Crystals

Sassanik · November 2014

Looking for information how to make crystals in Bryce. A tutorial of some sort would be awesome? Thanks!
Something along the lines of this, well perhaps not that ambitious! But you get the idea!

Thanks!
Amy

Dave Savage · November 2014

Sorry, your link is taking me to a 404 error so I can't see your example.

Are you looking for the geometry of the crystal or a convincing crystal material?

sriesch · November 2014

Your link appears to be broken for me, so I'm not sure what kind of crystal you are attempting to generate. However, assuming you probably wanted something generic like a quartz crystal with maybe 6 sides and a pointy end, you would probably simply want to use booleans, with one positive object for the part you see, then a bunch of negative booleans, one per facet, that "cut" a piece off of the outside of your original object.

You can apply any of the transparent glass or gem type materials and fiddle with the color to get a nice effect, although if you want it to be accurate to the original mineral you will want to research the index of refraction of the material you are trying to simulate.

If you wanted to create something like beryl or aquamarine that has a growth habit with a flat end and numerous striated sides, you can use a terrain, which is what I used in the image below for the large green crystal. The small white sprays were just displacement on a sphere, you could also get away with stretched cubes if they are too small to see the points. And of course cubes can be used for cubic-shaped pyrite, built up into more complex fluorite crystals, etc.. I was also able to use some primitives like a hexagon and cubes and just plain old materials for drusy crystals in this image: https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/6002/

Sassanik · November 2014

Lets see, maybe this link works? Or perhaps towards this? I get how to make the transparency part and materials I am not so worried about, I am having trouble figuring out the shape itself? The facets and stuff. So something like the center crystal in the last image posted?

I wondered if the terrain editor might work, so I will give that a try, and I like the idea of using the cubes maybe combined with some other primitives to get get the right look. I will have to futz around with it later.

Amy

Dave Savage · November 2014

Most of the components you need to make crystal-like geometry are already in your objects library.
In the Additional Primitives folder there are various 5, 6, 7 and 8 sided columns and matching pointed ends for the columns.

If you already have David's Pro Materials (free with Bryce 7 Pro), he has a folder of materials called Glass and Ice which has some good starting points for creating crystal materials.

I'm just doing a quick render of one I knocked together... It'll be about 10 minutes then I'll edit and add the picture.

Edit: To add picture

sriesch · November 2014

If you decide to go the boolean route: Create a new cube, size it roughly to your crystal, click on it's 'A' icon and set it to Positive. Create a second cube, line it up with where you want to cut out the first facet, click on the 'A' icon and set it to Negative. Select both cubes and group them, then render. Screenshot 1 shows doing this.

Of course, you want more than one facet, so you actually want to add a whole bunch of negative cubes arranged around all sides of the positive cube to cut out more facets. You can just duplicate the first negative cube to get a second, then move and resize it, and keep doing that. See screenshot 2 showing adding a second cube and rendering, then adding a third cube and rendering, etc. Of course I have the angles wrong so it didn't make a point, but hopefully you get the idea. You can carefully line them all up to get a perfect shape, but if you want a "real" crystal, it will likely be somewhat asymmetrical, so having each facet a bit off might be beneficial.

Just trying to do this quick explanation I found it actually very hard to see which piece was where, so it might take a bit of time to do, and it might help to label each item clearly (crystal, side facet 1, top angle facet 1, etc.), or maybe after you get the hang of it, turn off the boolean until you get everything lined up, then turn it back on.

Let me know if this is unclear, and I can try to reword things or add more screen shots later.