Bryce noise
BradCarsten
Posts: 856
I've always been fascinated with Bryce for scenery, but can usually tell a bryce render a mile away, especially when it comes to water because there always seems to be a lot of noise.
This is probably a good example of what I'm talking about. The water almost looks grainy. You can also see it in the mountains:
I'm thinking of getting bryce for my DAZ back drops, but was wondering if there was any way to overcome the noise issue, and get nice smooth looking renders?
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There are an extremely wide variety of water materials available in Bryce, including smoother surfaces. Plus they can be adjusted to have more or less bump height (if that's the noise you were talking about) and the material colors can also be adjusted (if you are seeing color variations rather than bump) although you'll need to know a bit more to make those adjustments. So while only you know the exact look you want, I think you should be able to achieve it based on your description.
Perhaps some people who have done a lot of water renders can post some examples of smooth water, and you can decide if that answers your question?
Yes I'm referring to colour rather than the bump height. It almost looks like someone has sprinkled pepper all over the image. It's usually most noticeable in water
Ok, here are a few randomly-selected waters (there are of course many more, and will look a zillion times better if you actually render something useful instead of like this.). No attempt to make them look good, default bryce sky and lighting, a grey cube floating over it. Some of them are so smooth you can't even tell its water and not a plane. Others with ripples you'll notice are smooth in the shadow, but of course have a pattern where the sky is reflected in the angles of the ripples outside of the shadow of the cube. Also a render I did that while a bit dark shows a good reflection in water.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/25565
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/44325
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/35481
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/44326
Almost always running water in my renders, living as I do in the land of waterfalls. (Wales)
@bradrg - it all comes down to how you set the water and the light as Sean said. We all scorn the typical Bryce look. Most materials in the library were made for older Bryce versions with a sun the power of a hand torch. A lot has changed in Bryce 7 and materials taken from the library need to be tweaked to look good. Here's one of many water renders I made. Water is transparent and no reflection. Reflection comes from the refraction index set and the viewing angle.
I agree with the previous speakers. Water can have very different looks in Bryce, just like all other materials.
Here is one of mine, with quite some bump. There are no real waves here, though it looks a bit like that. The settings are in the different picture. It may be an original that came with one of my Bryce versions or I have modified it (which I often do) in the Texture Editor. Whatever, the original probably is by David Brinnen. I like this one, but maybe you think this is too noisy too?
Thanks everyone. There are some really good looking renders there. I'm glad to see that it is possible to get good results like this in Bryce! I'm actually a little surprised. I think I messed around with version 4 or something and the renders didn't look anything like this.
@horo- when you say that materials taken from the library may need to be tweaked, is that just as simple as importing your own texture maps, or is it a little more complected than that?
One more question- I don't know if I should start a new thread, but is it possible to export your scenes, trees etc to Daz?
To modify materials, one would use the Material lab. How complicated this is depends on what you are trying to change. This could range from simply adjusting one of the sliders seen in the screenshot above your post,, to some pretty complicated changes that you would need to read up on in order to do. You can download the manual and look at people's tutorials on this subject area in advance if you want (but please don't get scared off if it looks complicated; everything looks complicated before you learn how to do it!). While I've fiddled with it a bit, honestly I usually start with an existing premade material and make the minor, easier modifications most of the time.
Exporting is a pretty complicated area. There are a bunch of threads on that you might want to read up on if you can find them, but the quick summary is: some things export ok, some things don't export, some things export but are changed in ways you may not like. Also there are multiple ways to export and the defaults may not be wanted.
You will probably not be able to export a complete scene unchanged.
Of course you are welcome to experiment and certain things may work depending on what you are trying to do. Procedural materials aren't compatible with DAZ Studio. An attempt will be made to bake them onto a terrain, but it won't look the same. Trees, while they can technically be exported, get all messed up, so unless they're going way in the background in low resolution or in the dark or something, I'd consider them not really exportable. An untextured terrain can be exported ok (don't use the default resolution which is unusably low). I've exported a few basic shapes that came out ok. I don't think you can export metaballs. You can't export booleans if I remember correctly. You might end up with problems with the mesh, which I think can get changed during export, some shapes didn't work. I've exported a few things from the Bryce library (some buildings and a bridge I think) and while they were a bit different, they were still ok.
Related to exporting: the other way around (from DAZ Studio to Bryce) is much more useful. There is a 'Bryce bridge' in DAZ Studio, which does not work for me anymore. However, I usually export posed people and animals from DAZ Studio into Wavefront object and then import those into Bryce. That works quite well, although there are a number of issues. For example: eyes do not export or import in exactly the right position, so they must be moved. Not all textures from DAZ Studio export nicely and the textures should preferably be stored in the same location as the posed figures, otherwise you have to search for each separate texture in the process of importing.
One of the issues with moving from Bryce to DAZ Studio is the fact that infinite planes, which are very useful in Bryce, are also too specific to Bryce and can (as far as I know) not be used anywhere else.
Bryce does have some very good rendering options, though not the 'physical correct' ones that come with more modern packages. And the result is very much 'tweakable' by using appropriate textures (in many cases: Bryce procedurals are best, because of their extreme flexibility and relative ease (compared to creating your own via UV mapping)). Extremely important is the choice of lights and Bryce has quite a variety of options.
If I sound like an expert here; that is not even close to reality. I am just a 'trial and error' user.
Real experts in various Bryce fields are around in these fora, such as Horo, David Brinnen, Slepalex and Rashid Carter. All of these give very valuable advice and some have made wonderful tutorials!
@bradrg - no texture maps, procedurals. If you take them from the library, get rid of Ambience. It lightens up the parts in the shadow, make it appear glowing and looks flat. In the Sky Lab, set Sun/Moon Shadows to 100. If it is set lower, light passes through the object and makes the render time longer. Also set Skydome in the Sky Lab to black. It is a radial without shadow casting and without fall-off exactly at the zenith. Instead, use a domelight from the Light Lab or create an HDRI from the sky to get ambient light from all over the sky.
Exporting a Bryce scene to import in Studio is usually not a very good idea. Materials/Shaders are too different. The other way, DS to Bryce, can give very satisfactory results, though the materials will need adjustment. Yet another matter is creating a render and using it as a backdrop in Studio (or any other 3D application). Of course, a photograph or a render done in another 3D application can be used as well. You could also render a complete spherical panorama in Bryce and apply it to an environment sphere in Studio.
Thanks again everyone there a lot to chew through here, and a ton of helpful advice. Creating a spherical panorama sounds like a great idea, I didn't realise you could do that.
In this example, made during the 7.0 dev cycle, we were still in the process of adjusting the new "default" bump type. Here the bump is set many times over what it should be to be physically accurate. This could be an effect if you wanted it, but if you wish to reduce the effect of noise generated by the bump channel you have a couple of easy options.
1. Set the bump value to within the range of -20 to 20. This is the limit of what is reliably within the capacity of the render engine to simulate accurately (reason for those that want to know, is that beyond this value it is possible to generate simulated geometry normals that pass through the geometry surface from which they virtually eminate - not really possible in the real world - "reflection correction" option clamps these to true geometry perpendicular if this happens otherwise the get locked to tangential or fall through the geometry surface - all these states result in "noise")
2. Use premium effects sampling 16rpp or above does wonders for getting rid of bump noise, even high value stuff. But at the price of increased render times. I don't recommend using Fine Art sampling - that's based on the default render kernel and is subsequently much slower than the premium effects kernel which is in fact a different render kernel entirely to the default. And has some nice additional functionality.
The Bryce 7 Pro Spherical Mapper ( http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro-spherical-mapper ) works really well for that, I've started making skydomes in Bryce with this to apply to a skydome in DAZ Studio so I can use Bryce skies and/or backgrounds in DS.