Volume materials won't render?

eponica

Hi there, been awhile ^_^ So I've been playing with Bryce 7 Pro all this week and am wondering if someone can tell me what I am doing wrong! I am trying to learn the Materials editor. So I can make a terrain and can make a Surface material to go on it, OK. But when I toggle over to make a Volume material instead, using that same terrain, my materials are showing up in the preview window all right, but nothing renders. Obviously I am missing something very, very basic here ^_^; Will one of you experts please patiently explain?

Dave Savage

Is it actually rendering nothing or refusing to render?

I wouldn't want to try a volumetric material on a terrain for a quick render as it will most likely take hours to render even on the most basic setting.

If it's rendering but rendering nothing, increasing the density may help.
Can you make a screen grab of the material lab settings and post it?

Chohole

Doesn't a terrain have to be made solid before a volumetric material will take?

mjc1016

TheSavage64 said:

Is it actually rendering nothing or refusing to render?

I wouldn't want to try a volumetric material on a terrain for a quick render as it will most likely take hours to render even on the most basic setting.

If it's rendering but rendering nothing, increasing the density may help.
Can you make a screen grab of the material lab settings and post it?

Couldn't it also be too dense and all that it is rendering is the 'fog'?

eponica

Ah, Wow what quick responses! :D Chohole, that sounds very interesting... because I didn't know about turning a terrain solid. Savage, thank you, if Chohole's suggestion does not help, I will post a screencap. And thank you too, mjc! I can always count on the DAZ folks to help me out! *Now turning back to the Bryce manual... hmm... solid terrains?*

David Brinnen

eponica said:

Hi there, been awhile ^_^ So I've been playing with Bryce 7 Pro all this week and am wondering if someone can tell me what I am doing wrong! I am trying to learn the Materials editor. So I can make a terrain and can make a Surface material to go on it, OK. But when I toggle over to make a Volume material instead, using that same terrain, my materials are showing up in the preview window all right, but nothing renders. Obviously I am missing something very, very basic here ^_^; Will one of you experts please patiently explain?

Volumetric materials are tied in very closely with the Bryce primitives, the way the materials are constructed is through a series of concentric layers (or staked planes if it is applied to a slab). Mesh based objects, such as terrains, stones, metaspheres and imported mesh objects are not fully supported for volumetric rendering. Sorry to be the bearer of such tidings, but the feature you are looking for here is not fully supported.

Dave Savage

Sorry was waiting for a render to finish before checking it out properly.

Yes, Chohole is correct. You have to make the terrain a 'solid' before it will render volumetric materials on it.

So: Select the terrain object and click the [E] button in it's little menu.
That takes you to the terrain editor.
You will find the setting to make the terrain object solid as marked in the picture below.

As David says though, you will get odd results from adding certain volumetrics to certain objects.

eponica

Chohole was right, it was my not making the terrain solid. Now it renders fine ^_^ David, thank you very much, I am having great fun with your materials :D And I have no idea what it was I was looking for anyway! ^^ I am not that advanced. Was just wondering why it wasn't showing in the render ^_^ Thank you all again for such great help! :D