I posted a message yesterday and BlueArdor and electroglyph both gave some good information but think I must be in a completely different ballpark. I'm trying to use a photo as the texture and image for a terrain. I've seen a butterfly and a floral ceramic tile done this way and I thought I had it right but apparently not. What am I missing? Susan

every shade of gray creates a different elevation, you have to many shades of gray.

Change your Y axis to 0.1 which will smooth out the bumps.

have you tried hitting the invert button in the terrain editor? higher elevation is white...

I have tried inverting the terrain and that had just a bad a result as not. But, it makes more sense to do that. I'll play with that again. If I'm understanding everything here and in the previous thread (didn't realize it was there when I posted mine), then most of the problem lies with my photo, not the Bryce functions. I need to figure out how to reduce the number of shades in the original photo first, then do this process, right? Lordy...one of these days I'll learn how this program functions. Thanks for the help everyone!

will this help? I dont know if your looking for a full deer model or just a flattened sorta 3d more realistic type thing

Also you may want to edit your transparency so that it will show all of your deer. Note the difference in the middle picture above with yours. Having it all white will show your deer texture (picture) without any transparency.

Also, what do your bump and mapping mode settings look like in the texture editor?

I downloaded the image attachment from post #7 above in this thread onto my HD and this is what I was able to do with that very low resolution (726x240). Yes, you do need very high resolutions if you want your pics to come out with any amount of detail.

Maybe if you just want the deer to show up in the scene, but don't actually need it to be 3d, you can just use a 2d pic object and map it in a way similar to post #7 above in this thread. If you're not sure how to do that, I'm sure someone else would be happy to explain it.

Do NOT use Bump height in Materials Lab. The terrain will create the bumps by itself. As for a 2D pic of a deer, you have to create a mask that will follow all the contours of the deer and cover the background. In Photoshop, it's a painstaking job of selecting the deer with polygonal or magnetic lasso and then inverting the selection and filling it with black. Or much less tedious job with a filter like Corel's KnockOut or Extensis's MaskPro.

Attached Link: http://3dmodelworld.com/lightmodels.asp

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you could just pop in a picture and get a 3D object. You can do flat or symmetrical objects like the butterfly you mentioned. Since this object is in profile you will have a hard time making the nose higher than the tail without hand editing the entire height map. Once you do this you will be unable to rotate the deer or use any other camera angle. This is because the legs and head won't be undercut and will be solid all the way to the back. The 2D picture method is best if you want the background to show through around this deer. The attached image is from the free reindeer model at Lannie's 3D modelworld it is in lightwave with textures but cannot be posed in different positions. There is also a deer for sale at DAZ that requires poser to open and position. If you really want to model a deer you can use several terrains, lattices, and metaballs to draw the antlers, head, neck, body, legs, etc. then rotate and stick them together. There are several people who are very good at this(I'm not)who can help more than I can.

I have to say that my need for the deer is moot now since I've worked around it. But, I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm getting closer, so maybe it's just a matter now of practicing. :o) This is one of the examples I mentioned. It's absolutely wonderful and it's one of the things that started me wondering how the heck you accomplish this. It's in the free stuff, posted by boundless, and I've taken it apart and worried over it until I'm blue in the face. Good news also is one of the books I ordered came yesterday and it looks like this technique is talked about in it so I'll have that to worry over also. So, I'm off to work on this and other mysteries! :o) I really appreciate you all! Susan

Oh, and electroglyph, a 2D would have been fine. I was wanting to use it in my challenge entry and just the hint of a deer was enough. I managed without it and I'm happy with the results, but I had some really super pix of deer that I was eager to use. Oh well....in another someday!