I want to combine DAZ and Bryce Renders

TheOwl

So my objective is to render two or more Genesis characters with clothes in DAZStudio then for the background, I will use Bryce 7.1 Pro where I will make a forest.

QUESTIONS:

1.) How can I make sure that the camera placement in DAZStudio is similar with Bryce?

2.) What Photoshop/DAZ/Bryce tips you can add to make sure that DAZ renders will "blend" convincingly with the Bryce renders?

3.) Can you render a target object for example, a tree in Bryce with a transparent background into a PNG file just like in DAZ?

Chohole

With Bryce you will need to do a mask render selecting just the objects you want to appear, and use this to cut out the unwanted parts when you layer your image in PS. However the layer mask will not show transparencies, it will mask the entire object, and most Bryce tree leaves do have a transparency on them to drive the shape. That part won't work quite as well as it would in DS, using a PNG

sriesch

TheOwl said:

1.) How can I make sure that the camera placement in DAZStudio is similar with Bryce?

There might be a better option I haven't thought of, but the low-budget way would be to just create a few primitives just in the very corners of your scene plus one in the foreground, send those across the bridge, then manually move the camera in the other application until the view is similar. It sounds like you don't need a perfect-down-to-the-pixel match, just something close, and that should work.
You may also want to avoid extreme differences in focal lengths between the cameras used in each application; Overlapping a super-wide angle render from one application with a zoomed-in narrow field of view from the other might be technically possible, but might also look very wrong.

Dave Savage

If you're only using Bryce for the background, you could save it in a format that would allow you to import it into DAZ as a photographic background. This would depend on if your Genesis characters had to interact with it or if it's just a backdrop though.

Dave Savage

chohole said:

With Bryce you will need to do a mask render selecting just the objects you want to appear, and use this to cut out the unwanted parts when you layer your image in PS. However the layer mask will not show transparencies, it will mask the entire object, and most Bryce tree leaves do have a transparency on them to drive the shape. That part won't work quite as well as it would in DS, using a PNG

Just thinking about this... It would be possible to render a tree (or any object that had a transparency mask to create it's shape) against a 'green screen' type background and then simply set that background colour to use as an alpha channel in Photoshop.
Doing it that way, you could build a Diorama type of scene with multiple layers.

The main problem with object masks is for semi transparent things like glass when you need you see through the object but still be able to see the object too.

Horo

Interesting idea, Dave. That's what they used to call the blue background in TV. Certainly worth trying.

dwsel

As for compositing semi transparent objects it might be a good idea to learn about straight alpha images and premultiplied alpha channels on white/black:
http://www.cgdirector.com/quick-tip-straight-alpha-vs-premultiplied-alpha/ - stright vs premultiplied on black
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dK71TVrBLM - stright vs premultiplied on black + conversion between them
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/WhiteHalo.html - premultiplied on white and how to get rid of it to get non premultiplied
http://animationartist.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=135386 - difference between these modes and what happens if you composite with the wrong method

What Horo or TheSavage64 suggested is rendering like on green or bluescreen and recreating the alpha channel via filtering, but as we're working in 3d application it's almost always better to render your front objects on white or black and render the alpha masks for them so you won't get halo rings around your objects while compositing. As for transparent objects it's often possible to apply white ambient material to objects that need to be masked and keep the transparency rather than use built in tool to create masks that doesn't care about the transparent channel. You can see the example of creating such mask in this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH0JJ8QTt2Y

Another thing that Sphere Mapper tool might be useful is to create environment maps that you might use to light your figures in Daz Studio. Sphere mapper should be put in the location where the figure will be pasted into. This way you'll get more consistent lighting between the two scenes.