Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 7
This discussion has been closed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Thanks Horo and Mermaid. Yes, Jay, give it a go, it's quite fun to mix and match the materials to see what effects you can get.
Here's another two from me after also re watching David's Geocrafting tutorial to try some different techniques on creating the terrain to stack.
Yes, but I couldn't get them to look right and didn't persevere with them. I may go back to them once I figure out how to get shadows from an object to appear on an invisible ground/2D plane :-) I'm using one of my own images as a background and adding elements but I want them to cast shadows on the 'ground' that they are sitting on so that they don't appear to be floating above it. I did it in DAZ Studio using a shadow catcher shader but I can't find anything online or in my Kitchens Bryce 4 book on how to do it in Bryce 7.1 Pro :)
I make volumetric clouds from rocks
Fishtales: David has done a few Shadow Capture tutorials.
I don't know if you're using your backgrounds as HDRs but this is a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNRH9ttwH3w
Or this one may be more use but it's a bit tricky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo8KpM-_jsM
here's a sneak peak at what im working on at the moment :)
@Dave: Adding that spire to that image really added to the overall look. It's like it was the only part of the mountain to escape the ecological sculpting of that mountain. The geocrafting images are wonderful. How did you use what you geocrafted as a stacked terrain?
@Horo: You are getting some beautiful results from that C-island.
@Pam: I've used spheres for clouds and never gave using rocks a thought. I'm going to try it and see what results.
@Tim Bateman: If THAT'S what you're working on, it'd be interesting to see the final results. What you done so far is really nice.
The technique works fine with Bryce generated terrains too.
Horo did a tutorial on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itbMGRW308w
I'm experimenting with subtly altering each of the three terrains slightly in parts to create intentional changes and rocks showing through etc. or maybe to make a path up a hillside etc.
I checked out those videos, thank you.
I settled on the first one and tried a few tweaks. I'm not using HDR's so it was trial and error :)
Image 1 :- The initial image with some content added.
Image 2 :- The shadows are just showing in this image after following Davids's video. I found that changing the light position, intensity and colour would make the plane appear and that had to be compensated with the sun position, intensity and colour, also vice versa. Changing diffuse and ambience in the materials lab for the plane also had an effect as did adding an extra light e.g. dome, distant or fill, so they had to be left out.
Image 3 :- I changed the intensity of the parallel light, it went up and down from -4 to -15 at one point, and the sun, it went from the mid 200's down to 75 and then up to 100 to try and make the plane less visible, and tweaked the shadows from grey to black.
Image 4 :- The shadows looked too 'painted' so I tried a few bump maps and tweaked them until I settled on this one. Not perfect but at least it breaks up the shadow image.
Image 5 :- The final image. The picture is moved back, the plane is stretched, the shadows were cut off at the edge where the plane met the backdrop, and the sun and parallel light intensities were dropped to darken the scene (the original image was taken at sunset at around 23:00hrs and the sun was behind a hill)
It took a fair bit of tweaking and fiddling in both the light and materials labs to get it right. Everything except the sun and shadows is turned off in the sky lab
Dave: the latest renders using geocrafting are great.
Pam: thanks for the tip, so far I only used the preset materials on slabs or planes.
Tim Bateman: Wow that’s truly an awesome render, looking forward to the final render.
Fishtales – nice work with the shadows, I like the 3rd and 4th renders
Reading all the comments on clouds, I did a bit of experimenting using Obsidian Dawn’s Cloud brushes in Photoshop.
In the 1st render the png image was applied to a 2D face and in the 2nd to a sphere. The material settings were the same for both. No doubt the 2D one looks better.
Too lazy to look back to see who said it, but someone asked if someone else tried metaballs for their clouds. I did. They do stretch into each other with an interesting twist ... very cloud-like. However, the edges that do not have another metaball to contact keep a distinct oval or sphere shape. Surround those parts with spheres, and it hides that a bit.
@Fishtales - I noticed the missing shadow in the very first render of this elf you posted here a few pages back. I also noticed a subsequent render you did, where you framed it so his feet, (thus; expected shadow), were not in frame. I felt that was an effective way to deal with it quickly. I know that doesn't help you when the object needing a shadow is further into the frame, but at least I noticed. I've used Paint Shop Pro 8 by the Jersey Atari Software Club to add a "Drop Shadow" effect after the Bryce render. Not as good as if Bryce put it in itself, but better than no shadow at all. I've also made "ghosts" with PSP by lowering the opacity of an object, so it looks dream-like, and probably wouldn't cast a shadow. When I do that, I make two renders, one without the object, so the scene behind the "ghost" shows through. Once again, no help here. Sorry.
@TheSavage64 - I really like the rusted ship hull in the shore wake. Almost expected the word HELP spelled in stones or coconuts on the shore.
Thank you so much, Hero. I mean you are my Hero, Horo. I never thought of that, though it seems so obvious.
@mermaid010 - thank you. Interesting experiments with the clouds.
@Dave - those are great terrains.
@Pam - volumetric clouds from rocks looks promising.
@Sandy - there are several strategies to create shadows. The easiest of them all I find the one using hyper textures. Using packground images may prove yet more tricky than spherical panoramas because of the prerspective and the light.
@Tim Bateman - very nice hills with trees and a nice sky, too.
@CTippetts - nice crater lake. Oh yes, we often miss the most obvious.
Here's another stacked terrain attempt with the IsleS-Sunset.
Wow...I mean, really! Wow... That reminds me a lot of home.
@Sandy: The second image is quite a change, and adding the shadow to the last three is like watching different times during the day. Really nice results.
@mermaid: Instead of applying the png to a sphere, as in your second image, apply the material directly to the sphere. You can then reform/deform/resize the sphere to your hearts desire. And/or, add more spheres or copies of the original.
@C Tippetts: I like your results with that terrain. Sky and water are nice, as are the rough parts of the terrain.
@Horo: Beautiful sky in that image. Real nice touch with the sun's reflection.
Thanks Guss. Now that my last entry for the challenge is done, I will try David's cloud tutorial and check out the file you sent me. I know I did this tutorial before and used it in a scene but I can't find it. It's always cool to rework with David's and Horo's tutorials. :)
The above renders was only an experiment to see how the same image will look on different objects. Btw it looks the same on a stone as it does on the sphere.
Thanks for all the comments.
I use most of what I do as training exercises as the images aren't going anywhere :) This is the next one I have been working on.
Image 1 :- I loaded a terrain and messed about in the terrain editor seeing what each thing did and this interesting shape appeared, which was crying out for a castle :)
Image 2 :- Deciding it needed a road I did a search for adding roads to the terrain and found David's video. Seeing as I had already done the terrain getting the road onto it and in the right place took a bit of trial and error. In the video you do the road and the terrain at the same time :-) As you can see it messed up the terrain but I wasn't too fussed as I had learned something new i.e. putting roads on a terrain.
Image 3 :- I decided to revisit Rashad's Instancing Groups tutorial and added some trees. One tree instanced to four and then instanced as a group a few times, although I deleted some instances within the groups that were in the wrong place. This was more to hide the terrain than anything else :-)
Image 4 :- The final image with a couple of horsed 'knights' on the road to make it more plausible, although where the sun is means they are in shadow so not too obvious. I can't move the sun or the roads running straight up the mountain at the back of the castle become obvious :-)
@mermaid: Both of their tutorials are indeed great resources.
@Sandy: That's a really neat scene. You might consider playing around with the frequency of the material used on the mountain, in the transformation tools. I can't remember which way increases the texture size, but it would allow the material not to look so smooth.
@Sandy - interesting terrain and setup with the building and trees. The green part where the building rests looks a bit like a table cloth. Good tip from GussNemo. In the transformation tools, the size of the texture is increased when the value is increased. 100% means a copy from the DTE, 200% doubles the frequency and 50% halves it.
Here is CTippetts's long awaited W island, again 3 resolutions with 3 different materials and 3 hills, so it's a 3 x 3 affair. :-)
Imagine! Things have stayed fixed long enough for me to get back to playing with coloured clouds. It was the bathroom lights yesterday... so that's it dishwasher, circular saw and bathoom lights. Hopefully that's my three things. In an act of sheer decadence, and because I've been hankering after having the choice, I got a 1 kw 190mm for everyday sawing and a 235mm 2 kw monster to replace my burned out one. I'm not going to try and use both at once though tempting as it is.
And another one from me.
i thought i would have another try at this scene, i slightly changed the view a bit and raised the render to 64 rays per pixel...im still debating with myself if i want to add some more plants to the scene ? ...i might just for the sake of it and see how it looks :)
@David - nice nebulae. As I mentioned earlier, there are almost infinite possibilities. I hope to be able to send the libraries etc. early next week at the latest.
@Roland4 - nice renders. The first one appeals to me most.
@Tim Bateman - keep on debating and your beautiful scene will never be finished. Don't tell me, there is always something that can be done to a scene, it is never fully finished, one is never fully satisfied.
N1, Sandy...the trees added some character to the scene.
Roland...yeah, psychedelic scenes - love 'em.
Tim...gorgeous, as expected. Don't know if a distant character, say, a monk, a medieval-robed lady...etc., in the hallway (or, extreme-wise, say, a robot) would add to it - give it a focus. Still, as is, it's super.
Jay
Many years ago my dad entered a photograph in one of his Photographic Societies competitions. At the end the judge asked why everyone laughed when he said it didn't have enough life to it. It was a similar picture to yours with a cloistered pathway with roses. The judge laughed too when they told him it was a Crematorium :-)
I would try an animal tucked in somewhere. A bird on the wall; a fox at the end of the wall; a mouse sitting half way down the path. It just needs a bit of interest but not enough to take the emphasis away from the scene itself.
Because I did the roads and terrain back to front (see David's tutorial to see what I mean) I can't change the texture or else the road disappears or extra roads appear all over the place :) So instead I changed the original texture for another one and increased the bump on that and this is what I came up with. The reason for doing it that way is that the road texture sits on top of the main texture and that is the flat green one. If I had done the tutorial first then the original texture would have been the top texture and the roads showing on it.
I hope that makes sense :-)
@Roland4, I think the middle picture is the most interesting in my opinion.
@Tim Bateman, I think the scene looks fine as is, it doesn't seem to be short any plants. Not that extra plants will hurt, just don't think they're missing.
@David Brinnen, I think nebula numbers 3 and 4 look the most realistic out of the bunch, very nice. Being into astronomy (at least back the days when staying up late wasn't a problem), I've always been a fan of of nebula photos, although it's always tricky to decide what colors are right since half the photos you see are artificially colored to enhance things, and you have to read up on them to determine if it has been or not, or decide if it even matters to you. Some photos are classics and you'll recognize them instantly from the colors, like the triffid nebula, horsehead nebula or the pleiades. Others like the orion nebula seem to be displayed in a zillion colors for no apparent reason, and I grit my teeth at half of those pictures, even though there is doubtless good reason to have the variations (for example, one can't see in non-visible wavelengths, but assigning them to visible colors allows you to study the relative intensity of those non-visible wavelengths). Not that I know what's correct even in visible light anyway, if you look at it in a personal telescope it's so dim it looks nearly black and white or maybe a tad greenish since the human eye isn't sensitive enough to pick up color in extreme low-light conditions.
@Horo, nice coastline and clouds.
@Tim Bateman.
I don't think it needs any more plants, but if you want maybe a potted plant on the wall
Xfrog have some nice Free trees/plants in .obj ,.3ds formats, 3D and 2D.
http://xfrog.com/category/samples.html
Supposed to be $79 each.
This picture is a problem from me. The details from the trees are not good.