Trees and Roads

theschemer

Good morning,
I found the tree editor. I knew there was a way to make better trees. Although you have to pay attention when flipping options, I think it is a very powerful tool. Now I am happy I figured that out as I need Pine trees for my project. When my flu goes away I am sure to be a bit quicker to learn but I am going to work on the trees for now until I can make my forest scene. Any tips on making a forest after I get my one pine tree figured out?

What is the best way to make a dirt road with sand or with gravel?

Thanks,
theschemer

Horo

@theschemer - best thing is always experimenting and this is true for the tree lab as well. There is a free tutorial on my website (see sig). Go to Raytracing > Tutorials > Page 2 > Good looking trees. There is also information how to make plants and whole eco-systems using just one tree - or use trees to make rather weird things.

Dirt road: find a stony material in the Materials Lab and adjust it in the Deep Texture Editor (DTE) to make it meet your specs.

theschemer

Thanks Horo,
I just read the pdf tutorial. Great info. How much memory can Bryce Pro 7.1 use? Is it still hard coded at 2GB? The more I experiment the more I like Bryce. I will see what I can do on some roads.
theschemer

Dave Savage

My tip on making the forest is to spend some time learning how to use the Instancing lab.
It will be a great help to you as long as you understand it's quirks and it's tendency to crash Bryce.
But don't let that put you off. With clever use of the instancing lab you can duplicate your tree (or select several different trees) en-mass randomly to follow the contours of your terrain.

As for making the dirt track. You can do that by creating your terrain and then using the terrain editor to physically draw your path so it dips into your terrain or is raised from your terrain, then assign materials with an altitude filter or use a flatter terrain set slightly lower and coloured differently as I did in the render below.

Hope this helps.

GussNemo

You can also select which trees you want by holding down the Alt key as you click on the tree icon in the Create window. Another window opens which shows you all the available trees.

At to making forest, I'm sorry I can't be any help there. Do keep in mind, though, Bryce does everything in memory. That is it doesn't use the hard drive as an temporary storage space while it does its work. Adding a lot of things, trees included, will quickly fill up memory and cause Bryce to stop working or completely crash.

I've never created roads for my scenes, but if I did I would use a terrain that has been modified. Create a terrain, click on the 'E' icon in the list of icons to the side of the terrain to get to the Terrain Editor. First image. The second image gives a bit of information about some of the controls I'd use to create a road. You can also use the Invert button to start a terrain then play around with the different brushes until you get the look you're after. It's then just a matter of finding the right material.

theschemer

Thanks Savage and Nemo,
I will work on what you all posted and see how I get along. One important question. Can you quit a render once you start it so you don't have to wait once you see it is a non-user?
theschemer

GussNemo

theschemer said:

Thanks Savage and Nemo,
I will work on what you all posted and see how I get along. One important question. Can you quit a render once you start it so you don't have to wait once you see it is a non-user?
theschemer

Yes you can, just click the render button again or left click in the working window. There's something else you can do. If you have a nice scene rendering but don't want to let it finish rendering until later, if you click on the small button to the right of the large render button, then immediately save that scene, you can come back later, open that scene, click on that small button again, and your render will proceed where it left off. Doing this save a lot of time if you have a long render.

Horo

@theschemer - provided you don't render to disk, you can stop the render and save it. Then resume next time you load by clicking on the small green button right of the large one. I think you have to stop the render with ESC. Try it first before you stop a long render.

Bryce has the 2 GB limit but you can make it large address aware (LAA) and then you can go to about 3.2 to 3.5 GB provided your system has enough memory for this.

Dave Savage

Yes you can stop a render at any time by simply clicking on the render screen. Then click back on the EDIT or CREATE tab to go back to wireframe mode to continue editing and creating.

You can also 'Pause' a render in this way too, and then as long as you don't actually change anything, you can 'resume render' from where you paused it by clicking the little green button to the direct right of the big render button.

You can also 'plop render' a chosen section of your picture by lassoing which ever portion of the picture you'd like to see rendered and then clicking on the render button.

theschemer

Thanks to all 3 of you. Looks like you all posted about the same time. :)

Great I can stop the renders. When new you make a lot of experimental choices and some render really slow even on a fairly fast machine. I like the 'plop render" as that is a neat feature.

I have 16GB RAM so I will adjust it up (LAA) but can't find where to set it?? I looked under preferences and didn't find it but I only found a few typos on one line:

Remeber DS Choise

Thanks for all the help guys, I am starting to have fun already.
theschemer

p.s. Great render TheSavage64.

p.s.s. I found this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/

Horo

Use LAA in Advanced mode, then you can add programs.

theschemer

Horo said:

Use LAA in Advanced mode, then you can add programs.

So I presume a fairly stable program (LAA) with no major issues to worry about? I am running Win 7 64 Pro.
Thanks,
theschemer

Horo

theschemer said:

So I presume a fairly stable program (LAA) with no major issues to worry about? I am running Win 7 64 Pro.
Thanks,
theschemer

I'm also running Win 7 64 Pro. Never had any issues with LAA. By the way, the Process Monitor is also a great help because you can select the application to be monitored (CPU, handles and memory). Win Task manager is always a summary.

theschemer

Horo said:

theschemer said:

So I presume a fairly stable program (LAA) with no major issues to worry about? I am running Win 7 64 Pro.
Thanks,
theschemer

I'm also running Win 7 64 Pro. Never had any issues with LAA. By the way, the Process Monitor is also a great help because you can select the application to be monitored (CPU, handles and memory). Win Task manager is always a summary.

Horo,
Thanks for the tips. For most of my apps I never need to monitor anything as I build my pc's to handle my workloads, but I guess Bryce is different. What language is Bryce built with and why the limits?
theschemer

Horo

@theschemer - many parts of Bryce are written in proprietary Axiom. This is not the computer algebra system known today but a composite file management system created by Andrea Pessino and copyrighted 1995 by MetaTools. Very difficult to get information on it. I guess it's some sort of a meta language. The advantage is that code written in it works on the Mac (Motorola) and PC (Intel). It is actually that Axiom code that is a hindrance to move forward to 64 bit. The rest of Bryce is written in C++ if I'm not mistaken.

Bryce does everything in memory. When you save a file, it is compressed in memory before it is written on the HD. Same if you load a scene. It gets into memory, then it is decompressed. So you can develop an elaborate scene and when you want to save it, Bryce crashes because there is no memory left to compress the scene and prepare the file. This is a bit unfortunate and in fact, you could build larger scenes in Bryce 5 because file compressing came with version 6. A bad move, in my opinion, because HD space is cheap.

Anyway, with 32 bit, you can represent numbers from -2G to +2G, hence only that much memory can be addressed. If made LAA, the sign is skipped so you get a total of 4 Giga. With 64 bit, 9 Exa can be addressed which is quite a bit ...

Goshtac

Hi guys;

Just a thought on the roads aspect of this topic ( I think I mentioned this before, but maybe I should give it a try to see if it is feasible idea on terrain with roads, etc. )

Has anyone ever tried creating a terrain map (gray tones) and then in another layer such as in a program like PSP or Photoshop, etc. do the ground texture so it overlays the terrain and then match the two up in Bryce? If one was to create a texture map that came out 1 to 1 ratio as to the ground terrain, wonder if that would work?? I know that large of a texture map might be an issue, but I have wondered for some time if something like this would work... Maybe a project for me to try later today?

Bruce

Have a great weekend folks!

EDITED: Now if people are already using this technique, my apologies for stating the obvious. Some of our experts out there may have been using this trick for years, but it just popped into my head and I had never heard of this before. But I could not wait to give this thought on image layering to match terrain with material texture. So I just slapped out a quick and dirty version just to see if it would work. Here are the results (Can't wait to play with this trick some more and develop the idea much further with more realism.. etc)

Just to clarify, using PSP, I made a 500x500 image of the terrain model with the black and gray - Then put another raster layer on top and selected the color areas on the first layer and then transposed the selected areas onto the new layer and put in whatever colors and textures I wanted for a material / texture.This selecting and transposing is done twice so your black area is selected and then filled in green and the gray is selected and filled in with a gray texture.(The bumpy look is just from a texture I put on the gray on layer 2 just to make it more like a rough back road)

Then instead of merging the layers into one image, I copied and pasted each layer as an individual image. The first layer went into the (Mountain) terrain editor in picture mode and then applied that layer image to the terrain. Then I loaded the material layer into the material / texture lab and laid it over the terrain at a one to one ratio. Only thing I then had to address was lowering the Y coordinates so my road/path did not stick way up into the air. (Just for your info, the entire process took only about 5 minutes - I could see this trick being used to lay out yards and streets in a city scene render, etc. )

Like I stated, this maybe old news to some Bryce / 3D users, but might be helpful to some new to Bryce.

Horo

This idea of Bruce is great, of course. Two things to keep in mind:

(1) the image doesn't need to be in square aspect ratio. That's just the way the TE displays it. If you have a 2:1 aspect ratio, it looks strange in the TE but if you scale X:Z also 2:1, everything is fine.

(2) The TE works in 16-bit greyscale. If you design terrains in a graphics application, make sure you do so in 16 or 48-bit, otherwise you get stairs. If you work with 48-bit, export it as 16-bit TIFF. Photoshop can do it.

[I wrote a small tool that converts 96-bit (HDR and TIFF) and 48-bit (TIFF) into TE compatible 16-bit TIFF. It is included in one of our products (Stylised Rendering) but it is a freebie bonus. I just haven't had the time to publish it on my website.]

Goshtac

Hi Horo:

Thanks for the encouragement and the information. Since my earlier post, I did a little more real world test and it didn't come out too bad as it just took 15 mins from conception to final render. The only part I was not happy with is I tried to put sidewalks in and was too close to the sloping I had put into the gray scale terrain. But I see this as a fairly easy fix (Should have been sloped grass where the gray is)

I did this with city streets in mind that are surrounded by slightly raised grassy yards. Again, this was a bit quick and dirty of a rush job, so it has real need for improvement, but I have been pleased where the project / experiment is going..

Bruce

theschemer

Horo said:

@theschemer - many parts of Bryce are written in proprietary Axiom. This is not the computer algebra system known today but a composite file management system created by Andrea Pessino and copyrighted 1995 by MetaTools. Very difficult to get information on it. I guess it's some sort of a meta language. The advantage is that code written in it works on the Mac (Motorola) and PC (Intel). It is actually that Axiom code that is a hindrance to move forward to 64 bit. The rest of Bryce is written in C++ if I'm not mistaken.

Bryce does everything in memory. When you save a file, it is compressed in memory before it is written on the HD. Same if you load a scene. It gets into memory, then it is decompressed. So you can develop an elaborate scene and when you want to save it, Bryce crashes because there is no memory left to compress the scene and prepare the file. This is a bit unfortunate and in fact, you could build larger scenes in Bryce 5 because file compressing came with version 6. A bad move, in my opinion, because HD space is cheap.

Anyway, with 32 bit, you can represent numbers from -2G to +2G, hence only that much memory can be addressed. If made LAA, the sign is skipped so you get a total of 4 Giga. With 64 bit, 9 Exa can be addressed which is quite a bit ...

Hi Horo,
Thanks for the info on the programming language used for Bryce. Hard drive space is indeed cheap, one could add a whole spare HD just for Bryce. :) I had to look up Exa. Yes that is a bunch. I think with the LAA I will be fine as I just want to create 3D backgrounds for use in iClone and try to make scenes that look like areas we have camped out etc in the past. Need to make sandy type dirt roads and pine forests and maybe a small pond and a river and a stream. Sounds all doable with Bryce. Just takes time to learn it.
theschemer

theschemer

goshtac said:

Hi guys;

Just a thought on the roads aspect of this topic ( I think I mentioned this before, but maybe I should give it a try to see if it is feasible idea on terrain with roads, etc. )

Has anyone ever tried creating a terrain map (gray tones) and then in another layer such as in a program like PSP or Photoshop, etc. do the ground texture so it overlays the terrain and then match the two up in Bryce? If one was to create a texture map that came out 1 to 1 ratio as to the ground terrain, wonder if that would work?? I know that large of a texture map might be an issue, but I have wondered for some time if something like this would work... Maybe a project for me to try later today?

Bruce

Have a great weekend folks!

EDITED: Now if people are already using this technique, my apologies for stating the obvious. Some of our experts out there may have been using this trick for years, but it just popped into my head and I had never heard of this before. But I could not wait to give this thought on image layering to match terrain with material texture. So I just slapped out a quick and dirty version just to see if it would work. Here are the results (Can't wait to play with this trick some more and develop the idea much further with more realism.. etc)

Just to clarify, using PSP, I made a 500x500 image of the terrain model with the black and gray - Then put another raster layer on top and selected the color areas on the first layer and then transposed the selected areas onto the new layer and put in whatever colors and textures I wanted for a material / texture.This selecting and transposing is done twice so your black area is selected and then filled in green and the gray is selected and filled in with a gray texture.(The bumpy look is just from a texture I put on the gray on layer 2 just to make it more like a rough back road)

Then instead of merging the layers into one image, I copied and pasted each layer as an individual image. The first layer went into the (Mountain) terrain editor in picture mode and then applied that layer image to the terrain. Then I loaded the material layer into the material / texture lab and laid it over the terrain at a one to one ratio. Only thing I then had to address was lowering the Y coordinates so my road/path did not stick way up into the air. (Just for your info, the entire process took only about 5 minutes - I could see this trick being used to lay out yards and streets in a city scene render, etc. )

Like I stated, this maybe old news to some Bryce / 3D users, but might be helpful to some new to Bryce.

Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the info on the roads as they are an important feature I will need in my 3D scenes. I will probably have a good excuse to connect a 2nd monitor to my pc now so I can read/watch tutorials on on monitor, while working with the other one. :) I am very interested in this subject.
theschemer

theschemer

Horo said:

This idea of Bruce is great, of course. Two things to keep in mind:

(1) the image doesn't need to be in square aspect ratio. That's just the way the TE displays it. If you have a 2:1 aspect ratio, it looks strange in the TE but if you scale X:Z also 2:1, everything is fine.

(2) The TE works in 16-bit greyscale. If you design terrains in a graphics application, make sure you do so in 16 or 48-bit, otherwise you get stairs. If you work with 48-bit, export it as 16-bit TIFF. Photoshop can do it.

[I wrote a small tool that converts 96-bit (HDR and TIFF) and 48-bit (TIFF) into TE compatible 16-bit TIFF. It is included in one of our products (Stylised Rendering) but it is a freebie bonus. I just haven't had the time to publish it on my website.]

Hi Horo,
How do I know if my graphics are in 16 or 48 bit? I have a bunch of graphics programs but no PS. Is there a way to test the TIFF after I create it or will it just be a major FAIL and be obvious if I try to use it?
Thanks,
theschemer

theschemer

goshtac said:

Hi Horo:

Thanks for the encouragement and the information. Since my earlier post, I did a little more real world test and it didn't come out too bad as it just took 15 mins from conception to final render. The only part I was not happy with is I tried to put sidewalks in and was too close to the sloping I had put into the gray scale terrain. But I see this as a fairly easy fix (Should have been sloped grass where the gray is)

I did this with city streets in mind that are surrounded by slightly raised grassy yards. Again, this was a bit quick and dirty of a rush job, so it has real need for improvement, but I have been pleased where the project / experiment is going..

Bruce

Looking good Bruce. If you can do all that I surely should be able to make a logging road. :)
Thanks,
theschemer

Horo

@theschemer - you should get the options in your graphics application when you Save As or Export. Bryce doesn't load 48-bit TIFF (16-bit RGB) into the TE, however 24-bit (8-bit RGB) it does, as it accepts 24-bit BMP. If you create a ramp in you graphics program from black to white and bring it into Bryce as a terrain, render that ramp terrain. If it is a smooth ramp, it is 16-bit greyscale, if you can walk up the steps, it's 24. Though there are moments when you want just that. This is also the reason why there is a Posterize control in the TE.

theschemer

Horo said:

@theschemer - you should get the options in your graphics application when you Save As or Export. Bryce doesn't load 48-bit TIFF (16-bit RGB) into the TE, however 24-bit (8-bit RGB) it does, as it accepts 24-bit BMP. If you create a ramp in you graphics program from black to white and bring it into Bryce as a terrain, render that ramp terrain. If it is a smooth ramp, it is 16-bit greyscale, if you can walk up the steps, it's 24. Though there are moments when you want just that. This is also the reason why there is a Posterize control in the TE.

I just made a few test .tifs and looked at the properties and they are 24 bit. I guess I will have to experiment so I can ask questions with a better idea of what I am talking about. But I think I understand the steps and smooth ramp you are talking about....Is it best for me to have the capability to export to 16 or 48 bit or will everything work with 24 bit? I guess I am a little confused yet as you say Bryce won't load 48 bit tiffs into the TE, so why would I need an image editor that can export to that resolution?
Thanks,
theschemer

Goshtac

Hi again guys;

I redid the last streets test and fixed the sidewalks perse. I see what you mean Horo on the stepping factor, so this is an issue I will have to play with. This last render I lowered the Y coordinates and expanded the x & z settings so I tried to make the slopes a little more gradual. But I will play with your thoughts on the step issue which does seem obvious in this latest render.

PS: When laying the material / texture down, make sure you set it as Parametric - Any other selection in the Texture mapping mode will give you some odd ball results (But in the right circumstances, it might be worth while to play with the other settings and see what you can come up with.

Bruce

Horo

@theschemer - ok, you can get that little tool that converts 96 and 48 to 16-bit greyscale. I've yet to write up a doc but the rudimentary help should get you started. Link is www.horo.ch/xchg/TIFF4816.zip [DELETED, see below]. The zip is less than 70 kB. Just unpack it wherever you want and run. It doesn't mess up the registry or whatever.

@Bruce - your street came out really fine. Here, steps don't offend, they are needed.

theschemer

Horo said:

@theschemer - ok, you can get that little tool that converts 96 and 48 to 16-bit greyscale. I've yet to write up a doc but the rudimentary help should get you started. Link is www.horo.ch/xchg/TIFF4816.zip. The zip is less than 70 kB. Just unpack it wherever you want and run. It doesn't mess up the registry or whatever.

@Bruce - your street came out really fine. Here, steps don't offend, they are needed.

Thanks Horo,
I will be looking forward to the docs. :)
theschemer

Horo

The program with documentation is now available on my website (see sig). Go to Bryce Documents > Programs > Terrain > TIFF4816. I deleted the link above.

theschemer

Horo said:

The program with documentation is now available on my website (see sig). Go to Bryce Documents > Programs > Terrain > TIFF4816. I deleted the link above.

Thanks Horo. I appreciate that. I will look at it tomorrow as I will have more time then.
theschemer

Goshtac

theschemer said:

goshtac said:

Hi Horo:

Thanks for the encouragement and the information. Since my earlier post, I did a little more real world test and it didn't come out too bad as it just took 15 mins from conception to final render. The only part I was not happy with is I tried to put sidewalks in and was too close to the sloping I had put into the gray scale terrain. But I see this as a fairly easy fix (Should have been sloped grass where the gray is)

I did this with city streets in mind that are surrounded by slightly raised grassy yards. Again, this was a bit quick and dirty of a rush job, so it has real need for improvement, but I have been pleased where the project / experiment is going..

Bruce

Looking good Bruce. If you can do all that I surely should be able to make a logging road. :)
Thanks,
theschemer

@theschemer: I did up a more detailed image called Roads To Nowhere using this technique and you can see further example at the page of Show Us Your Renders http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/32589/P1215 to see how it came out after some changes and using Horo's advice in getting rid of the steps effect. Still has work that needs done, but I am happy the way it is coming out so far.

Bruce

theschemer

goshtac said:

@theschemer: I did up a more detailed image called Roads To Nowhere using this technique and you can see further example at the page of Show Us Your Renders http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/32589/P1215 to see how it came out after some changes and using Horo's advice in getting rid of the steps effect. Still has work that needs done, but I am happy the way it is coming out so far.

Bruce

@Bruce: Great job. Like Horo says it could easily be made into a runway. The roads I am planning to make are going to be dirt roads like in a forest more like fire roads. But I am sure your technique will be a great start to get me closer to that goal. Currently I am burning the candle at both ends in my learning a few different apps at the same time so I will be a bit slow. I checked out your website and see you are close to where I am from originally (Wisconsin). I also have some property in Minnesota. Too bad I am stuck in Florida. :)

@Horo: Great job on the Docs for the TIFF4816. Interesting you wrote that with PowerBASIC. Too bad for Bob Zale that he passed away a few years ago. I have PB but never really had a chance to learn it as it didn't click. I have done some programming in VB6 which I wish they would have kept upgrading instead of the .NET stuff which I have but never pursued. I really need to decide again what to use to keep my software alive into the future because one day support will probably go away in Windows. :( Us guys that try to do it all sometimes should focus on one thing but that never seems to work...

Thanks,
theschemer