I have been trying to build a sun inside Bryce that looks good to me and with enough realism to please me. I have been working in the DTE for a while now, and it dawned on me how to do it. I started with this Nasa photo as a reference. But I had trouble with shadows being cast on it, even when I disabled the Bryce sun. I found that the key was also to turn off visible moon/sun in the Sky Lab.

Here's what I came up with. I realize the reddish glow is most likely a photographic phenom, but went with it because I thought it made it look cool-I also went with more numerous and prominent solar flares-again, coolness factor.

Real nice. The solar flares popping out and the corana look excellent.

I also placed a radial light inside and grouped it to the 3 spheres that make up the sun. Then I stuck the Earth and a "deathstar" in the shot moved things around and adjusted my radial light until I was happy with it. I wasn't going for a finished work here or versimilitude of nature, but just testing the effect. I also added a second radial light to the scene (shadows off) in order to add some ambient light. I realize it's turned up too high, but again, this was only a test. Think of it as the full moon reflecting light back on the dark side of earth. What do you think? And the whole sun object, light and all is only a little over 61 kb in size. The pic took about 5 minutes to render on a 2 gig Pentium4 with render settings at 64. What do you think?

That looks brilliant. A few months ago I was also trying to create a realistic sun to animate the solar system. But the end product took over 7 hours to render, so animating it was not a realistic option. I'm still working on alternatives for the January challenge, flares and massive sun storms and so on.. How long did it take to render it?

Oups just posted after your post. ;)

Thanks Boomer: I even think it makes the Bryce starfield look half-way decent. :^) The 2nd and 3rd pics are all native Bryce 5 except for the Nasa Earth and Cloud layer maps.

Sorry ttops I'm a slow typist. :^)

Will gladly e-mail this object to anyone who wants to host it for me in free stuff, just keep the name Tjohn's Sun or something like that when you post it, absolutely free for commercial or non-commercial use. A plug would be nice, though, if anyone uses it in a gallery pic. Just IM me your e-mail address and it's yours.

I'm trying to find the image; it has to be on a backup CD because it appears to be no longer on the hard drive. This is a nightmare with over 200 backup CD's. I really should organise this lot some day...

I'll host it for you if you want tjohn, no probs at all.

I'm uploading the file and creating the links for it at the moment. I'll post a link as soon as it's ready. You can also host files your self if you want. Here's 25MB free web space: just follow this link

Thanks for the link. I'll keep it around in case I ever come up with anything else worth sharing. LOL

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez

It's in the Bryce section.

Excellent Sun. Thats exactly what ive tried to make in the pass but failed. Altering the color and amount of solar flares and you could have any star you wanted. Great work.

Any chance you could send a direct link to that file? Have tried 3 reboots, its a issue with not being able to rightclick anymore to open new pages etc... too tired to try furthur tonight, wouldnt mind getting that file unless you plan to keep it up for some time?

This is the best sun render I've seen tjohn. I also tried to make a realistic looking sun a while back and failed misserably. Well done young man. 8) Catlin

Suns are hard to do, still working on this one.

tjohn, have you tried uncecking the three shadow options?

The Bryce sun has been hosted by ttops and is currently available in the Bryce free section. It is a Bryce 5 obp and will only work in Bryce 5. Sorry.

I have been trying to rebuild the sun in Bryce 4, but because of the differences in the way Bryce4 lights work, Sky Lab, no Light Lab, etc. the basic design will not work no matter that I am duplicating the settings for the maps in the DTE of Bryce 4. I'm sorry, my Bryce 4 friends, Bryce 5's programming is apparently all that enabled this object to work properly.

Cool. Better than my best tries. I've got to try a little harder :)

Great job on the sun. I'll bet it makes you feel like a God. LOL 8^)

Downloaded the file at work, ill have to bring it home on a floppy till i figure out why i cant get a download to work on my main machine. Ive been wanting to make a picture with a structure completely surrounding a red dwarf a few 1000 billion years in the future. The last life before its all dead cold matter and slowly evaporating black holes.

For those having problems downloading the obp file, I've also posted the zipped version to the free stuff/Bryce section.

I tried downloading from free stuff last night, without a problem. Are those that are having problems using "save as" and giving it a folder name to save to, then opening Bryce 5 and importing it into one of your object preset folders? This is what I did without problem. If you're used to using "open" as your download choice, this is a obp file, not a zipped folder. It only took a few seconds to download to my very slow dial-up modem. I just went to the Bryce free stuff and noticed that ttops has uploaded a second "zipped" version, so those of you experiencing difficulty may want to try that download. Please give feedback here on whether that link is working for you, and those who have successfully downloaded and played with it, let me see some of the pics you're making. This is the first (and maybe only) post of any objects or textures I've made, and I'd like to see how it turns out for you. Thanks, Tjohn And special thanks to ttops for his patience in hosting for dumb old me. I didn't have the slightest idea how to do it.

Sorry ttops, old slow fingers has stepped on another of your posts. :^)

:)

Great looking sun; thanks for sharing. :-)

Erlik: Sorry, somehow missed your post in this thread, didn't mean to ignore you. I believe the shadows are all turned off on all three spheres. Thanks, Tjohn

Also, belated thanks to all who posted here and said such kind things about the Sun. Boy, there's a sentence you don't read everyday. My puppy came down with a respiratory virus, and I've been worrying about her all day. But she's been to the vet and had her pill tonight thanks to my Mom and Dad. I'm back working at my day job again (since last Thursday) after 4 months medical leave. I left her with them, and they took her to the vet for me (they're in their eighties). I am truely blessed. Less time to work on art now, but will (of course) do all I can. Will try to keep up here, though.

Not to tell you its wrong or anything, but I would imagine the only way you would see the sun like that is through some sort of filter strong enough to view it's surface. But nice job anyway. I prefer a sun that looks like Bryce's default sun, a huge bright 'sphere'. I can show you how to create those type(having multiple sun's in one image)if you would like.

It's called a "H alpha" filter, it gets used to make hydrogen visible so giving more surface details. Catlin

Sparr: Agreed. But I have seen suns that look like this in lots of CGI effects on sci-fi films and t.v. programs, and that was the look I was trying to reproduce. I should have made that clearer. I wanted to be able to see solar flares, texture to the sun's surface, etc. I can make the more (perhaps, I don't know, because I've never been in outer space, but I have been accused of coming from there before) realistic spheres with white ambience turned up to 100, shadows off, too. But those look like larger versions of the stars in a Bryce starfield to me. A close approximation of a real star, perhaps, but not as much fun, to me, as a starfield created in Universe, for example. The only way I've ever seen outer space, is in filtered photographic images from Nasa sources or imaginary images in sci-fi films (which have been influenced by the Nasa photos). And when I don't see that in an image, it feels like something is missing, somehow. :^) Thanks for your comments. Tjohn