Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 9

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Comments

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,633
    edited July 2015

    @slepalex - GREAT! That's a most helpful information. I'm currently testing this successfully with one of your Cumulus you sent me (thank you!), cutting through a default terrain and lit by the sun and an HDRI made from the sky - with the group excluded. I duplicated the terrain and made it 10% larger (I tried from 1% up). It works great. With a cylinder, I got an interesting result, too. However, the part of the terrain in the slab gets a bit brighter. (Above terrain, below cylinder)

    @David - very nice renders. I got your email and will check the stuff on the FTP next, latest tomorrow morning.

    @Art - perhaps a tad too much fertilizer for the daisies ;-P Otherwise, that scene is breathtaking. Great vegetation and the size of the scene looks very natural.

    @Jay - thank you. Yes, you're right, there should be more anaglyphs. It's so easy with the lenses.

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    Post edited by Horo on
  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    With a cylinder, I got an interesting result, too

    I take it the interesting result is the repeating image of the terrain in the clouds behind it?

  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376
    edited December 1969

    I'm amazed by a lot of renders here! I can see good results with David clouds which make me want to try this new wonderful trick but we've got a heat wave here in France and with about 38oC, I don't want to burn my processor.

    So I'm still waiting for the rain to come!

  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    @slepalex - GREAT! That's a most helpful information. I'm currently testing this successfully with one of your Cumulus you sent me (thank you!), cutting through a default terrain and lit by the sun and an HDRI made from the sky - with the group excluded. I duplicated the terrain and made it 10% larger (I tried from 1% up). It works great. With a cylinder, I got an interesting result, too. However, the part of the terrain in the slab gets a bit brighter. (Above terrain, below cylinder)

    Horo, perhaps you have something wrong doing. As noted Fishtales, repeating reflection terrain inside the cylinder and a sharp boundary of light on the mountain in a place of cloud base. What is the lighting scheme?
    Here the camera view of previous image (http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53147/P720/#853075).

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  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    Monochrome shows lighting better than colour, I agree. How do you do it? Just set the saturation of all colours to zero?

    I just converted to shades of gray in IrfanView.
  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    Inspired by the works of David, I also decided to create something exotic. Clouds are below the summit. Lighting: Sphere Dome Light (group with clouds and cylinder excluded) and the sun.

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  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    slepalex said:
    Inspired by the works of David, I also decided to create something exotic. Clouds are below the summit. Lighting: Sphere Dome Light (group with clouds and cylinder excluded) and the sun.

    Cool, I cannot detect where the cylinders are, effect works very well.

    Here's another from me,

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  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    slepalex said:
    Inspired by the works of David, I also decided to create something exotic. Clouds are below the summit. Lighting: Sphere Dome Light (group with clouds and cylinder excluded) and the sun.

    Cool, I cannot detect where the cylinders are, effect works very well.

    Here's another from me,

    Works in oil! Reflections! Colors! Coastline!

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    slepalex said:
    slepalex said:
    Inspired by the works of David, I also decided to create something exotic. Clouds are below the summit. Lighting: Sphere Dome Light (group with clouds and cylinder excluded) and the sun.

    Cool, I cannot detect where the cylinders are, effect works very well.

    Here's another from me,

    Works in oil! Reflections! Colors! Coastline!

    Thank you Alex, yes I find the secret to making a nice render is to make a plenty of them and eventually a nice one will come along. I used a bit of ambient shoreline effect and also a volume water material. Horo's HDRI adds a bit of power to the sky. It is a hodge podge of things. At least with these clouds most of the renders are fairly quick. Except for the green one, that took longer.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:

    @David - very nice renders. I got your email and will check the stuff on the FTP next, latest tomorrow morning.

    No rush, my next task is taking down a double garage.

    Here's the last for today.

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  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,633
    edited December 1969

    @Sandy - I didn't realise it is actually multiple reflections. I enlarged and rendered that part.

    @slepalex - perhaps I did something wrong, most probably the cylinder is too large at its base and the camera is looking up into the gap. If Transfer Material is enabled, the inner side gets black.

    The render below shows horizontal and vertical banding. There is no difference whether the group is excluded or not. Quality makes a difference: the number of horizontal and vertical copies increases and the contrast decreases (which makes sense since volume materials are made up of stacked 2D sheets). Lighting is simple: Bryce sun and an HDRI made from the same sky without sun.

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  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    @Sandy - I didn't realise it is actually multiple reflections. I enlarged and rendered that part.

    @slepalex - perhaps I did something wrong, most probably the cylinder is too large at its base and the camera is looking up into the gap. If Transfer Material is enabled, the inner side gets black.

    The render below shows horizontal and vertical banding. There is no difference whether the group is excluded or not. Quality makes a difference: the number of horizontal and vertical copies increases and the contrast decreases (which makes sense since volume materials are made up of stacked 2D sheets). Lighting is simple: Bryce sun and an HDRI made from the same sky without sun.

    Maybe it makes sense to use a cone instead of the cylinder and to make it with a smaller diameter?

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,633
    edited December 1969

    slepalex said:
    Maybe it makes sense to use a cone instead of the cylinder and to make it with a smaller diameter?

    A cone, a copy of the terrain, a cylinder that fits better, ... or a better camera position. This effect doesn't annoy me, I find it rather interesting and would like to know what makes it. After all, this was just a quick test.
  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    slepalex said:
    Maybe it makes sense to use a cone instead of the cylinder and to make it with a smaller diameter?

    A cone, a copy of the terrain, a cylinder that fits better, ... or a better camera position. This effect doesn't annoy me, I find it rather interesting and would like to know what makes it. After all, this was just a quick test.

    I wonder if there is some kind of mirror/reflection going on in the clouds themselves rather than the cylinder?

  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited July 2015

    Horo said:
    slepalex said:
    Maybe it makes sense to use a cone instead of the cylinder and to make it with a smaller diameter?

    A cone, a copy of the terrain, a cylinder that fits better, ... or a better camera position. This effect doesn't annoy me, I find it rather interesting and would like to know what makes it. After all, this was just a quick test.

    Horo, and you tried to assign a clouds material to the cylinder?
    ***
    By the way, a copy of the terrain can be done with a minimum resolution. Also a good idea. Grouping a negative copy of terrain with the positive clouds.
    Moreover, the terrain may be cut off by the bottom brace to the level of an infinite plate. Do not forget to tick "Solid".
    Post edited by Slepalex on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited July 2015

    Fishtales said:
    Horo said:
    slepalex said:
    Maybe it makes sense to use a cone instead of the cylinder and to make it with a smaller diameter?

    A cone, a copy of the terrain, a cylinder that fits better, ... or a better camera position. This effect doesn't annoy me, I find it rather interesting and would like to know what makes it. After all, this was just a quick test.

    I wonder if there is some kind of mirror/reflection going on in the clouds themselves rather than the cylinder?

    Volume materials, even rendered at their highest setting, do not have any reflection properties. So I deem that unlikely. Unless the reflection has come from the cutting cylinder - but I think Alex said that the transfer material option should be unchecked.

    So... here's my speculation. Volume clouds are made up of a stack of 2d layers, each layer has the ability to transmit light, respond to diffuse light and cast and receive shadows. The density of stacked layers is dependent on a few things. Quality setting. The shape of the slab primitive (if world space). The viewing angle of the camera.

    If the transition at the edge of the layer is soft enough, then the layers can be hard to see. Cutting the cloud with the cylinder however creates a sharp transition within a dense part of the cloud this will make the layers more likely to be visible.

    Here the position of the sun is such that it can cast a shadow around the peak and into this cut part of the volume cloud. This combination of things is what I think has caused this banding to become visible in this position. And due to the bands not being tightly packed, the lighting variation between bands is showing up the effect.

    That, as I said, is speculation. I'm not discounting the possibility of mirroring or reflections, but that possibility I feel is less likely because it requires an additional mechanic to the ones normally seen in volumetric materials.

    Post edited by David Brinnen on
  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969


    Here the position of the sun is such that it can cast a shadow around the peak and into this cut part of the volume cloud. This combination of things is what I think has caused this banding to become visible in this position. And due to the bands not being tightly packed, the lighting variation between bands is showing up the effect.

    David, I also thought about it. It is likely, the mountain casts a shadow on a group of endless plates of which, in fact, is the volumetric material. The whole point is to position the camera and the sun.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,633
    edited December 1969

    @Sandy - nothing has reflection set on.

    @slepalex - yes, the cylinder has default grey material, I changed it to the same as the slab, but there was no difference. Only if I enable Transfer material, the inside gets black. The upper image on top of the previous page uses a copy of the terrain at 110% of the size. There is no difference whether the terrain is set solid, or not.

    @David - yes, volumetric materials are made of 2D sheets, the higher the quality, the more such sheets are packed closer together. The banding makes this evident. Edge Softness makes the sheet more or less transparent towards its edge, Fuzziness may be a filter blurring the texture applied. Cutting through the middle of these sheets doesn't make that part an edge for the render engine and there is no edge softness.

    The "reflection" we see are shadows. If 100% soft sun shadows are used, the "reflections" get blurred. Changing the sun position moves the shadows - makes them even more pronounced or disappear completely. Actually, I've been very "lucky" to get this effect.

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    Horo

    That's what I call, in tribute to Bob Ross, a happy accident :-)

  • JamahoneyJamahoney Posts: 1,791
    edited July 2015

    Horo, I think your cloud effect is known as cumulous repeaticus...heh he ;)

    Jay

    Post edited by Jamahoney on
  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    Detail of some clouds... Making it quite abstract.

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  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433
    edited December 1969

    And the freebie Stonehenge model with some more clouds.

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  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited July 2015

    Following on from David's one element volume cloud I wondered if it could be used for fog/mist.

    I used a volume water plane and a different texture but the same principal using the ambient channel and filters. Unlike the built in fog/mist it can be raised, lowered, looked through, colours changed, density changed, thinned or thickened by stretching and these are only some of the things I have found out :-)

    I also added a volume cloud plane to see how it would go and found that some settings of the fog mist slowed down the rendering of the clouds, sometimes by quite a bit.

    The last two images I reversed the colours putting white on top and dark on the bottom.

    I like the last image the best.

    Terrain and trees are only there to show the effect the trees being low polly distance ones. Lighting from HDRI using the sky and the sun is on; mist is on for the horizon.

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    Post edited by Fishtales on
  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,483
    edited December 1969

    Amazing cloud renders especially the colorful ones by David using Horo’s Hdris. Thanks for all the info and the discussions. I will need to come back here after trying David’s video. :)

    Beautiful Anaglyph renders by Horo and Jay

    Slepalex – I love the black and white version of your landscape “Rays of a wonderful sunset”

    Vivien – Thanks. Very nice render with the shiny objects.

    Art – Beautiful render, lovely vegetation.

    Sandy – nice experiments with the fog/mist, I like the 4th image the test_005

    A landscape -the country house is a freebie (Alphons Blom) and the hedges are xFrog, the bench, cat and flowers are also freebies, the clouds from David’s Cloudscape 5

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  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,927
    edited December 1969

    Great cloud renders I see.

    OK, so I also tried my hand at the one material cloud texture.
    I have been playing with it a while. I decided that the first attempt I would post is a more or less closed cloud cover. Disadvantage is that it does not submit any light, or better: underneath all is black (100% shadows). I tried using distant lights: no success. Therefore, I used IBL-TA in premium, excluding the slab with cloud material. It took days to render.
    There are three terrains, all with the same material, though the terrain up close has a higher frequency.

    One other disadvantage of the skyslab, of course, is that they do not go all the way to the horizon. This would logically be impossible (where is the horizon in en unending slab?) But it is not nice, because now my grey/white slab ends in a nice blue sky.

    I will show the result and the setting.

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  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    mermaid010

    Thank you.

    I recognise that house. I have used it before too :-)

  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911
    edited December 1969

    hansmar said:

    One other disadvantage of the skyslab, of course, is that they do not go all the way to the horizon. This would logically be impossible (where is the horizon in en unending slab?) But it is not nice, because now my grey/white slab ends in a nice blue sky.

    Endless Slab (and the texture too!) extends to the horizon, if you do not limit your texture in the 2nd and 3rd component in the DTE. Reduce the haze to 0 and you see the result. Another thing is that the world of Bryce is limited to a particular size or distance. Enter in the attributes of the object the number more, than 102400 (in any field), and you will see that the number is automatically reset to 102400. But even under this condition, you will not see the edge of the plane or an infinite Slab.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,633
    edited July 2015

    @Dave - nice detail. Stonehenge looks great. I've used it several times in the far past.

    @Sandy - interesting experiments.

    @mermaid010 - beautiful sunny and peaceful scene.

    @hansmar - slepalex is of course right about the maximal size and that the slab indeed reaches the horizon. You can also tilt it (X) by 1 or 2 degrees. If you use IBL to brighten the black shadows, exclude the slab. This works fine if the slab does not interfere with objects. Another strategy I used with some success is to put a distant light at the sun position and disable shadow casting to penetrate the cloud slab (this, when the clouds go into the terrain and the slab cannot be excluded). With Diffuse, set the light so that the shadows look good for you. Sometimes, a second, fainter, distant light opposite the sun helps to brighten the parts not lit by the sun and the first distant light.

    Post edited by Horo on
  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    Wondering, as one does, what my last scene would look like from above I added some bi-planes :-)

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  • Fencepost52Fencepost52 Posts: 509
    edited July 2015

    I've decided to take a step back away from the cloud renders because the advances are coming so quickly, I simply don't have time to keep up, and I don't have the smarts to add anything to the experiments. There are some absolutely beautiful renders y'all are putting forth. Combined with the different HDRI's.....well.....AWESOME!

    @Horo: I loved the anaglyphs. Even though the one scene pops out in the bottom corner, I like it that way. Really gives a sense of even greater depth.

    @mermaid: Lovely landscape. It's funny, because I was experimenting with that same cottage for my render below and opted not to use it. Great minds? I think so! :)

    @Fishtales: Nice scene from above.

    Thanks everyone for the kind words on my recent landscape.

    slepalex said:
    Good scene! I like the texture of the stone and vegetation on the distant hills. It is made with spikes on the terrain and texture with Blend Transparency? In my opinion it is necessary to reduce the daisy 5 times at least, and apply a translucent material to make them look white.

    Thanks for the compliments. Correct! Spiky terrain with blended transparency texture. I shrunk the sizes of the daisies considerably and due to the variable sizes of them from the instancing lab, many of them were no longer at a scale where they could be seen. So, I made some more instances and added them. I wanted more daisies in the scene, but I'm done now! I agree about the daisy textures, but decided against making any changes because my frustration level with the scene and lack of time. The rock texture is a freebie you can download here (other good textures as well).

    http://www.virtual-lands-3d.com/texture-tags.html?tags=Bryce+textures&start=0

    I added a deer to the scene, but it wasn't getting enough light and when I tried adding different lights, I came across some oddities with the light lab and how it affected the scene. Maybe y'all can shed light (ha!) on that for me. Did some quick renders using David/Horo's HDRI's from the Landscapes Under Fastastic Skies

    Every light I added (radial, distant, dome), I tried including the deer only. No matter how high I set the diffuse setting, the deer never lit up. I tried excluding everything, but the deer, and evidently I had some objects grouped that Bryce didn't like because it still lit up certain things I didn't want. Also, using the distant light, no matter what coordinates I typed in to match the sun's settings, it reset itself to the defaults. I gave up with adding lights and used some ambience on the deer, which didn't turn out the way I wanted.

    This morning, I decided to try again with the lights and re-render just the deer. Still the same problems with the include option and the distant light settings, but I was finally able to ungroup whatever was causing the problem, exclude all the items, and got the deer to have more appropriate light.

    Any thoughts on why the Include option wouldn't work? The issue of grouping? Why the distant light would reset itself to the defaults?

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