What do you render most?
fictionalbookshelf
Posts: 837
I've been using Bryce 3 months (except 3 weeks of that my pc was down). Since I started it' has all been landscape renders and 90% of those have water in them. I have a lot to learn but was curious what do you mainly render in Bryce? Is it a particular style of landscape, do you use it for something else?
Comments
I only use Bryce and Wings 3D. I'm terrible at landscapes so I settle mainly for Abstracts and Stills.
As to my use of Bryce - I like to use it for almost everything. Granted, landscapes are often a major part of scenes I create, but I also love Bryce for the modeling I get to do using primitives. Frequently I find myself importing people and props into Bryce from DAZ Studio as well to create various scenes ( Although people do not come out as good in renders with Bryce as it does in DS due to material issues )
When I do images in DAZ Studio, I find Bryce can be very handy for creating background scenery as well. So the two programs really tend to complement each other.
Bruce
When I first got into using Bryce and Poser (and later, Studio) I found myself drawing and painting less and less. As my freelance work started to slack off, before disappearing all together, I found myself doing the same thing with computer art that I was doing with more traditional art. I went from pencil, pen and ink, from watercolor and oils to pixels. Oddly enough, I found myself doing the same sort of thing I always did, illustrative works. Something involving people doing things, be it modern, ancient, SF or fantasy. Big stuff, little stuff...all sorts of stuff. I like doing landscapes, so long as I can have people (or animals or creatures) interacting withing it. Abstracts are just beyond me for some reason and I don't find them all that interesting. Call it a character flaw, I guess. Still, some of the ones posted on these forums in the past year or so have been just stunning and maybe some day I'll screw my courage up enough to do one...but not right now. In short, for me, the sky's the limit. Stuff I just couldn't do on an illustrative level are now within grasp with Bryce and Studio.
I use Bryce for lots of different things, But I love to have animals and people in most of my stuff, I do use other software as well, DS, Vue Hexagon as well as PSP for postwork, So it depends on the look that I am after as to which program I use, But Bryce was my first 3D program and no matter what I always come back to it.
I came to Bryce with version 5 and mostly did some terrain stuff. When 5.5 came into being, I started using DAZ-sold props as well. Bryce 6 finally had a sun that was not just a weakling - and IBL. I concentrated on lighting. Props were ideal for that, no distraction of doing a scene, just light up what you have. I do a bit of modeling, I like the boolean way more than the sub-division method, though I do use Wings3D now and then. Bryce is a tool to create what comes to mind. Landscapes (also real ones), objects, abstracts, space, caves, underwater, still life, urban. In Bryce, not even the sky is the limit (but the memory is). I start up Bryce whenever I want some fun, which happens to be the case quite often.
As evident from the images/scenes I've posted, I don't use Bryce for anything specific. I've created a few landscapes, which are nearly impossible for me to create well, a few abstracts, and several objects by following tutorials. I've even tried a few things off the top of my head, which after they rendered, is where they should have stayed.
So far I haven't found my niche, so to speak, but I don't think that's anything to worry about. By doing these different things I'm learning not only how to use the program but also how to actually see what it is I'm trying to create. I'm also learning how to think critically about what I'm seeking in the results. I've also found myself looking at the RW a bit differently as a result of using Bryce and other like programs. I don't just see the makeup of my surroundings, but the structure that makes up my surroundings. Now if I can only keep my patience to continue plugging on in the hopes of one day creating anything my gray cells can dream up.
In 2001,I received Bryce 4, and a user guide, from a friend who was moving and was giving up a lot of his stuff. I played around with Bryce, but found that what I was creating just wasn't that good looking, I knew that there was so much more to the program but just did not invest the time to develop my skills. I was not that familiar with computers or the internet at that time.
a few years passed and I took a multi media program, where I got many of the essential tools and understanding of digital media. Armed with an entirely new set of tools, and a familiarity of the net, I took Bryce back up. Bryce 5 was now my new tool and built my first Palitoy Death Star model, it was horrible, but at the time, a real jump forward for me.
Last year I decided to revisit my DeathStar model, and found that Bryce had gone thru many changes, and companies, and now was Bryce 7. I dug in and spent months getting the model I always wanted.
On the net I found the Daz site, Bryce forum and couldn't believe what I was seeing! this program really does have what it takes. posted my DeathStar, and I received feedback almost Immediately, and was welcomed to the forum.Feeling welcomed, and Inspired from the work I had seen on the forum I started to really get in to Bryce. Building models, animated textures like moving water, and now terrains. Thanks to all the kind words and advice on the Bryce forum, I am completely addicted to Bryce. It has made learning the program attainable. Now my "To Do" list is incredibly long, and getting longer, I look forward to trying a bit of everything over the next years, and hope that Bryce and all the fantastic artists continue to flourish.
sorry for gushing,
short answer, a little bit of everything the program can do, and all the things I can dream up or emulate, or have been inspired from others.
I tend to flip-flop between Bryce and DS depending on what I'm rendering. If I need clouds, fog, haze, water, or landscapes I use Bryce because it can do those well and I generally can't do those in DS yet. If it's an indoor scene I use DS because of Bryce's memory limitations, speed, and inability to adjust poses without transferring things from DS. However I do sometimes use Bryce to generate a backdrop to use in DS, but that really only works if the backdrop is easily separable from the scene.
I tend to be all over the place. There are a number of landscapes in my palet, but also quite some abstracts. Several scenes with DAZ animals or humans, houses and several props. I have modeled some houses and colonade in Bryce as well as some strange animals. However, I tend to use Hexagon 2.5 for modeling more nowadays and then render in Bryce.
I also paint and where I find that I hardly do anything close to realistic in painting anymore, I still do quite some realistic (fantasy) stuff in Bryce.
One thing I also do, being lazy and not wanting to spend lots of money: I reuse elements. While you can save these in libraries, I tend to merge scenes (deleting what I don't need). Memory in my computer is not yet an issue, so I just save many scenes.
My advice: just play with whatever you can imagine!