Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 7
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@Dave,
Love the patriotic Ladybird, you give me ideas, Lol.
@Sean Riesch,
Nice idea. You asked about further tweaks? Well Horo mentioned the sky but that doesn't bother me at all. What bothered me is that there's so much going on – so many creatures, that I couldn't immediately tell what was going on – and I'm still not sure. Is it that the dragons are alive and are attacking? Because if so then fewer dragons might make this clearer. And those deer, are they alive too? Because if not, then giving them a texture matching the stone of the castle walls might make this clearer, their brown colour at the moment makes them look alive.
You asked about the colour of the more distant parts of the castle? I'd give that part the same texture as the closer parts, no need for grunge then. (or the closer parts the same as the lighter buildings.)
I do like the dragons, I particularly like the green in their wings. And I like them twining themselves around the bridge's supports as they try to climb up, but as I said, there are too many of them – too many places for the eye to look. I like the scaling between dragons, men and horses, that looks right. I guess that's why the larger scaling of the deer and their position poised precariously beside that tower – dangling over a sheer drop with no visible means of support! Lol! ...makes them look... odd. I'm still not sure if they are some magical animal prancing out of nowhere to protect the castle, or just sculptures... if sculptures, then a stone texture would help to resolve this.
That building on the right, closest to the camera... it looks a little close to the bridge to me, almost as if it's within a couple of feet of the bridge, also it has a different stone texture to the other two sets of buildings, and having 3 different looks like this is another slight distraction. This is nitpicky though and I might not have noticed it if you hadn't brought up the paleness of the more distant buildings, or I might... dunno now do I? Lol.
There's what looks like a light under one of the bridge's arches... it's doing a nice job of lighting up the mist in that area, and I like the mist, but there's no matching light under either of the other two arches closer to the camera.
The mist on the far left looks a teany bit too dense or just too bright. But if there were lights under the other two arches, this might then merge into the scene better...
There are two different looking textures on the water – is that because of a weir between them? Making the higher part choppy and the lower part smooth? Because I'd have expected the water above a weir to be smooth and below it to be choppy... just a thought.
All the dragons seem to be the same size... if you don’t want to loose too many of them but do want the scene to be less distracting, maybe a way to do that would be to vary the sizes? But I'd make sure to do that so it's obvious that one is an adult and one a juvenile or baby, so have a baby close to its mother. If you just make one of them smaller but it's on its own in the scene you probably wouldn't be able to tell. Like the 3 climbing the bridge. Those could be mum with two babies following her. You could do similar with the cluster of dragons closest to the camera.
Overall this is a very interesting scene with such a lot going on in it, that you don't easily loose interest in it, and I guess it all depends on whether you want to hold the interest or tell the story in a glance or both. Both would be the ideal but it's all a question of balance. Too much going on can be distracting and make this unclear and frustrating, too little and you look and then look away...
I mean I'm still not sure if that object between the different water textures is a weir or just a branch close to the camera... or a rift in reality, a tear between the dragons' world and the human world... It's the oddness of there being a reflection of the castle in one part of the water, and no reflection in the choppier part of the water's texture... That's puzzling the doodad's out of me!
Overall this is both interesting and frustrating, for me it's a bit too busy, but I'd say there are a few points to think about:
Deer, dragons, textures, lights.
Good points: Mist, dragons, buildings.
The mist gives it an early morning feel that matches the sky nicely and helps to add a touch of mystery. The dragons... well many of us like dragons and I like the way you have them looking like an infestation, rather than a 'St George and the' image, that makes it different.
The buildings: the different angles and shapes makes for an interesting image for the eye to look at, the tall, thin, angular towers. The domes and arches, the different (metallic?) fabric on the domes, the tiled pitched roofs on the square towers, the rectangular windows on the bridge's watchtower, the little bits of detail (not sure what they all are) on the closest buildings. The flag details on the most distant buildings, the street lamp on the bridge (only 1?) and the foliage close to the camera helps to break up all that stone of the rest of the image – that's a nice balance.
The uncertain points:
The mist is a little unbalanced – rather bright on the far left.
The isolated light under the bridge.
The pale textures on the distant buildings.
Rather too many dragons of all the same size.
Deer too brown.
Water looks odd: both choppy and calm.
Overall an interesting image. Well done and good luck in the competition.
@Mermaid,
Thanks for distracting me from trying to learn rigging – scowls at you horridly! Lol! I spent all yesterday and the day before worrying at this fractal thing – once we'd got my problems with the tutorial sorted! ROFL! (thanks for that – you start to think your brain is fried otherwise)
I must have liked your first posting of fractal images or I wouldn't have been tempted to have a go myself, but the one I like most is the single one on page 9, nice and sureal looking. (I liked the 1st of the original ones you posted, the 2nd looks like something you might see down a sci-fi shaft or tunnel, the last one looks quite Matrix-ish)
@GussNemo, thanks for the help with positioning the moon, the tut was rather vague on that.
I love the ritz cracker boxes – those white edges are easily cured if you're worried about them, just scale those faces down a little in the UV Editor in Wings3d – I like to keep all my UVmaps very slightly away from the edges of the mapping area, otherwise this whiteness can easily spoil a render – the white is just where that face is too close to the edge. Luckily in this instance it just looks like the box's edges are a little scuffed. Your image makes me want to go out and buy some crackers! Lol.
@David,
Looks like an oriental style beach hut, but I do hope you're going to clear up the mystery and tell us.
Saw your mini tut on how to render just an object's shadow... interesting!
Are you going to make this available as an .obj? Cos I'd really like to play around with different textures on it.
P.S. Dave mentioned using Photoshop to create a Welsh matchbox texture, there are 2 ways to do this without an .obj file but just an .obp file.
(– so long as the original maker has no objections!) So please ask David Brinnen first!
1) give the whole object a basic grey material in Bryce and then you can export as an .obj and then you can play with the UVmap creating a new one if you want. (exporting with the original textures on the object can crash Bryce, but with just 2 this might or might not work – defaulting it to grey makes it much easier)
But an easier way is just to copy the image in Bryce's Material/Pict editor, then use 'paste' in your image prog of choice. (Corel's PaintShopProPhoto does this in 1 click) then you can just edit that texture to read 'Welsh' for English, etc etc...
This method enabled me to rescue some models of mine saved as Bryce .obp's when some kind person broke into my car and stole loads of stuff including my laptop and all my backup dvds. (my bryce presets were saved somewhere else - luckily)
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To everyone else, I'm sorry I can't comment on everything – but I've waffled on quite long enough as it is, (got caught up with Sean's Dragon pic and – oh look, that donkey's lost a leg!)
Here's my contribution to the fractal theme:
Kaleidoscope Mint
See pic 1 below for a still:
And I just couldn't resist having a little play with the ladybird matchbox series:
(see pic 2) I didn't touch the box itself but...
Guss:
great abstracts, just want to dive in there and look around!
Dave:
nailed that mike for sure, I hope they t choose the concept that includes it for the CD cover
David:
Bucket and spade is a good example of modeling anything that comes out of a plastics mold, it seems like every line and shape is anything but straight, most likely for strength, and the bizarre shapes that causes. simple looking but far from it. I have used some of the "hidden " contents you pointed out to me a few months ago, thanks a bunch
Franontheedge:
have been refrencing the waterfall tut, thank you again, it works really well, and I have implimented it in my current project
Here is my current w.i.p
I found inspiration from a picture on the net, it is Crescent Falls in Alberta
and the project progress up to today, the big fall will take one step down before coming over the 2nd edge, it might be hard to see in the image, and pool at the bottom and run over the mini falls
.
if any one can give me a hint as the best material for the bottom, or floor level rock , and also a gravel looking material would be appreciated.
Looking good, though ...
@franontheedge - Kaleidoscope looks nice, video too. Ah, and the patriotic ladybirds are also nicely done.
@dana365 - this waterfall scene WIP of yours looks great.
@dana365, your choice of gravel might depend on how close or what angle you want to view your scene at, as well as how much you want the rocks to stick out of the water. If you just wanted the solid gravel bars to have a different material and weren't going to zoom in, you could experiment with one of the stony materials that I think ship with Bryce, maybe rescale it a bit. If you wanted some individual rocks sticking out of the water like in the picture, then you might need to go with either scattering a huge number of actual rocks (or instances) about the scene, or maybe fake it with a single terrain if you can find a way to turn a terrain into a bunch of rock-shaped bumps that look realistic (I tried once, and failed miserably, but I'm sure there's a way to do it. Perhaps you need a rock-elevation-shaped brush or something.)
@Fran, thanks for the super-detailed feedback! Bryce is currently tied up in another render with a deadline so I'll probably have to wait a bit before I get back to this scene, however I will get back to it. Others commented on the deer statues as well. I might try retexturing those from the current bronze material to maybe a corroded green copper, or make them super shiny, or maybe add other pieces to the statues too like a tree and a base, so it's more obviously a statue, and see if I can make it more clear that it's resting on the bridge side railing. I agree that the mist on the left looks too bright, I'll have to fix that. I may experiment with the sky blueness as suggested by somebody else and see if I can change it without eliminating the sunset effect.
The differences in water reflections are intentional; the largest bottom layer is supposed to be an actively flowing river, thus rougher water. The two smoother water surfaces are supposed to be still pools trapped higher up in the rocks above the level and out of the influence of the river. Perhaps I need something else to make that more obvious. The large number of dragons is going to stay; you hit spot-on with "infestation", that was the goal. (And actually there is a single much larger parent dragon; it's the one on the rooftop of the building way out on the water that the guard is pointing at.)
I'll try using the bridge's stone texture on the nearby righthand building and see what it looks like. Interestingly, this texture already IS being used on all distant buildings, but it looks totally different for some reason, perhaps because this side of the bridge is in more shadows combined with being close enough to more easily make out individual stones and mortar. I actually thought I had missed copying the material and tried to "fix" it and couldn't figure out why the material wasn't applying until I realized it was already there! I'll have to actually make it different to try to make it look more the same. Weird. Perhaps I can just lower the diffuse a hair to darken it without needing a second material, as there might not be enough memory left for a that new material. The single light was intended as a navigation waypoint for tiny boats through the deepest and most rock-free section of the river without hitting the bridge supports, but I'm not particularly attached to that idea, I could try experimenting with adding more and see what happens.
Well, another job done (nearly finished) that includes Bryce work.
The band loved the microphone and after some slight adjustments, this is how it looks:
Horo:
Thank you, long ways to go, but I am really like this build
Dave:
congrats on the cd cover, glad they went with it, the fonts, and over all style really match the music genre, awesome job!!
Sean:
hi, nice to meet you, I like your castle scene, very fantasy
, thanks for the feedback. I don't think of materials or textures from one particular pov,, although this might place a disadvantage to rendering times and/ or the over all look, but I like to animate my scenes when I am done and I never know for sure where the camera will be going, so I try to make the materials/textures believable from any pov. I think your idea for rock shaped brushes, for elevation, should come in handy as I was going to place a bunch of rocks individually and this might be a handy tool for that. as goes the gravel I think I am looking at using an image texture as none of the supplied textures are lending themselves to this , so far, I have a few more to go through to be sure. For the lowest terrain I have decided on a cracked concrete image as the texture, its working out all right, but I think with a bit more tweeking, there are a couple of supplied textures that will eventually replace those.
Savage...just a note on a typo - [it's] should be [its] (No part of this recording or it's packaging...) - aha, the dreaded apostrophe, like so many, many (including myself) of us sneaked up on you. Hope you haven't gone printing quite yet, and wonderful finish, btw.
I was looking at music magazines today to see if any were offerring royalty-free music on accompanying CDs, and one mag actually had a mic like the one you have (but don't ask me what the name of the mag was, as I was looking at several).
Jay
I only use modern mics in my band. I find even the pseudo/repro ones made today aren't as good as a modern design... But they do look the part don't they.
Savage...yeah, you’d be surprised how many would pick them up on it afterwards. They happen all the time - no matter how many times one proofreads a piece, you come back a day later, and 'pop' they show up. Typos, and inclusion/misplacement thereof can sometimes get very funny – my favourite is below:
'I helped my uncle Jack off his horse.' ;)
Edit: Have a look at these ones - some are a bit hard to spot.
Jay
And of course there is always that well worn joke
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
@Dave - CD cover looks great.
@Pam - yeah, typos can be fun.
I had to purchase the product Miss B mentioned in the thread http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/39906/ in order to update my conversion program for Bryce terrains. Now it's done and the doc updated and I'm having a bit of fun with it. So here is only (part of) that terrain and the ground plane. The material applied to it is an old one of mine. Lit by the sun and the Ermitage HDRI for the ambient and the sky. Rendered with soft shadows.
@Sean
Yes, about the buildings and this strange effect on the texture – looking at it more closely, if you look at the tower on the far right – at the town end of the bridge? It has a more faded appearance sort of part way between the main bridge tower and the more distant pale buildings, what stops the eye from immediately taking this in – is the closest building with its darker texture. I notice that the tallest tower on this nearest building causes a break between this townside tower and the paler buildings – therefore the eye is distracted by this darker tower, and you don't take in the distance fading going on with the stone texture.
If that tower alone is moveable it might be an idea to move it to a position where it's on the right of the townside tower – again a slight change of camera angle might do this for you instead. But don't forget to save the original camera angle before trying that, if you decide to. Something I've done before! Duh!
I'd be interested to see what the nearer buildings look like with the same texture as the bridge – if it's possible to change it.
Yup. Experimenting is good. And if the extra light is too much you can either turn the lights' output down or just off without loosing the actual lamps.
Good luck with this image.
@Dana,
Wow! Looks like you've done a lot of work on this already, did you model this in Bryce?
Oh Sean mentioned using a terrain for rocks. I've used one for that before. You use 'Mounds' in the terrain editor.
@Dave, great album cover, the microphone looks really good there.
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Got a few rocks here:
And I did a longer render of the Ladybirds with better shadows:
Horo:
love it!, that is the kind of depth I really want to understand and execute, thank you for the example, awe struck as always.
Franontheedge:
Thank you , too kind!, almost everything is Bryce, except for the top layers on the cliff, I made the shape in Photoshop, and went from png, to inkscape for a svg, to blender to extrude and back as an 3ds. to Bryce, I just find it easier than cutting up Booleans in Bryce. As goes my gravel, I have used a terrain, with a gravel pct image, it looks ok, just because gravel is just mounded, I used a gradient on the terrain map, so there is a shape to it, but I think your suggestion of using mound, is going to make the difference, thanks for hint! I used your tut, to make the water map, and also used the same ides to "cut" the terrain down where the water flows, very nice detail. now the water has a channel it flows in.
here is where I am at:
figured out my basin texture(cracked concrete image), and found a workable gravel, cut in water channels
ps. the "inclusions in the mini falls , are actual reflections of the above terain, and not the terrain it flows over, getting in the way, you wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure that one out!. hahaha.
WOW Horo, that looks fantastic. I know I have materials I've purchased over the years that still need to be installed, but even with one of the materials that comes with Bryce, I should be able to get a better render when I pump up the resolution as you suggested in the above-mentioned thread. OK, off to play. :coolsmile:
@David: Wonderful looking pail and shovel.
@fran: Thanks. Your set up for uv mapping is something I decided to try before you mentioned it. I reasoned if the images were close to or on the edge then it would be harder to size the face of the object without catching some of the edge. So for my Ritz box, I went back into GIMP and started over laying down the Ritz box images. This time leaving more room between the images and the edges. I then remapped the box and it turned out much better, no white edges this time. For my first try, the white edges didn't bother me. They just caused me to try and do better the next time. Your rocks images look good.
@Dana: Nice looking terrain.
@Dave: The final images are awfully nice.
@Jay: I looked at that typo page, but only recognized the very first one. Guess I didn't recognize any others because I write the same way. And I was playing around with JWildfire again, and saw this program generated flame I thought you might like to add to your collection. It started out as an all green flame, so I picked another color palette then rendered it at a higher setting. It's in the group of images below.
@Pam: Quite a joke, good thing I had my old shoes on while reading it. ;-)
@Horo: Great terrain. It almost looks like a photo.
I gave my Ritz box another try, remade the complied images in GIMP and remapped the box. As you can see in the following image, the white edges are gone. I added three more boxes, and a couple of other things in the two box images. The abstract is a program generated flame from JWildfire.
Cheers, Guss...psychadelic, that's all I can say..."pass the weed...mannn - Morrison and I wanna puff" ;)
Jay
@franontheedge - strange but charming terrain, the crab is a nice touch.
@dana365 - thank you. The concrete slabs look very convincing.
@GussNemo - nice collection of boxes. But you don't eat the contents of each in one go, do you? Both abstracts look great. As different as they are, I couldn't tell which one I like more.
Built this bulb from scratch - metaballs and booleans...etc.
Had difficulty getting the glass refraction correct, but all came out well in the end, I think. Now, as to explain how the bulb is being lit with no power source in sight, well, it's obvious...you see the wire is at... ;)
Jay
PS. It would have been cheeky to have entered this bulb into the Spring competition...get it...Spring Bulb ;)
I think it would have been an awesome entry
Came out great! OK right glass refraction, this can be tricky. For very thin sheets of glass material, generally speaking there is no desire to show the refraction taking place inside the glass material itself, but to have the correct Fresnel effect with respect to grazing angle reflections, this can be faked using refraction 100 + a bit of reflection + metalicity effect where the diffuse colour is set to fully black. Eg...
Great inspiring work from everyone. Thanks for the comments on my last renders.
David – beautiful bucket and spade. Thanks for the screenshot for the glass material.
Fran - love the kaleidoscope animation, I wish I could take any tutorial one step further, maybe someday. :) The ladybug and the rock renders are cool too.
Dave-awesome work as usual, great poster and CD cover.
Horo – the landscape is very nice, I especially like the lighting.
Dana- watching your wip, looking forward to the final render.
Guss- the boxes are very nice and the abstracts great.
Jay – I agree with Pam the “Spring bulb” will make an awesome entry
A render inspired by David’s spooky cave render in another thread. I used David’s spooky tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-lDcqH78Is and panoramic caverns tutorial (minitut15} from Horo’s site, render time almost 5.30hrs
Chohole...many thanks, but as to the entry...judges might be puzzled ;)
David...thanks for that - have saved a screengrab of it, so useful for future works. My own setting below - all experimented with, so wasn't far off.
Cheers, Mermaid...love the cave, and want to explore. What is it about caves - they're just super structures all.
Jay
Guss:
Thank you, I like the box work you have done there, the kink in the Hungryman box adds the reality.
Quick question, when you take a photo, or use a scanner, what image size ( d.p.i ) do you use to go into Wings, and or Bryce?
Jamahoney:
Jay that bulb is hot! love all the detail,
question, what part was metaballs used to create? I have only experimented a bit with those and really have not caught on to their flexibility as a modeling tool. I have made a collection of your images and mat lab settings and David's as well, I know I will have the bright idea of doing a bulb in the future.
David:
from your conversation with Jay, I have taken a copy of your material lab settings and notes for doing a bulb, it is still amazing to me how many different ways you can approach a build in Bryce.
Mermaid010:
Thank you, the terrain is coming along nicely, the SpookyCavern is wicked!, great color choices.
@Jay - bulb looks great. The glow looks like a reflection of the sun from an HDRI.
@mermaid010 - thank you. Very nice cave scene.
dana365...cheers. As to the metaballs used - red meshes below. Actually, it wasn't as easy as it looked to get the bulb proportions correct, as a slight separation between the two produced a too-extended-like bulb.
Yeah, Horo, does look like the chance alignment of the sun with the bulb filament - what essentially is a squished-in radial light down to what looks like a line.
Jay
Thanks Jay, Dana and Horo
All this talk of glass got me thinking...
Wings 3D - glass bubble and bowl - by David Brinnen
Bryce 7.1 Pro Advanced - initial investigation into glass material rendering - by David Brinnen
Incidentally that's a great render of a spooky cave Mermaid!
Edit: something else to make for rendering
Wings 3D - make a triply twist it (mobius space) - by David Brinnen
An interesting video to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VydFQmtZ8
Hi Bryce friends... nice to see that the conversation is still going strong! Although my participation has been intermittent, I still drop in and observe when I can. Here's a little something recent from me; I'm still continuing the trend of "less Bryce" and more "other stuff." Lots of Zbrush in this one. Still a fair amount of Bryce hidden in among the greenery... I'm putting an e-book together of my images, soon to be released on iTunes and a few other places. I'll let you know when it's ready.
Great 'glass' vids, David - something I initially stumbled through while creating the 'bulb', but from watching, know now where I made mistakes. Bryce seems to do great glass effects (water, too), so worth noting, and adding, to my Brinnen's Fav file - on Favourites Folder in Win 7 setup).
Great work, M1chaelFranck, looks like one of those giant 'Stag Beetles' - would hate to have one of those crawling in sight over me: defintely...an end to life as a lowly, other insect.
Jay