Show Us Your Bryce Renders!
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Hi David, I have an Intel Core i7-2600 running at 3.4 GHz with 4 GB RAM and Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Off to look at that video.
Now that's more like it!
OK no need to be afraid of crunching some numbers...
You could try converting your sky to a HDRI image and lighting the scene that way, it might make it a bit less "harsh"... You also might want to get a few of those video tutorials under your belt before you try that but you've got the machine to do it with. If you want to track down more basic HDRI tutorials you can find them in the list http://www.bryce-tutorials.info/bryce-tutorials.html
hey, at least my hamster still manages to turn out some reasonable renders, even if I can't use all the modern bells and whistles of Bryce 7.
Even nearly got one render accepted as book cover (it came in as second best. OK it is a layered final image, obviously.
I wondered how long it would take before you felt compelled to take up the gauntlet. You know, of course, your renders are excellent - but just imagine how much excellenter they would be if you strapped bells and whistles all over them?
I will get there eventually. Just need a space of time when I won't be too busy. Just not quite certain when that time is likely to arrive.
Would it help if I just nagged you about it day and night - pretending all the while it was for your own good?
Not really, I have trouble enough with peeps keep nagging because things aren't getting sorted quick enough.THere are times I wonder why the heck I volunteered.
Now the forums are ordering properly I have promised someone I will do a portfolio of some of my renders altogether in the Art Studio, and heven't even got round to doing that yet.
Yes you would think that people who's hobby was rendering would really have more patience? Then again... think how much faster your jobs would get done if you had a new computer...
Not sure about that.
Frank and Adam have all singing all dancing type pooters, and still moan about how long it takes to do the things we need to do, as distinct from the things we want to do.
I hate it when they talk about their rigs. Adam's is even water cooled.
Aye... what you find is that for a few days your computer seems fast, then... you start experimenting with more exotic render options... IBL, TA, Volumetric World - and you are back to where you were - but with fancier bells and whistles.
I wouldn't mind, but neither of them even use Bryce, although they both "bought" it. They waste all that processing power on things like DS, and for Frank his modelling program, and Poser as well for promo's
Just be aware that we have an organic English Grammar/Spelling/Thesaurus checker in the thread.
Anyway, I'm going to look really bad for asking this but I'm going to ask it anyway. Despite you've uploaded all those wonderful videos, I've not actually seen any of them other than those you did for the Committee (with the odd exception perhaps). I have to ask, did you ever upload a video that shows how to handle pits in the DTE?
Like on a car dashboard or the rubber grip on a camera. I was thinking of installing Bryce and having a play with it because I need a black leather-effect rubber where it looks dull black on the protruding parts, but looks like it's powdery grey in the pitting. Think black, heavily grained leather and then pouring flour all over it, and when you wipe it over lightly, it leaves traces of the flour in the grain.
If you uploaded any videos that deal with those aspects of the DTE in one way or another, I'd appreciate the links because there's no way I have time to look through them all right now.
@ David Brinnen I am not sure what you mean .......... split wine? ..........the glasses are actually bent like that its just a slight abstracte feel to the glasses
Yes, David should have written "more excellentererer". tsk, tsk.
Never changes, does he?
.
It's for the interfaces of my VST Plug-ins, actually, so you're just dirty-minded.
Always said I'd do them in Bryce when the time comes, and I'd still like to if possible. It's a toss-up between doing them in Bryce or ZBrush, just depends on how close I can get to what I want out of the materials. I need to be able to get the finish exactly how I want it - not close - just exactly.
Really not sure what was dirty in what I said...
You're just getting excited because you're about to become an active member.
.
Silverdali, typo - should have been spilt - pass tense of to spill?
Len, if you upload an image of what you are looking for I will see what I can find.
PJF, do you also offer similar advice for banananananas?
I advised Paul McCartney on his Olympic opening lyrics. He really got the hang of it.
@ David Brinnen no worries
@Peter
Impossible, I haven't even got to Spain yet so I doubt there's a chance of me earning title of Active Member. And crap, you just reminded me I haven't even watched the rest of the Opening Ceremony yet, I hope the damn thing's still available on BBC iPlayer - especially as you was involved in it.
@David
Just found a couple of examples of what I'm talking about:
Good Example
Bad Example
They're both black, they're both the same effect, but the one on the top is a shiny black on the protruding parts of the texture, and a lighter, duller colour in the pitting (or grain) of the texture. Now the thing is, Bryce is perfect for that sort of stuff because it's DTE is 3D, that means I can have a procedural texture like that, and not have to worry about contours and corners like I would if I'd used a 2D procedural. All I have to do is set it to World Space and make sure I build a 3D procedural.
I'm not bothered about the colour because that's basic stuff even I understand in the DTE (I'm even thinking of having them in two-tone). I also know how to assign different procedurals to control the dullness etc in the Materials Lab. What I'm hoping for is something that explains how to get that sort of texture, or something that feeds us the information to know how to arrive at a certain texture. I know the basics, I can get a far-off result but I think there are two topics here; one to work the effect of restricting the colour to the grain in various ways, and another to actually shape the grain.
When I tried it before it felt like I was missing something obvious, especially when trying to get the texture and then adding a random element to it to break the monotony.
So, if you uploaded any videos that fit in with what I need to know, I'd really appreciate the link or links.
Don't let them intimidate you Pam and besides, water cooled may sound really neat and spiffy but water and electronics do not mix. Having a water cooled rig is like a guy going thru a mid life crisis buying some wildly expensive, hot looking, sports car. Obviously making up for something they feel is lacking elsewhere. :).
You don't need all that fancy schmancy stuff you just need a decent reliable computer stuffed to the gills with as many cores and as much memory as you can stuff in there. With computer parts prices being as low as they are these days and if you can or know someone that can build a computer, now is a great time to upgrade like right now you can get an 8 core AMD processor at newegg.com for under $200 which is amazing when you consider that just a few years ago the latest and greatest processors usually went for closer to $1000.
Okay I was trying to follow my usual pattern of late with the underwater cave scene and do one version of a render using DOF and another using DOF and TA. The DOF one I posted previously because I didn't want to wait for the other one with TA. When I checked later though I found it didn't go well. Now the first pic I used Rashad's recommendation and turned off TA Focused Scattering but had the Scattering Correcting, Boost Light and Reflection Correction turned on. The way the image turned out it looked to me like pixels might have gotten "scattered" around somewhat so I thought, "maybe Rashad was wrong in his advice and if I'm going to be correcting the scattering then I need focused scattering on so I tried that and got the second pic. I'm puzzled as to what's going on though especially since the second picture ended up significantly different from the first but still very wrong. It this kind of the same thing as what I got with the Mech? I didn't think it was because I thought those spots are always black but I've only ever seen that effect with the Mech and so maybe it is the same thing and I just haven't seen enough examples to know that?
The pixel noise is the result of Boost Light.
Scattering correction is superior light gathering (for most scenes) than focused scattering.
Reflection correction determines what happens to a light ray when the bump on a surface sends into down into the object behind that surface. For example, on a flat water plane you can have the bump effect creating waves, these reflect the environment according to that pattern - but with extreme bump the bit they would reflect to the camera is actually directing the ray down underwater - reflection correction at this point determines if the ray exits tangentially along the plane or is permitted to dive deep into the void below. The difference in appearance between the two options only really becomes apparent if the void below is unlit, then unexpected dark areas will appear on your bump.
Edit: focused scattering probably accounts for the glossy appearance of the materials in the second render - in focused scattering, the TA light gathering process is heavily biased towards the geometry normals. So it tends to lend materials a specular quality.
Focused Scattering will often create bias in the illumination of an object at times when the illumination should be more even. The second pic shows it well. The second pic almost looks brighter, but this is because the rays are not firing in all directions evenly. The result is a sort of highlight which is incorrect.
The first pic definitely shows more even ray firings, visible and lack of highlight.
But the issue for me here is the incredible and distracting noise. As mentioned before, TA by default places a cap on the level of divergence adjacent pixels can have, so that two adjacent pixels will vary from one another only but so far. This step reduces noise in the final output a great deal. But with Boost Light enabled, there is no fixing of the pixels so adjacent pixels can vary a as much as they want resulting in more visible noise.
The name Boost Light is misleading and I begged them to change the name. Boost Light doesnt do anything it just skips the final step of averaging. More in a moment.
TA fires rays from a each pixel point in many directions statistically. The exact number of rays fired by each pixel is determined by the ray depth and rays per pixel settings, but more on that later.
Here is a clearer explanation. Imagine if you will that there are two adjacent pixels sitting side by side in your image, and each of these pixels fires only two "discovery rays" into the environment. The exact direction these discovery rays will fly toward is supposed to be statistically random. In the case of Scattering Correction the ray firings are indeed properly random in direction, but with Focused Scattering the rays are more likely to travel along right angles than along other angles resulting in highlights you are seeing in the second pic you uploaded. Anyhow, we imagine further that each of these four total discovery rays strikes a different random area of the environment. For pixel one, ray A strikes a bright surface lit by the sun while ray B hits a dark surface. Default TA will gather these extremes but it will modify them so that the two colors are averaged resulting in a single gray pixel. Imagine that the second pixel sends out two rays as well and each of the rays hits a dark and a light area, the result of this averaging will yield another grey pixel. So in the final output you will observe two gray pixels side by side which will appear as noiseless. Now imagine if you will that each of these two pixels fires twp rays, but for pixel 1 both rays strike bright surfaces, and for pixel two both rays happen to strike dark areas of the image. In this manner we can expect pixel one to be very bright and pixel two to appear very dark, Default TA with the cap will will try to reduce the contrast of these two adjacent pixels averaging them both toward gray to reduce noise. But with Boost Light enabled, there is no averaging of adjacent pixels so each pixel is allowed to display the information it legitimately gathered. bright pixels remain bright, and dark pixels remain dark, and the result is more visible noise.
Because Boost Light doesnt try to "fix" the contrast of the pixels to a comfortable range, it can be extremely noisy looking in environments like yours where there are areas of extreme light and dark. Typically, you want to use Boost Light in situations that are well lit where there is little likelihood of the environmental contrast wreaking havoc on the Boost Light.
Now I should explain further. Boost Light itself is not the problem, the problem is the lack of ray firings for TA in general made obvious when the cap is removed. Firing only 2 or three or even 10 rays per pixel into the environment is not going to give a very good representation of the environment. Each pixel only has two inputs to average to determine the final color leaving the pixel blind to all of the other colors in the environment. But if each ray was firing 2000 rays in all different directions, that pixel will gather a much more complete picture of the environment. The information gathered by two adjacent pixels will be very similar by consequence of these multiple rays fired and the multiple areas of the image seen by each pixel, resulting in very little if any visible noise even without any last minute capping and fixing
So, I will say that Boost Light, though wonderful, is not ideal for your particular study. I'd say use it for more open scenes, with a bright sky and you will see very little noise from the Boost Light.
Len,
Bryce 10 minute material project - leatherette - a tutorial by David Brinnen
any use?
That video was wonderful and very effective. I am pleased to see the normal mapping trick you applied. I am thrilled because when i first saw what Len was asking for I figured the Voronoi filters would be good starting places. They have a nice cellular quality to them. Skin has a natrual leather grain to it and what you are doing here makes me hopeful for procedural skin solutions that are no longer slave to uv map resolution limits.
Great work as always, David!
Have been watching lots of the videos and trying to take in all the advice. Takes a while for the old brain to absorb all this knowledge now I'm getting older, but I keep watching and learning as they are such great tutorials.
Had another go with the lifeboat render.
Made lifeboat a bit smaller as I realized that it would not fit in the lifeboat station at the size it was!! Changed the sky for a more dramatic one.
@David Brinnen FOUND all the hidden stuff ye ha thanks for all your help, maybe now i might be able to give the abstract tut ago which HDRI should i use to try and achieve a similar effect?
Thank you Rashad - I've spotted your lighting thread, I'll try and put some links together for that.
Thank you Silverdali - I would suggest Dungeon Dimension HDRI since it has some strong coloured light sources in the HDR to work with the specular effect.