experimenting!
I made some more landscapes with the help of the TE-filters and further modifications. First: rocky island
I tried to follow David B's tutorial on shore-line around islands for this one. Not completely succesful, but OK for me.
Next one: New Mountain
This one started from a photo of a waterfall (from the top, showing largely the froth of the falling water.
Third one uses the same landscape but with some dinosaurs and a Homo Erectus (these probably never lived in the same time, I did not check).
I used (generally slightly modified) preset skies for the last two and a HDRI augmented sky by Horo for the first.
Hansmar, my favorite is number 1 because I love the water and the texture looks very good. Like the spiky terrain in number 2. You could probably texture them to look like trees. The sky in number 3 is perfect for a prehistoric look.
NGartplay, Horo, Hansmar : thank you.
Hansmar : cool landscapes, the 3rd one has my preference, great water texture on the rocky island, the effect of water on the new mountain is very well done.
Hansmar - thank you. Three interesting pictures. The first - Rocky Island - looks quite realistic. Yes, getting the shore right is not always easy and I think you did a good job. I agree with NGartplay for the New Mountain. It's a nice terrain but the material applied has yet some potential to be improved; sky and reflection on the water look fine. I like the third - Jurassic - best. I like the idea of the Homo overlooking the dinos from this save vantage point, sky and water give this render a dramatic mood.
The terrain was generated from an HDRI and given an adjusted material from Terrain Stacking, the clouds are from Object Clouds 2D & 3D (both available at bryce-tutorials). Sky and ambient light by the Gasclouds_B10 HDRI (like the terrain), the key light by the sun. Soft mounds and some rocks.
SRay - great waterfall examples, the snow looks great in the 2nd render.
Horo - thanks, reading is not a problem, these days comprehending is. Another outstanding landscape, the lighting and materials are perfect. Mounds and Rock is another amazing render.
Adbc - thanks, The remake of the castle render look very nice.
Slepalex - thanks for your explanation, although it's addressed to Adbc, we all benefit.
NGartplay - thanks, both your renders are very nice, you did an awesome job with the Shoreline, much better than my attempt at David's tutorial.
Hansmar - thanks. Three amazing renders, my fav is the dinosaurs, sky is awesome.
mermaid - thank you.
Horo, that's quite an interesting landscape. We have green, rolling hills then fall-offs with rock material. In the center is a craggy rock formation and another off in the distance. Makes me wonder what caused that and what's living there. I'm a tomboy in heart and if I was younger I'd be all over those rocks.
Horo : awesome image with the gasclouds_10, beautiful sky and clouds, great material on the terrain.
mermaid : thanks.
NGartplay and adbc - thank you.
I watched an animation that showed a scene of crazy roots coming out of shallow water that dropped off into the deep and small fish everywhere. Thought that I'd try it. Mine ended up looking like a tropical scene. Posting this for a couple of reasons. First is that I used a water plane and after rendering I get a very distorted image that looks almost like watercolor. Why does that happen? Second, this renders somewhat slowly. It said 2 hours 26 minutes but ended up being 1 hour 18 minutes. I used 12 maximum ray depth, 36 rays per pixel and super fine render. I'd like to know how the max ray depth and rays per pixel affect render time. Is a higher max ray depth better for quality?
NGartplay - it may not look as what you had in mind but I find your result very good. The camera is above the water plane and looks through it. Bump and refraction may be what gives you the impression of distortion. Perhaps the bump pattern is too small. Nevertheless, I like your result.
Super (Fine Art AntiAliasing) is very slow. If the result is not good enough with Regular (Normal AntiAliasing), use Premium (Effect AntiAliasing). In Regular, you can adjust AA Radius, Rays and Tolerance though I never found an obvious difference when I fiddled around with them. Default settings in regular are quite good. The expected render time is shown for the render, exclusive the AA pass, which can be up to 10 times longer than the render.
Premium uses another raytracing engine. If you use shadow softness for the sun, lights, IBL Regular gets very slow, Premium is faster and gives a better result. The expected render time is relatively accurate and is for the complete render. There is no additional AA pass, it is included in the render. If you start the render it looks much slower than with Regular. With 9 Rays per pixel (rpp) it is about as fast as Regular inclusive AA pass. 9 rpp are often enough, sometimes 16 or more are needed if the shadows and the transition shadow to no shadow looks pixelised. Depth of Field may need 36 or 64 rpp, True Ambience most of the time 256 and during developing time we asked for up to 1024.
The render time increases with the rpp setting, you can multiply it. Example: rpp 36/ rpp 9 = 4, 36 rpp needs 4 times more time than 9. The same is true for 64 rpp versus 16 rpp and therefore 4 rpp renders 64 times faster than 256.
Maximum Ray Depth (mrd) also has an influence on render time, but much less than rpp. Max ray depth determines how many times a ray must continue after having met a surface. An example would be to put a completely reflecting surface in front and behind the camera. With default 6 mrd you soon see a black square, if you set it to 50 or more, you really get the image of a mirrored mirror. A high mrd setting doesn't have a dramatic impact on render time, it depends the scene. For your render, I think 4 to 6 would be enough, though 12 doesn't have a dramatic effect on time. Note that it is the Maximal Ray Depth, if there is nothing to continue for the ray, it won't continue and stop earlier then the set mrd.
NGartplay : I like your render too, beautiful colours, great FOV.
Horo : thanks for the explanation, very useful.
NGartplay - very nice render, I love the painterly effect.
Horo - thanks for the useful explanation, learning all the time.
Thank you Horo, adbc and mermaid. I found it quite interesting too. The green plants in the water are tall and straight but they end up looking all twisty. I wonder if you can get the same watercolor look using the same material on the water plane but without the bump distortion. Might give that a try.
Horo, thank you for the explanation. I'm going to have to give different settings a try and see how they affect my times for me to remember this. I had tried regular render first and it was quick but the image was quite pixelated. That's when I fiddled with settings. I've always been afraid to use premium render because if super fine is slow I figured that premium would be even worse. Now I'm not afraid to try using premium. Appreciate the help.
I have yet another question. Was following a simple abstract tutorial and created this picture. I rendered it with default/regular render settings in 6 minutes. It turned out pretty good but there was slight pixelation if you look very closely. I then tried premium render with 64 ppr, 6 mrd, true ambience, boost lighting and reflection correction. Wow, so slow. It may have taken days to render. So I removed boost lighting, reflection correction, true ambience and turned down ppr to 16 and mrd to 4. It rendered in 13 minutes.
What I noticed between the regular render and this premium render that I'm posting is that the premium is darker and I lost some of the reflection but there is no obvious pixelation like in the regular render. Why is the premium render darker?
NGartplay - the abstract looks beautiful. Yes, Premium renders are often a bit darker than Regular/Super because it uses the other render engine (yes, Bryce has 2). I develop a scene in Regular and when I use Premium for the final (and usually double size) render, I have to increase the light a bit, around 5% to 20% but it depends on the scene.
By the way, Boost Light works great for True Ambience but has almost no effect otherwise. If your scene has a lot of reflections (and reflected reflections) as often is the case in abstracts, the option Reflection Correction can make a big difference how the image looks.
Thank you Horo! It's great to understand the effects that each render option has on render times. I have not found a tutorial yet that describes the relationship. It is something that I would bookmark. This is also information that I have never known, even years ago when I used Bryce every day. So helpful.
NGartplay : great abstract, love the colours.