Show Us Your Bryce Renders! Part 3
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A sunny winter day in the mountains.
Excellent. The trees look a good scale and the material for the mountain works well, the light is good, but I have to say... I am overly familiar with that sky. That's not a criticism on your choice, it's just I have used that sky a lot myself - I think indeed... if memory serves, I might have even made that sky at some point. So I've only myself to blame. And... uh, I used it in a video I did the other day too...
But, yes the nice render - I feel cold just looking at it. No wait... it really is that cold here!
Electro-elvis...yeah, agree with David, and it looks very natural, too. But the cold....bbbrrrrr...brass monkey weather.
Jay
I think many of my scenes are large which could be a problem. Just had a look at the largest scene I did in Bryce 5 and it comes in at 551mb. Not only that but I know issues occur when using certain textures against one another. I've also found some parts of a model will slow a piece down even though they are textured the same and are not overly complex. There are some great features on Bryce 7 but for ease of work flow I'm still apprehensive.
David and Horo finally managed to persuade me to try using Bryce 7, but only after I had replaced my poor old PC. I haven't crashed Bryce 7 yet, but do still have Bryce 5 installed anyway.
Oh and BTW David, round here looks somewhat akin to that image I did with the snow you so kindly sent me..
OMG, I was just reading about the Menger Sponge in the NY Times today (or was it yesterday?). I happen to be a fractal fanatic (just check out my gallery at Renderosity), and was amazed at what was on display at the Institute of Figuring.
One more thing to add to the list of things to try in Bryce. Hmmmm, the list is getting very long indeed. :-)
An excellent render. I love everything about it. :-)
Chohole - beautiful render as usual
electro-elvis - lovely render, it's cool when the lighting and all the elements come together.
Thank you all for your kind comments to my winter mountain picture
@David: I do understand you. I have the same feeling with the Bryce standard sky. And slowly I also get it for the choosen sky for my scene. But I think this sky is one of the better in the library.
BTW I used this winter landscape to experiment with fake spruces and a material I made for them.
Just wondered how I can make this image look more real/photographic.
Been messing with the lighting and render settings for ages but something
seems to be missing. I'm using an HDR image for the lighting but also
have 4 other sphere fill lights. I just can't seem to get it right.
@electro-elvis - beautiful scene. This is my standard sky I start every project. Lazy Afternoon is it called, by DAZ. However, I'm certain that it initially came from David.
@StuartB4 - great models. Not sure where the problem is but on a wild guess, I'd say the materials lack specularity and maybe a tiny bit of reflection. If material specularity is set, it must also be set for the sun (if used) and IBL.
To make it look more realistic I would suggest adding imperfections. Photograph your desk for example and replace the ground with either a terrain or a very high resolution bump map derived from your photo (as well as using the photo for your image). Place something in front of the camera to distort the image slightly to make it behave more like a real lens and maybe just a touch of specular in that lens to catch a bit of light and "spoil" the image. Also consider filtering around the lens to recreate that vignette effect - but for your scene, considering the lighting, that may not be required. But that kind of thing I would suggest. Same goes for materials, add imperfections, chips and scratches. If you really want to go for it, a bit of fluff and dust would not go amiss. But really, you've done such a good job already, taking things further is going to be hard work.
Electro-elvis - the trees worked a treat. I was struggling to determine when I looked if they were a terrain effect or individual models or Bryce trees.
Made abusing David's nice new tuts and Horo's Lake pic.
I know, I am like me mom's moggy, always love to play :)
My first landscape pic. I called it : "China, land of the flee"
Good start!
The cubes renders look excellent. The landscape needs a bit of work - but given the speed with which you've consumed and emulated my tutorials - I don't think it will take you very long to make it believable. My first suggestion would be to experiment with the atmospheric haze and you may have to scale the terrain a bit to get it interacting with the haze. Shroud those distant mountain tops in some colour leeching haze and see if that adds a sense of scale.
Edit. Also in your haze experiments don't forget "blend haze with sun" and "colour perspective" these two controls have a strong influence on how the haze turns out.
Thanks Horo and David, you've certainly given me more things to think about.
You seem to be quite close already. Several things that take it away from total realism:
- very fine and uniform grain on the table - it seems for me too small compared with these already small objects. I'd make leave the current grain and blend it 50:50 with some more random and 2-3x bigger grain or even better with bitmap for bump and slightly alter diffuse channel so that it would be more interesting. I'd say IMHO you don't need to use displaced terrain - might get too exaggerated.
- DOF - if you don't want to render it with premium effects you can render the depth map (or even simple top-bottom gradient might work too) and add effect with Lens Blur (PS) or Focus Blur (GIMP) filter.
- I can see some banded shadows - either they can be hidden with stronger bumps and texture on the ground plane or higher quality or soft shadows in IBL settings.
- There are quite dark shadows of the objects at the moment - Id suggest placing the light in the colour of the ground plane (point, parallel or low q sphere dome) under the ground plane either with turned off shadow casting or the ground plane excluded from lighting. This combined with more reflective ground plane will make your shadows lighter.
- Vignetting, lens distortion, chromatic aberration in post optional.
I played a little bit with your image to add some effects. I'll get rid of it if you say.
No that was Rudolf Herczog aka Rochr. Onetime Bryce legend and now just all round legend.
Check out his site www.rochr.com. If you look at his 3d renders about half were done with Bryce before he moved on to Cinema 4d.
I was responsible for cloud city only, I think Rochr also did downtown, whilst the forest scene was by Hamfast, who is sadly no longer with us.
Ah okay, that makes more sense because looking back on following them they didn't feel like they were all done by the same person. I only asked because Horo refered to you as the guy who did those tutorials. Since he said it in the plural form and we were generally talking about the Masters Series I thought maybe that meant you did them all.
No, sorry, the metallic objects rather, and less reflection but more specularity.
He posted in another thread recently: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/11534/P300/#222310
As a big Tolkien fan, I'm interested in his Smoke and Mirrors tutorial...I have a long ways to go yet with the various free tutorials, but at some point in the future I'll probably take a look at picking up that product and/or the Mentoring DVD.
There's a broken link in the features list of Smoke and Mirrors, though...might anyone have that "List of Included and Required or Recommended Items?"
Well going by the readme for the product the only required items are Bryce and a Paint Program but you can add to that list Poser also because you'll need to do some things in there to create Boromir, Pippen and the Orcs oh and you'll need Michael 3 for Boromir and Pippen.
Tell you what rather then try to explain it let me copy the introduction part of the tutorial that spells out what you need as well as suggests some optional things, what the support files included are and some hints or tips. That should cover what you're wanting to know and then some.
Introduction
The Smoke and Mirrors Master Series Tutorial was written to explain the use of multiple renders in Poser and Bryce along with layering and compositing in a paint program (Photopaint, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.) to avoid the limitations of low-RAM and slow processor systems.
This was my dilemma: How could I create a scene in Bryce that is simply too big to render because my computer lacked the RAM or processing power?
This is not a tutorial to teach you how to pose a Figure in Poser nor is it a tutorial to teach you how to create things in Bryce. This tutorial explains a method I used to overcome the shortcomings of my home PC. Steve White has done a tutorial on an aspect of this. There is also an excellent tutorial by David Lloyd (Flak) that use multiples of a Bryce scene BUT within Bryce itself as 2D Pict Objects - Making of Siege and one using multiple renders and mask layering - Making the Massive.
During the tutorial, you'll be taken through the scene design, thought processes, and working in the different programs. Next (starting with Step 6), you'll be given the information needed to actually place the trees, foliage, add clothing and textures, pose the figures, and place them in Bryce.
The scenario was simple enough; it entailed placing about 50 Poser characters in a Bryce scene. That scene is a dark, dense forest, with shafts of light penetrating through the forest canopy.
Tools Needed
Poser 4.01 or higher or DAZ|Studio
Bryce 5.01 or higher
DAZ Turbo Importer plug-in (Bryce 5.01 only)
Corel PhotoPaint 12 or any painting program supporting masks and layers
Tools used in making image but not needed for this tutorial:
UVMapper Pro
Extreme Morph 3D
Clothing\Texture items (available at DAZ) - use these or choose your own:
Michael 3 SR1
Michael 3 Head and Body Morphs
M3 Hooded Cloak
M3 High Fantasy Character & Clothing Bundle
Pirate Pack for M3
Morphing Boot Pack
Wedgecut Hair 2.0 (original image used Quarker’s “Grace Lion Hair”)
Michael 3 Millennium Beard
Short Curls Hairstyle
Pirates Adventure: Privateer
Michael 3 Hi-resolution Maps or other texture for eyebrows, mouth, teeth, eyes, etc.
V3 International Beauty Type 2 Map converted to M3 using the Universal Texture Convert or other texture with similar coloring
Nordic Vincent for V3 or Nordic Michael converted to M3 using the Universal Texture Converter
Optional items:
Ghost of Macbeth's Orc Character for Michael - hair only
Support Files
The following support files are provided within the Bryce 5 Masters Series folder once the tutorial is installed:
Content\Masters Series\Smoke n Mirrors\Basic Scene Foundation.br5 - Sky and ground plane
Content\Masters Series\Smoke n Mirrors\Basic Scene Finished.br5 - Includes terrains and trees
Content\Masters Series\Smoke n Mirrors\ - light beam and weave PSD files
Presets\Materials\Master Series\Smoke Mirrors.mat - all necessary Bryce 5 material files
Presets\Objects\Master Series\Smoke Mirrors 1\2\3.obp - foliage and tree files
Content\Masters Series\Smoke n Mirrors\Smoke Mirrors.bsk - Bryce 5 sky file
In addition, there are Poser character, prop, MAT, and MOR files available in your Poser Runtime folder:
Runtime\Geometries\MastersSeries\SmokeMirrors - OBJs for props
Runtime\Libraries\Camera\Smoke n Mirrors - Camera setting
Runtime\Libraries\Character\Smoke n Mirrors - Figures and Clothing
Runtime\Libraries\Hair\Smoke n Mirrors - Hair
Runtime\Libraries\Pose\SM Injections - Injections files for Boromir and Pippin
Runtime\Libraries\Pose\SM MATs P4 - MAT Pose files in Poser 4 format
Runtime\Libraries\Pose\SM MATs PP56 - MAT Pose files in ProPack/Poser 5/6 format (with Shader Nodes)
Runtime\Libraries\Pose\SM MOR Files - MOR Pose files just in case you accidentally reset a figure
Runtime\Libraries\Pose\SM Poses - Poses for Boromir, Pippin, and Orcs
Runtime\Libraries\Props\SM Props P4 - Props in Poser 4 format
Runtime\Libraries\Props\SM Props PP56 - Props in ProPack/Poser 5/6 format (with Shader Nodes)
Runtime\Textures\MastersSeries\SmokeMirrors - Textures
Hints & Tips
Save often, especially when in the construction phase of the final Great Hall. It may also help to add a number to the end of the file name and increment it every time you save (or every few times).
Once you finish going through the tutorial, you can use the included files to recreate a similar scene.
Since this is not a step by step tutorial, read the text carefully then use the included Poser and Bryce files to put the scene together yourself. Take liberties with poses, textures, placement, etc. Make it your own!
Thank you David for another brilliant tutorial.
I've taken a break from Bryce for a couple of months, but have just followed your tutorial and here is my render.
@StuartB4: These are really brillant made keys and fantastic textured.
To increase the specularity in a scene I use a distand light, turn down the Diffuse channel to Zero but increases the specular channel to e.g. 100. You have to find out, what is best.
That turned out really well! Hopefully we can coax you back to playing with Bryce.
Here's another tutorial I've tried to make with novices in mind.
Bryce 20 minute beginners project - simple still life - a tutorial by David Brinnen
Also, got to say I'm impressed with Dwsel's postwork on the keys image!
@dwsel_:- That's a lot more to think about, the thing is I don't do any post work in any of my images, I like to just use Bryce if possible.
@Horo:- Thanks for clearing that up.
@electro-elvis:- Thank you, I'm open to any suggestions for improvement.
Shortly after discovering abstracts in Bryce, I ran across a tutorial - I think it was called "ZOT's Primative Abstracts", or something like that. It showed how to do abstracts by putting your camera inside a reflective sphere, and placing other reflective objects and lights inside the sphere. I've noticed several such tutorials since then - I could have sworn I saw one by David, but I can't seem to find it now :roll:
Anyway, here are some of my efforts...
I believe that using some postwork on correctly lit image with nice materials closes the gap between looking good and looking great. I don't consider this cheating and being less 3d especially when you're making only or mainly colour corrections, put together image from layers originating directly from the scene, apply mood and maybe make some areas more pronounced than it's available while lighting a 3d model or photographing an object in a studio. When using conventional lighting there are some areas and effects that would be really hard or impossible to achieve, and using postpro for them is often quicker than solving the problem inside the renderer. I don't consider this being less valuable skill or sign of lack of knowledge about the renderer or lighting - just time saver when you say now it's a good time to stop rerendering all over again and time to finish the scene in post.
Some people use just basic compositing:
- https://vimeo.com/8217700 , https://vimeo.com/8200251
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6zLayk-W4E
It's more the thing I commonly do, rather than the other approach used by some people who need only a form - a perspective hint to build an image aruond it which is more matte-painting than actual 3d art:
- https://vimeo.com/46326930 , https://vimeo.com/35341467
Not been around much or doing much Brycing recently... good to see the thread still continues without me. :-)
To make amends, here's a quick render I did today:
@cjreynolds - like you're abstracts, first most.
@TheSavage64 - outstanding barbed wire. There is beauty in simplicity.
Thanks, Horo!
Here's a couple more - playing with mats, lighting, and render options.
The first one is a scene from my last post - replaced the containing sphere with a terrain. From the inside of a terrain looking up, the parts of the terrain that appear like valleys and crevices from the outside, look like upside-down mountains hanging from the "ceiling" - like stalactites in a cave. The "mountains" in the foreground are these upside-down mountains, reflected in the spheres in the foreground.