I would like to say that this picture is free of any postproduction, (that is usually condition sine qua non for me, specially for pic that i want to post on a forum...), but that wouldn't be true...this scene weights 350 megs on the HD and need almost the double of ram when opened in bryce...rendering time, with default AA took initially 72 hours (1024*768 on an Athlon 1900), I was abble to lower it to 45 hours by setting optimisation to uniform/agressive and reducing ray depth to 2...and then i decided that the scene could benefit a lil DOF...well...hummm...Premium rendering with just the DOF checked at 64 ray per pixel (32 is kinda grainy) is 10/12 times slower than regular rendering...wich means I would have to wait 20/24 days (assuming i wouldn't need that comp for any other job) to actually be abble to check the result...That's way too much for a simple DOF effect...no matter how nice it is...so I had to use a distance mask (took 5 minutes to render) and composite the DOF into photoshop...Everything else is bryce.

Wether this pic needed some DOF or not is another story...I decided that I was done with it but this doesn't mean that this picture is perfect or finished in any way...I am just done with it =)
For the record, the cars are commercial meshes from 3d02, modelled by Lewis, architecture (yeah pretty simple) was designed into bryce, everything else been modeled into truespace or picked from the bryce library. Concrete textures are customs and i used some bump and reflection map too.

Thx to all the people here who shared their experiments and tips, the use of light dome brought my enjoyement of bryce to a level i never thought possible before.
Also I would like to thx all the ppl who initially commented the first version of this pix...I tried to take benefit of every idea ppl came with...so I worked on the contrast, the car body color, the specularity, and tried to give it a more grungier look...I am glad to say that this pic wouldn't have been the same without your help (for the best or the worst heheh)...

As usual, comments and idea are welcome...

Eidolon

simply perfect every detail is great. for what I can see this image donesn need anything more.

Too good for words. Five stars, three cheers, and two thumbs up. Stand tall and be proud!

Why is my car up on the ramp???? Very nice work....!!!! The Bryster

Great job Eidolon! I was an auto tech for 30 years and I can say you captured the subject perfectly.

Simply perfect! Keep it up mate !

What can I say.... Simply fantastic work....

Whoaaaaa! An incredible work, you did. Remember the first one, even that seemed exceptional to me. This one is perfect. Stefano

Awesome work. Great Attention to detail.

I can smell the gas and oil. Take a break, you deserve it (so does your computer). Breathtaking.

It is an incredibly well done image!

Mindboggling!! You are now my mechanic.

Very nice. impressive lighting.

This really is terrific. Thanks for posting the finished project. Lin

Wow, this is wonderfully detailed...Sharen

I just keep coming back to look at this. I will never have enough patience to do anything like this.

I agree, tjohn, I don't have that much patience. That's an amazing piece!

Excellent work, great attention to detail.

Excellent!

well worth the effort brilliant

Must say you do pay attention to detail. Your other renders are just as spectacular. You need to put this one in your gallery so the others that don't visit this forum can see it.

That's a great garage. Love the amount of detail in it.

absolutely stunning!

Absolutely perfect work. Giant freaking Kudos. You could show this render to anyone and EASILY get away with telling them you used any piece of expensive high end program you wanted to go with, lol. I too have fallen to not using DOF inside of Bryce and doing it in Photoshop. Once you get it down in Photoshop, it is stupidly faster and gives you more control. Wonderful, wonderful work. AgentSmith

I'm also preparing to use the DOF in Photoshop for the window, too, because it really is horrible waiting in Bryce. Excellent work. BTW, nice seeing somebody else from these here parts in the forum. :-)

PS: sorry for the poor english I am french.

Lol, jeez...this is fairly close and they look great! You really out did yourself. Useful or not, better be ready for 1,000 downloads, might take a month, might take a week, but it will happen. Again, great work! (grand travail) AgentSmith

Oh, I think a few of us who can't identify equipment on sight would happily throw these into any science fiction scene that needed more stuff. Take out the cars and put in some space craft, or robots, or cybernetic clones and it would still be a great scene. Lin

This is very impressive!