Rashad's Thoughts on Lighting in Bryce 7.1 Pro in 2017

1246789

Comments

  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911

    Rashad, I carefully read your articles on the topic of lighting and materials, ranging still from Bryce5.com. I get a lot of useful information out of your Philosophy (!) of Lighting.
    Here are two examples of the evening light.
    In both scenes HDRI effect is achieved. Details in the shadows vary good. If behind the camera, too, is a dense forest, that such an effect we do not reach. We need to be a different approach to lighting. I have thought about this:
    1. To apply Fill Light, which is very difficult and long. Although I experimented a little with this.
    2. To apply Dome Light in camera coordinates with the following options:
    a) Distant - off.
    b) Falloff - none.
    c) Outward - enabled.
    I do not even have new experiments according to claim 2. All ahead!
    *******************************

    Evening in the pine forest

    Bryce 7 Pro. Render Premium 36 rpp. Render time 9:34:32.
    Lighting: the sun and the Sphere Dome Light.
    Modeling: Bryce, Sculptris, Wings 3D.
    File size 302 MB.

    __________________

    Sun Parameters:
    Diffuse 100
    Specular 100
    Color HLS (18, 191, 210)
    Altitude 9,4
    Color of Sky Dome HLS (0, 37, 0)

    Sphere Dome Light Parameters:
    Diffuse = 7
    Specular = 3
    Quality = 16
    Bias = 25
    Randomness = 0
    Distant - enabled
    Falloff - none

    Sunset in a pine forest

    Bryce 7 Pro. Render Premium 36 rpp. Render time 5:48:52.
    Lighting: Distant Light, IBL (Bryce Sky HDRI).
    Modeling: Bryce, Wings 3D, GeoControl.
    File size 21.8 MB.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,709

    Rashad - the richness of your vegetation always awes me. AA default is the Box method, by far the simplest. Catmull is a more elaborate AAing scheme and doesn't take longer than box (as preliminary tests some time ago revealed). However, in normal scenes it is difficult to see a difference. Some testing is needed but finding a suitable scene that shows the difference is difficult.

     

     

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    Horo- Thanks indeed. I hope you produce a really cool panorama hdri or two from the scene, but it might take some time to render out at a good resolution. On the Matcreator collaborations, its just that I often perceive you and this pristine puritan of sorts, but you've got a twisted quirky side to you as well, which is why MatCreator's visual cues are stimulating to you. It makes me smile. In many ways you're more freakish than I am, and I mean that in the very best way possible. People have at least 3 dimensions, right?

    SlepAlex- Great!! Something is going on with the vegetation models. Some of them look like Bryce, others must be made by you in outside applications. They all look amazing, so keep doing more of what you are doing. The lighting is also working quite well in both of the recent submissions. Once again I find myself agreeing with the intensity of the indirect light, it looks really good. Any dimmer would depress the mood of the piece.

    3d Fills. You will soon find in the example MegaScape file that the 3D Fills arranged as I've done so can do the job quite well and with good render times, but translucency must be avoided to prevent multile day long render times. I've had to adopt a method for EGFLPS that uses 8 3DFill lights, each with a high qualtiy (1000) and as you will find a very specific influence range of 1100. The magic comes in the limited influence range. It also prevents the 3d fills from slowing down the rendering of the Cumulus Layer because none of the rays travel far enough to ever reach the Cumulus Layer. But also notice the color of the 3D Fills is handled as an inverse gradient. All this to hide the positions of the virtual light sources from revealing themselves as hot spots on the target models.

    Voodoo magic. No other way I can desctibe it.

    Why such settings from the 3D Fills? And why 8 of them? Why the specific size and why the intensity and power? Cannot this scene be rendered with lower quality from the 3d fills, or with fewer 3d Fills? Short answer; Yes. But it won't look as good. The size is because I wanted a global solution, it had to extend as far as the eye could see in all directions because we want to cover 1/4 mile at least. But also, because the limited range of the virtual light sources of these 3d Fills mean that no model is ever being struck be every single one of those virtual sources, only those within 200 feet of the object will affect it which is about 100 vitual sources per object. If you increase the Range of the 3dFills from 1100 to 1300, the scene will get brighter but the render time wil increase dramatically because each item is being struck by more of the virtual point lights.. Lowering the Range from 1100 to 800 and the scene will get much dimmer but will render much faster due to fewer rays reaching the model. The way EGFPLS operates is that it creates almost like a localized dome around each object. The reason so many samples are needed, and the reason why there are 8 3D Fills instead of 4 is because you have to find the right balance between the number of lights and their intensities if you are to avoid nasty hotspots. That isn't to say that EGFPLS isnt versatile and robust, it just requires that we use it only in particular ways or nothing good happens.

    More to come.

  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911

     

    SlepAlex- Great!! Something is going on with the vegetation models. Some of them look like Bryce, others must be made by you in outside applications. They all look amazing, so keep doing more of what you are doing. The lighting is also working quite well in both of the recent submissions. Once again I find myself agreeing with the intensity of the indirect light, it looks really good. Any dimmer would depress the mood of the piece.

    Rashad, if you look at the file size, it explains everything. The top image is heavy 3ds pine, foliage made with geometry. The second image is a Bryce-trees.

    3d Fills. You will soon find in the example MegaScape file that the 3D Fills arranged as I've done so can do the job quite well and with good render times, but translucency must be avoided to prevent multile day long render times. I've had to adopt a method for EGFLPS that uses 8 3DFill lights, each with a high qualtiy (1000) and as you will find a very specific influence range of 1100. The magic comes in the limited influence range. It also prevents the 3d fills from slowing down the rendering of the Cumulus Layer because none of the rays travel far enough to ever reach the Cumulus Layer. But also notice the color of the 3D Fills is handled as an inverse gradient. All this to hide the positions of the virtual light sources from revealing themselves as hot spots on the target models.

    Voodoo magic. No other way I can desctibe it.

    Rashad, when loading your full scene appears window "Out of memory!". Download interrupted for 61% of loaded objects. I suspected it beforehand. The file of 515 MB is too heavy for my system. I have Win XP 32 bit 4 Gb memory. But the version of "Blank" I uploaded successfully. It is enough to study. It's too complex lighting scheme. For most of my scenes, such a scheme is excessive. I think that good results can be achieved with simpler circuits, having 1 or 2 Dome Light  and 1 Fill Light or something like that. Although the study of your concept is very useful.
    I will continue to work on advanced lighting in Bryce.
    Sincerely.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    Slepalex said:

     

    SlepAlex- Great!! Something is going on with the vegetation models. Some of them look like Bryce, others must be made by you in outside applications. They all look amazing, so keep doing more of what you are doing. The lighting is also working quite well in both of the recent submissions. Once again I find myself agreeing with the intensity of the indirect light, it looks really good. Any dimmer would depress the mood of the piece.

    Rashad, if you look at the file size, it explains everything. The top image is heavy 3ds pine, foliage made with geometry. The second image is a Bryce-trees.

    3d Fills. You will soon find in the example MegaScape file that the 3D Fills arranged as I've done so can do the job quite well and with good render times, but translucency must be avoided to prevent multile day long render times. I've had to adopt a method for EGFLPS that uses 8 3DFill lights, each with a high qualtiy (1000) and as you will find a very specific influence range of 1100. The magic comes in the limited influence range. It also prevents the 3d fills from slowing down the rendering of the Cumulus Layer because none of the rays travel far enough to ever reach the Cumulus Layer. But also notice the color of the 3D Fills is handled as an inverse gradient. All this to hide the positions of the virtual light sources from revealing themselves as hot spots on the target models.

    Voodoo magic. No other way I can desctibe it.

    Rashad, when loading your full scene appears window "Out of memory!". Download interrupted for 61% of loaded objects. I suspected it beforehand. The file of 515 MB is too heavy for my system. I have Win XP 32 bit 4 Gb memory. But the version of "Blank" I uploaded successfully. It is enough to study. It's too complex lighting scheme. For most of my scenes, such a scheme is excessive. I think that good results can be achieved with simpler circuits, having 1 or 2 Dome Light  and 1 Fill Light or something like that. Although the study of your concept is very useful.
    I will continue to work on advanced lighting in Bryce.
    Sincerely.

    Hmm. No worries. I'll upload another version that doesn't include the grass layer. That change alone will make the file small enough that you should be able to load it. The blank version doesnt include the geometry, and the geomtry is the reason for the lights. Once the scene becomes fully dense, you'll see why its so bright. Thanks for the feedback.

    You will need LAA installed if you do not already. Back in a bit!

  • c-ramc-ram Posts: 376

    @Rashad : very very.. very interesting new way to light up our scenes!! I thank you so much for your EGFPLS file and while I made some test with it, I have decide to employ it in my new render! It's very promessing and I could see really significant benefits about render time.

     

    Just a kind of words about L.A.A : I could be wrong but I think that Alexey will not be able to run it on its 32 bits XP system.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,709

    Rashad - I haven't had time to look into this, just measured Bryce-only memory usage with Process Monitor and loading needs 3.13 GB, once loaded 2.95 GB, rendering 2.96 GB. With 4 GB memory LAA cannot help since the XP opsys takes up around 1-1/2 GB already. I think 5 GB memory is the absolute minimum.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    The file did load for me.  It took several minutes as indicated.  But I crashed it almost instantly but deleting a light source family and then hitting ctrl-z.

     

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,949

    Rashad: incredible scene. Wonderfully made. I agree that the foliage appears a bit too enthousiastic in light in your examples, which is why I like the evening/darker ones best.

    Slepalex: Two wonderful renders again. 

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    Gents,

    Thanks to each of you for downloading and testing it out. I wanted to demonstrate the way Bryce behaves when it gets truly close to its limits in a number of key areas all at the same time. The file is sensitive indeed, but I've not had a crash occur before from simply deleting a few lights and then bringing them back. I hope that doesn't put you off completely from playing around with it any further. I think it was a fluke or something. What could definitely cause a crash is attempting to change the materials of any of the major Layer groups. But changing lights shouldn't cause too much trouble in terms of crashes. But admittedly, this is somewhat unexplored territory. I've never shared a file this size before, so maybe there are corruptions that occur when sharing files this size. If so it's a good thing to know if indeed that is the case. We will see what the feedback from the rest of the community points to.

    Due to memory concerns, many of us Bryce users are just plain terrified of building complex scenes. But what I've found is that when commissioned works are requested for many projects, often they do want levels of complexity Bryce cannot currently offer, so they go straight to application slike Vue and overlook Bryuce completely. I want to explore these areas because these are the areas I feel that Bryce will need to grow in to remain competitive in the future. Building a scene this size isn't a cardinal sin of sorts, and can even be a necessary endeavor. When Bryce becomes 64 bit then the memory will no longer be a hurdle to limit our choices, I wanted to know if we even had a means to light scenes with this degree of complexity. So here we are.

    What I am hopeful for is that you guys will unhide the Eye Level Cameras Layer and play around with lots of different shots to see if the current light scheme holds. Also when you want to decrease the indirect light the first thing to do is to lower the intensity of the AAA Bounce Dome as this is the non-shadow casting light that does almost half the total work of the indirect lighting. Next is to tweak the EarthGlow 3d Fills and the Skylight Dome as needed for the time of day you're portraying.

    I'm also interested in seeing how you guys would approach the lighting for a scene of this scale. Best to remove the lights. Save and then reopen the scene to contiue working.

    David, Horo- You both had the experience of playing around with an earlier MgScp project several years ago. If you recall, a major issue of distraction was how incredibley slow the Brcye navigation became. I assumed that Bryce would always handle primtives better than imported geometry. But what I found is that the opposite is true. We can go further much faster with imported models. There is still a slowdown when editing the large groups themselves, sure. But the rest of the scene continues to behave at normal speeds. All this to say we need to have means of producing vegetation outside of Bryce. There could be a market for such idealized plants.

    C-Ram- I very much look forward to seeing the EGFPLS light scheme applied to one of your works. As you will notice the EarthGlow 3D Fills, the True Parallel Light, and the Bounce Dome are all green tinted to represent the color bleeding of the green foliage. Depending on the color scheme of your new piece, those color values will need to be updated.

    Horo- Removing the grass lowers the memory footprint by a little more than 1gb. This should bring the total file size down to just over 2gb. Provided Alexey closes all ofther applications and just runs Bryce, he should be able to load it with a few hundred mb to spare.

    My sincerest thanks again for taking time to look over my work!! More to come.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    edited March 2017
    Hansmar said:

    Rashad: incredible scene. Wonderfully made. I agree that the foliage appears a bit too enthousiastic in light in your examples, which is why I like the evening/darker ones best.

    Slepalex: Two wonderful renders again. 

    Thanks Hansmar! You bring up a good point about the light intensities and you are not alone in such thinking. That's why I want to explain it a little bit.

    The first lesson in this thread once it starts is "Respect for the Sun." The sun needs to be a point of special emphasis. I'll explain.

    This particular thread is a realism study, moreso than an artistic one. We want to recreate the look of photographs. It's my opinion that most Bryce renders I see are missing a lot of light compared to photographs, not just indirect light, but also key light. We underpower most everything. Some angles are well lit and others left in shadows. I find It takes a lot of light to cover a model from all angles appropriately. More light is almost always a better bet than not enough in brute force ray tracers like Bryce and also Octane.

    Recreating works from paintings this ideal of low light levels works well enough because paintings themselves are LDR, but not when trying to recreate the look of actual photos especially in full daylight. I think the dimness preference comes down to certain quirks with Bryce and the way we have trained our Bryce eye over the years, and the way the engine handles AntiAliasing noise making us afraid of pushing the dynamics too far. Along with the fact that before the advent of Bryce 7 the default sun was not very powerful. Most people assumed the sun didn't need to be any brighter than it used to be, but it does need to be brighter if you want to push the image into more photographic levels of dynamic range.

    Remember, realism isn't always about looking pretty; it's about looking real, and that can sometimes require some degree of ugliness. The real world never apologizes for the way it appears. It expects you to accept it on its own terms, which we tend to do. Same with a "realistic" render.

    What you are seeing is burn-out. In Octane for example; "burn-out" is a very common result from full daytime lighting, and the burnout actually adds to the realism. We tend to be afraid of any burned out pixels in our Bryce renders, but we shouldn't be. With these EGDLS and EGFPLS examples I want to shake us out of that safety and comfort of low dynamic range results. I like to push it, and I want you try pushing it from time to time as well, just to see what happens. Because if I cannot feel the "heat" of the sun in my render, then the sun probably isnt quite bright enough. What I am saying is that the feeling of needing sunglasses while viewing the image is a good thing, because that's how you'd feel in real life.

    Not to confuse anyone, here are a couple of Octane Renders I produced a while back while studying the ideal of "dynamic range" for finished images. Octane is very good for teaching us the way realistic light should actually look. After study like this I've come to realize that I always want a least a few pixels to reach burnout if a render is intended as full daylight with clear skies in temperate lattitudes. Too far from the equator and the sun doesnt rise very high in the sky, but it might still be quite bright. Anyhow. Specular reflections can often provide little boosts to the dynamic range of an image, allowing burnout reflections such as those on the leaves of the MgScp example I've provded above, which tend to look like noise when there are so many tiny leaves involved. But sometimes diffuse can burn out as well.

    Because Octane operates like a real world camera with exposure and gamma settings, the final outcome of a scene can be hugely divergent based on the settings applied yet each version fully realistic, thanks to the ideal of the Linera Workflow as explained to me by Phil W. These example renders are fully unbiased with in PMC kernel, textures are generally PBR compliant. These images will most certainly appear as photographs at first glance, not just due to the quality of the models and textures, but due to the unaplogoetic nature of the almost garish lighting. Real life doesnt apologize for its harsh lighting at noon time, and neither should we. What I am saying is that "flaws" can be a good thing when we know what we are doing.

    There are a couple of things to note in these Octane Renders. Firstly, the sufaces that are exposed to the sun become strongly saturated, as well as very bright indeed. Because of this brightness from the sun, we dont find the generous indirect lighting to be overdone. It seems plausible that the sun provides enough key light to energize the indirect light to the point where the scene becomes easily visible in the shaded areas. It's all about the proportions. More key light means more indirect light. Less key light means less indirect light. They should go together and compound upon one another.

    The Bryce examples I am showing above clearly don't look anywhere near as good as the Octane Renders I'm about to upload, but I've done everything I can to get a result from Bryce that is as similar to what I'd expect from Octane as possible. The main limitation I'm facing in Bryce is that leaf translucency technique proves to be too expensive in render time under more advanced light schemes like EGFPLS when faced with so much geometric complexity. As I stated before, translucent foliage completely affects the light solution for a scene. Part of the reason the shadows look so good in the dense Octane Renders is because the light passes through the leaves to illuminate the geometry beneath. That same penetrating light needs to be craftily compensated for in Bryce if translucency is not enabled.

    Its okay to burn out from time to time. In fact, if you export the image as an 96 bit .hdri you will find that the burned out pixels arent even burn outs, that there is still distinct information there that the .hdri format has retained. You can lower the levels bright areas of the file in a 2d application and find those lost details will return to the previously burned out seeming areas. So really, there's no need to be afraid of some heat in your renders.

    Hopefully with this thread, we can re-train our Bryce eyes to see our renders for the way they compare to real photos, instead of the way we imagine real photos to be. Go ahead. Turn up the heat. It wont look so bad so long as you do it the right way.

     Fun fun!!!!

    Tropical Hillside 1.jpg
    1600 x 1000 - 2M
    Tropical Hillside 2.jpg
    1600 x 1000 - 2M
    VA Victoria 4 119.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    VA Victoria 4 120.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    VA Victoria 4 87.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    VA Victoria 4 96.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    VA Victoria 4 123.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 2M
    Post edited by Rashad Carter on
  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    edited March 2017

    I want to be clear, this thread is not intended as a sales promotion for Octane. But seriously, the amazingness of thes results speak for themselves. Nothing would make me happier than a Bridge or plug-in allowing Bryce to have direct access to render engines like Octane. Not only did these renders come out nicely, but they each completed at this hgh resolution in less than 2 hours each. Often no more than half an hour. That same level quality render with translucent foliage and True Ambience would take several days per frame in Bryce, which is just too expensive in these modern times.

    Bryce needs updates to its qaulity and its speed to remain competitive in a world where apps such as Octane exist. Even with all of what Octane can do, I STILL find myself working in Bryce whenever possible. WHY IS THIS? What is this magic Bryce holds over me? Okay, going back to work on the thread materials. Back soon.

    Post edited by Rashad Carter on
  • SlepalexSlepalex Posts: 911

    I want to be clear, this thread is not intended as a sales promotion for Octane. But seriously, the amazingness of thes results speak for themselves. Nothing would make me happier than a Bridge or plug-in allowing Bryce to have direct access to render engines like Octane. Not only did these renders come out nicely, but they each completed at this hgh resolution in less than 2 hours each. Often no more than half an hour. That same level quality render with translucent foliage and True Ambience would take several days per frame in Bryce, which is just too expensive in these modern times.

    Bryce needs updates to its qaulity and its speed to remain competitive in a world where apps such as Octane exist. Even with all of what Octane can do, I STILL find myself working in Bryce whenever possible. WHY IS THIS? What is this magic Bryce holds over me? Okay, going back to work on the thread materials. Back soon.

    Rashad when "Octane", or any other visualizer able to convert a formula from DTE to bitmap texture, then it is possible for something to say. But this will never happen.
    Another thing is the speed of rendering in Bryce. It's worth a conversation.
    **********
    But I want to tell you about something else.
    Rashad, I reduced the size of your file "Blank" by 30% for 1/2 minutes without any loss of quality. Why is needed texture 1536x1536 for the shallow grass? Operation is very simple. I copy (Ctrl + C) the texture of foliage, tree trunk, grass, etc. In the "Edit 2D Pict Textures", insert the open window "IrfanView" (Ctrl + V), reduced to 256x256 (Ctrl + R), copy and paste in Bryce. The operation takes less time than I write these lines.
    Then I did a little (a few seconds) think and replace almost all bitmap texture on treatment. If you do not show the leaves and bark of a tree close up, it is necessary to use a procedural texture. Reducing bitmap textures I apply also to the low and high poly characters if I do not use their close-up. This greatly saves space in memory and on disk.

     

  • DZielsDZiels Posts: 13

    David, I've used those AA controls in the past and still do to a limited extent. I often use soft shadows and blurry reflections (if I have any reflective surfaces or water) so I still get better performance out or the premium setting. I usually set the AA Radius up a little to 1.1 or 1.2. I feel it helps soften the edges. If you look at what a digital camera produces, you don't get pixel sharp edges. If you really zoom in, high contrast transitions are fuzzier than what Bryce's mathematical precision generates. It's a personal preference.

    Rashad, all of those sample images look fantastic. I'm amazed Bryce can handle such a dense, lush environment. In that darker image with the overhead branch, the translucency of the leaves really sells it. Great job!

    I have finally finished the test image from above. I tweaked the lighting and tint to fairly closely match the the TA version. I think the 3D fill lights still provide better shading in the nooks and crannies. I also think that TA has some problems where two surfaces meet at right angles, especially if the lighting angle on one is much more direct than the other. I'll be posting the final image in the show us your renders thread shortly.

    I'm sorry it took me all week to respond. Some bosses just don't appreciate that a fella might have a Bryce habit he needs to indulge...

  • vivienvivien Posts: 184

    Thank you Rashad for starting this thread. Lighting has never been one of my strong points and reading all the posts from the masters of Bryce has really showed me how little I know...

    Saying that, some of the explanations, I managed to understand, (not many mind you) I'll certainly be trying them out.

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,949

    Rashad: Thanks for your thoughts. I guess the issue why we think that the lights in your Bryce renders are maybe too light is partly due to the fact that our mind is very good and quick at correcting differences in light in real situations. Our dynamic range is enormous, one could say. So, if we look at light leaves and then at shadows, we see the leaves not very light and the shadow not very dark. So maybe that is why I feel the leaves are maybe a bit too light: we don't generally see really light and really dark at the same time.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    Vivien- Glad the thread is useful. Every few years I like to kick up the dust again with a new lighting thread. Problem is, rarely is there anything new to discuss. Still, going back to the basics and rebuilding ourselves is part of the fun. I have no special qualifications mind you. No one should be quoting me as the gospel. But I do have a great deal of interest in the subject and I've had a powerful computer for some years now to test things out that previously could not be tested effectively, so I know how the tools work even if I don't know how to make decent art with them. Anyhow, as you gain more experience you will find yourself agreeing and disagreeing with me at certain points. Just know that I can be wrong, so trust your own instincts and pursue any idea that comes to you.

    Dziels- Thanks so much!! I must admit, there is no translucency anywhere in the Bryce renders. The look of the SSS is faked by the use of an upward facing True Parallel light, that keeps the shaded regions of the foliage from becoming so dark we notice that there is no translucency there.

    TA has some quirks. If you are getting odd results from certain angles it sounds as if Focused Scattering is at play. Make certain in the Render options that Scattering Correction is enabled and that Focused Scattering is disabled. Please report back on if this change in setting fixes the issue you were observing. Sorry to give you homework with this thread and the other one. I just want to learn as much as I can from you. Thanks.

    Hansmar- Yes, I agree about seeing light and shadow at the same time being somewhat rare. But in fairness, I have pushed the levels a bit to fake the appearance of translucency that isn't actually there. So you and David are correct, the light is bright, but it is not by accident, and I think it still works generally.

    How do we know the true brightness and color of a surface? This is the central question to all lighting.

    I think often in Bryce we concern ourselves with making an item look good for the current shot only. So we adjust the sunlight and other lights to the point where the target model appears as we desire it to in our mind's eye, which can be a very abstract place. In our mind's eye, there is no burn-out, and there are no deep shadows. The problem is, our abstract minds often don't consider issues such as time of day. How this object will look "differently if it is placed into the shaded regions of the image, or if the time of day indicates the sun is placed at a high angle or extremely low angle. Instead of asking ourselves if a surface looks plausible in an abstract sort of way, we need to ask ourselves if the surface looks correct under the specific current given circumstances, such as the time of the day and the weather conditions and nearby geometry such as walls, buildings etc. How should this sidewalk appear when lit by the sun at 75degrees in altitude? This is different than the way the same sidewalk appears when rendered in the evening, when the sun strikes said surface from a shallower angle lending much less light than it does at other times of the day. Unless you test it in multiple times of the day, it can be difficult to discern the true color and brightness level a surface should be placed upon. That's part of why the MegaScapes are built as they are, to allow users to free themsleves from concerns over the look of any surface from any one angle. Sometimes, surfaces should be brighter or darker than we assumed but we don't notice it until we view them from a different angle. More on all of that in the near future. Also, do I have your email? I'd like to send you the file. Drop me a PM please. I'll double check my records to see if I can find it.

    Part of the issue with the renders we are seeing is the extremely low resolution of the images, only 600 pixels. These same light settings rendered at a higher resolution, the distraction of the noise disappears. I think AA is a bigger problem than the actual light levels.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    edited March 2017

    Dziels already recognizes this necessity, but he has reminded me of something I should share with everyone.

    There is a bit of terminlogy I want to make sure we all agree on for this thread to avoid confusion.

    Key Light- This is the equivalent of Direct Light in CG conceptualization. Such as light from the default Sun and light from indiviudal radials and spots. Key lights cast cleary discernable shadows onto nearby objects. Key lights also elicit specular reflections.

    Indirect Light- Light from sources that are not point-like in nature, such as the light that sheds down from the sky. Coming in from lots of angles, skylight produces very soft shadows compared to those of the sun where all the rays face the same direction. Indirect light also comes from surfaces as they reflect the input of key light sources. True Ambience specializes in this type of lighting.

    Fill LIght-The term "Fill Light" has a very specific meaning in real world photography. It is usually a single light bulb softened by a scrim that is placed to the left or the right of the model to illuminate the shadows along angles which diverge from the angles being lit brightly by the key light source.

    3D Fill Light- This is a special cluster light form found in only one application as far as I know...Bryce. Unlike the photographical Fill light that comes from a point, the 3D Fill is actually a bit of a volume light, coming from an area instead of from a central point. The size of that area can vary from nearly point like, to world encompassing.

    When we discuss the lighting in our scenes, we should draw a clear distinction between a traditional "Fill" light and the Bryce specific 3D Fill Light. Thus, the extra typing required to indicate 3D Fill is worthwhile.

    Sometimes, all you need is a Fill light, which you'd apply with a single radial to the left or right of the target model. Other times you need something to solve the indirect light for more than the mere target object, but for the rest of the room as well. Those are the situations when you want to use the Bryce 3D Fill.

    Thanks

    For further reading:

    Specular Channel: In Bryce, the specular channel of the material lab allows surfaces to reflect the images of light sources themselves and only the light sources.

    Reflection Channel: True reflection however, allows the surface to reflect the images of all items within the scene, not just the light sources.

    In the real world all "reflections" are the same, they are all specular in nature capturing both light sources and nearby geometry. But for biased engines like Bryce, Poser, Carrara, 3DL, "reflection" has been broken into two separate parts.

    Post edited by Rashad Carter on
  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    edited March 2017

    C-Ram

    As you adapt the EGFPLS to your new scene, there are few things to keep in mind.

    1. Open the Blank file and save the entire EGFPLS group to your Bryce library. Do not close the file, keep it open for further reference. You'll need this file to carefully compare and examine exactly which surfaces should be included and excluded by the given light sources. The blank file should not use up too much ram

    2. Open a new scene and import the EGFPLS.

    3. Do not change the physcial size of the 3D Fills. Currently they are around 33,000 Bryce units wide and 600 Bu tall. This gives you indirect light covering up to 1/4 mile square and up to 80 feet due to the randomness of the 3d Fills. If you do not need to illuminate that far out, no worries, the extra lights won't reach the camera anyhow.

    I also suggest you do not change the Range of the 3d Fill lights or anything related to the inverse gradient. You can dim and raise the diffuse and specular power as needed. In the MgScp example I sent you, once the scene became fully complex, I had to push the 3D Fills intensity to the maximum of 999 for both diffuse and specular. In less dense scenes, I've lowered the 3d Fills to 400 and everything was still bright enough. It depends on the situation.

    Edit: Also don't change the quality of those 3D Fills. 1000 seems high but it is optimal based on the range that is set.

    Edit: Also forgot to add that the True Paralle in the original scene is placed well beneath the ground plane so I could have light on the underside of the stone and other objects are are beneath world center. But ideall, the EarthGLow Fill Light group wants to be placed at world center, Y location 300 so that it remians above world center at 600 units tall.

    4. Make certain there is no blend transparency anywhere in the scene,especially the leaves of the trees. Otherwsise, the render speed advantages of EGFPLS are lost. For optimal rendering, all transparency related effects must be avoided.

    Best of luck!

    Post edited by Rashad Carter on
  • DZielsDZiels Posts: 13

    Dziels- Thanks so much!! I must admit, there is no translucency anywhere in the Bryce renders. The look of the SSS is faked by the use of an upward facing True Parallel light, that keeps the shaded regions of the foliage from becoming so dark we notice that there is no translucency there.

    TA has some quirks. If you are getting odd results from certain angles it sounds as if Focused Scattering is at play. Make certain in the Render options that Scattering Correction is enabled and that Focused Scattering is disabled. Please report back on if this change in setting fixes the issue you were observing. Sorry to give you homework with this thread and the other one. I just want to learn as much as I can from you. Thanks.

    Wow, Rashad!  So your upward facing parallel light fooled me.  Very interesting...

    Below is a test shot of what I'm talking about.  Boost light and Scattering Correction were checked, Focused Scattering was not.  The spanning blocks that go from one column to the next have the exact same material as the square cap stones at the top of each column and the rest of each column.  For some reason they render a darker gray than the columns.  Granted, the spanning blocks are slightly farther from the light sources and the parallel faces of the spanning blocks and cap stones do look similar as they should be.  At the intersection of the perpendicular cap stone face and the underside of the spanning blocks, the color transition seems too sharp and different.  Maybe the shading is "optically" correct but the resulting coloration looks wrong to my eye.  My solution as can be seen on the lighter spanning block was to apply about 8% ambiance to compensate.

     

    TA Odd Shading Test.jpg
    544 x 509 - 45K
  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803
    edited March 2017
    DZiels said:

    Dziels- Thanks so much!! I must admit, there is no translucency anywhere in the Bryce renders. The look of the SSS is faked by the use of an upward facing True Parallel light, that keeps the shaded regions of the foliage from becoming so dark we notice that there is no translucency there.

    TA has some quirks. If you are getting odd results from certain angles it sounds as if Focused Scattering is at play. Make certain in the Render options that Scattering Correction is enabled and that Focused Scattering is disabled. Please report back on if this change in setting fixes the issue you were observing. Sorry to give you homework with this thread and the other one. I just want to learn as much as I can from you. Thanks.

    Wow, Rashad!  So your upward facing parallel light fooled me.  Very interesting...

    Below is a test shot of what I'm talking about.  Boost light and Scattering Correction were checked, Focused Scattering was not.  The spanning blocks that go from one column to the next have the exact same material as the square cap stones at the top of each column and the rest of each column.  For some reason they render a darker gray than the columns.  Granted, the spanning blocks are slightly farther from the light sources and the parallel faces of the spanning blocks and cap stones do look similar as they should be.  At the intersection of the perpendicular cap stone face and the underside of the spanning blocks, the color transition seems too sharp and different.  Maybe the shading is "optically" correct but the resulting coloration looks wrong to my eye.  My solution as can be seen on the lighter spanning block was to apply about 8% ambiance to compensate.

     

    Strange. Normally I'd know what to say but in this case I have no clue. Well, I have an idea but no way to know if its relevant. Check your PMs.

    Edit: The idea I have relates to a bug I remember from some time ago relating to True Ambience and the Bryce Cube Primitive. Primitives have been known to be problematic for TA, but that bug should've been fixed long ago by now.

    Post edited by Rashad Carter on
  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,540

    Still reading, re-reading and learning, unfortunately I don’t understand much of the discussion. Slepalex’s examples are easier to implement. smiley

    Rashad Carter – the Octane renders are awesome.

    Slepalex – beautiful renders, thanks for the information about the sun and Dome light settings.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    Heya All!

    Finally!!

    Files are ready for download.

    This is round 1, I will likely upload another round of files before long.

    Files are found on page 1 of this thread.

    Please download and have fun and please report any questions or observations.

     Fun fun!

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,709

    Rashad - thank you. I got the files and will see when I have the time and courage to embark on them.
    For those living in the metric world: since one ft is 30.48 cm, 1 cm is 0.481 BU and 1 km is 48120 BU (48120.079) of that helps.

     

  • adbcadbc Posts: 3,115

    Rashad : thanks. I got the files. I did read and read the discussion a while ago, trying to understand but anyway I certainly will try to work with it and probably read it again a few times !

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    It was pleasure to produce these files for the Bryce community. This is only about half of what I'm planning in total. Have fun. Deconstruct and destroy and rebuild and please report back with any interesting observations.

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,540

    Thanks a zillion Rashad, downloading the files now. Like Adbc I read and read the discussion trying to understand, maybe using the files and re-reading the discussion will make more sense now.

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,949

    Thanks so much, Rashad! Also downloading and hopint to understand when re-reading and seeing the files. (And to find some real time to play with them!)

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,169

    Wow, nice thread.

  • Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,803

    Thanks grandly to anyone and everyone who has taken the time to download the content. Please do not be shy, let me know what you think. I'm surprised no one has proposed any questions or observations yet. I'd love to get some dialogue started. Fun fun!

Sign In or Register to comment.