Bryce to Octane.
David Brinnen
Posts: 3,136
Obviously this topic is only going to be of limited interest so I've made a new post to keep it all together in one place.
Why Octane?
My choice. I looked at a lot of renders. And my eye was always drawn to Octane. Something about the quality of the light - hard to put my finger on exactly. The only other consideration was this - is there any chance that my carefully crafted Bryce scenes could be converted to Octane for final rendering?
So I got myself a GPU from Nvidia (well strictly speaking I got the graphics card from a vendor at Amazon) and the Octane demo from here http://render.otoy.com/ and had a go. I've very much of the opinion that you learn things from your mistakes, success doesn't really teach us very much, so I'm just going get on with it and you can draw your own conclusions.
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 1 - by David Brinnen
Here to start with is the image from the Bryce scene I'm going to attempt to convert.
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Comments
The next tricky episode. Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 2 - by David Brinnen
Oh David you traitor!How could you consider rendering in anything other than our beloved Bryce!...? :-) ;-)
Seriously though, it looks like a nice piece of software. Do post some images if you work it all out.
Oh David you traitor!How could you consider rendering in anything other than our beloved Bryce!...? :-) ;-)
Seriously though, it looks like a nice piece of software. Do post some images if you work it all out.
Yes I thought I might get a bit of stick for perusing this project. Here's the complete series. And some renders to look at.
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 1 - by David Brinnen
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 2 - by David Brinnen
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 3 - by David Brinnen
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 4 - by David Brinnen
Bryce to Octane - Island scene conversion - part 5 - by David Brinnen
The second and last ones seem best to me, though the difference is quite small. Perhaps the sun is too white in the third one for being so near the horizon. The first one misses that shine-through illusion, the sun seems less bright.
Thanks for the feedback Horo. Tired now, missed out on almost everything to get this done before I've got to tie my computer up with a monster render. (Edit: After the first pass the prediction is 43 days - eeep!)
Bryce to Octane - Another Islands (two) scene conversion - by David Brinnen
Sounds moderately long :-P
The upper one is way better.
Sounds moderately long :-P
The upper one is way better.
The upper one is Bryce. Of course! It may be weeks, months or years before I know enough about Octane to be able to push it as hard. This challenge is about porting the scenes over. And bit by bit learning some more about how Octane works.
Still rendering - A power cut would be really unfortunate...
I see. So the lower one is Octane and the material on the rock is different. The shader in Octane is really very different from Bryce (more like the new one in Studio) and - considering this - you came up with an awesome result.
Octanes bump mapping falls a long way short of Bryce's but Octane has normal mapping so... that might be better. However, due to not being able to output the bump information from Bryce as 16 bit heightmaps the normal maps don't look very promising so far that I've been able to convert. I need to do some tests on getting colour from bump - in case those can be converted into normal maps...
Mostly I just want to get as much out of Bryce as possible, so far, primitives yes - but probably not metaspheres or trees. Lattices and terrains. yes. I'm pondering how to create some volumetric effects in Octane... there's lots of interesting puzzles to solve and it is also forcing me into unfamiliar parts of Bryce - like the export options for example.
Still rendering...
Three new Bryce tutorials spawned from my researches with Octane.
Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - Exporting and importing lattices part 1 - by David Brinnen
Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - Exporting and importing lattices part 2 - by David Brinnen
Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - Exporting and importing lattices part 3 - by David Brinnen
Bricks taken from Bryce scene http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-pro-advanced-lighting via DS.
Horo's HDRI exported from IBL as a spherical map.
Wings 3D used to combine the allocated materials from the DS export.
Carpet texture from Genetica.
Normal maps for carpet generated with Crazy Bump.
Rendered in Octane in 35 minutes using the Pathtracing kernel.
16 bit png output, filtered for noise and converted to jpg using PSP8.
That looks very natural. Perhaps - just perhaps - there is a tad too much red on the white Legos. It could be a photograph.
The Lego bricks look great, very real.
I'm not convinced by where they rest against the carpet though. Maybe it's just me but I'd like to see more shadow on the carpet.
Thank you for the feedback gentlemen. OK, here's another for you to cast your eyes over. The bricks had about 40% of an SSS shader in. In this one, I've pushed the effect over to 95% to try and give them a more gel like quality. The same Bryce file was used as a source for the content of this image.
Certainly an improvement in where the objects interact with the carpet.
Love how the materials have turned out and the semi transparent effect.
It does look very real... All it needs now is a "choking hazard" warning sticker. :-)
The main light seems to come from straight above. That's probably why the shadow is very difficult to see on the Lego render. Here, with the keys, it is more obvious. I agree with Dave that the transparency came out nicely, particularly so the blue ring.
Thanks once again for the feedback. OK since you liked the blue ring, here's some more of that kind of material effect. Cube from the metals 2 and torch from material showcase 1. Wings 3D > Bryce > DS > Octane. Carpet as before Genetica > Crazy Bump > Octane.
Late putting in my 2 cents, but, Legos looks like the Legos we have. If light were above the stair step Legos, there would be some visible shadow under them. At least there were when we were building a structure on the dining room table. Carpet looks real good.
Toy keys really look good, like you'd buy them from a store. I do wonder if there would be more shadow visible under the key ring between the blue and yellow(?) keys. If might not be as dark as directly under the green key, but I'd think something substantial would be seen. Unless I just can't see what's really there.
Torch and blue cube looks interesting. If the torch is shinning through an opening on the side, as it is, wouldn't the circular opening on the right side of the cube be as slightly illuminated as the top and front circular openings? I ask because the center point at the right back is slightly illuminated, which indicates light is reaching that area.
This one is difficult to assess. There's something odd how the light progresses through the inside the cube. The torch is not at the height of the hole so it shines into it at an angle. I can't say what we see is right or wrong.
David, I find all your videos intriguing and interesting although I only have Bryce and Wings 3d and photoshop (a very old version)
David: In your latest render, I especially like the way the Mini Mag Light has brought out the bump in the carpet, it looks very natural even though a Mag Light would provide much more light that wouldn't fall off so rapidly.
The Blue material is also looking good.
Just curious David, why do you need to take the objects via Daz to Octane.
Using the bridge converts the Bryce primitives into mesh objects with a crude uv mapping applied. If I export directly out of Bryce via the mesh exporter Bryce primitives either become unmappable or unreadable. I have found through that it's possible to export terrains and lattices directly and these can then be brought in with DAZ exported stuff provided a scale and rotation correction is applied in a placement block.
Another experiment for you to ponder.
The dragon seems to be massive (not glassy). I like the burned-out look around the mouth. What I don't understand is the colour change. Where does the red come from when assuming the dragon is blue?
I was trying to recreate an effect I got with an old toothmug. It was blue plastic to outward appearance but when you shined light into it, it glowed magenta. So the blue plastic is a glossy coat and the material absorbs green light. That leaves red light to be scattered. In and out, through the blue coat, you get magenta.
Interesting material, never came across of such (though I never tried the mugs with a torch at night). makes sense - you've got the effect nicely.
I'm just that kind of guy you know? My friends here take the "mick" because I show an uncommon interest in little things. I can enjoy solving small problems. Here in "render land", all the problems are on a scale I can cope with.
Thanks David for your explanation.
Maybe one day I will install Daz. I do have an earlier version of it. Your work with Octane is very interesting but its not a program I can afford at the moment.
Well I look at it this way, either DAZ 3D will update Bryce in which case it would be really helpful if they had access to a keen Bryce user who had a reasonably up to date understanding of what was going on in lighting and materials. That's me that is. Or DAZ 3D will not. But I still need a way to get my Bryce scenes rendered with up to date lighting and materials if I want to continue to use Bryce in my chosen hobby. Others may feel the same way. Or not? I don't know. But my presenting thinking is that the time of the "all in one package" solution is coming to an end (and has been for a while) and so it's time to start learning how to move stuff around between applications.