Ok, Your looking at the image and "say so what?". Here is the interesting part. WHat if I told you that was done with one light? Still not impressed? Ok, what if I told you soft shadows where NOT on on the light? Still not? Ok what if I told you that... No Lights where shining on the truck or ground. All light is coming from a REFLECTION. And NOT a reflection from a mirrored/reflective object either! Do I have your attention now? Good :) Let me explain. It is a infinite plane above the camera, painted pure 100 diffuse white with a Quad or directional light shining upward on the plane only. I then increased the power of the light, render in high end mode, and this is the results. Want the secret? Send $19.95 .... hehehe Just kidding.. The SECRET is 1 ambiant setting and a 0.1 reflection Huh? When using this method, to get true radiosity make sure all objects you want to recieve radiosity have at least a 1 ambiant setting and a 0.1 reflection setting. And that you render in high end mode (the word eludes me right now for some reason). If you knock the ambiant setting down to say 0.5 it will still render, but like in the real world the objects color will get darker. Adjusting the SIZE of the Directional or spotlight shining on the plan above determines the area covered. If you do not want to use an infinite plane (Say its an outdoor render, then the size of the plane you use along with the size of the light will determine the area covered. If you think the light is just "fall-off" from the directional light your wrong. Try removing the plane and keeping the light. You won't get the effect anymore.. Because its true light bouncing. Pros: ---------------------- 1) True Lighting, as close to real as you can get in Bryce 2) Only requires one light ..ie, no more light domes Materials seem to reflect and act like there descriptions. (Look at gunmetal color of truck body and look where blue color shifts with light.) 3)Opens a big door for all kinds of Special FX. 4)Soft Shadows are automaticly done by the variance in the lighting it self. Cons: ---------------------- 1) Long Render Time. You have to use the highest render setting. For this render I did the 256 rays option, however, that is not neccesary. 64 rays or more and everything except DOF are required (You can still do DOF, its just not required) 2) The Nano Render window shows almost completely black preview. This is becuase the nano preview does not use true ambiance or radiosity.So dont rely too much on what is showing, becuase once you render you will see a difference. 3) You have to find a way to hide the "plane" above the objects so that it doesn't show up in the render. Not too difficult. In the next message I will attach the scene, (Minus the truck, sorry). Just render the scene, all the options "should" already be set. Oh, one more thing, The "square edges" around the wheel wells are not Bryce or the rendering process fault. That is a problem in the actual 3d mesh itself so don't worry about that. Please let me know what you think. If this is something that someone else has already made known, I apologize. I did search through the forums and only saw renfrences to using light domes. All I'm trying to do is help, nothing more,nothing less.

Here is the zipped scene (no truck though) Remeber, any objects you put in must have a 1 or greater ambiance and a 0.1 or greater reflective. Not to worry at those low settings you wouldn't see any difference in material looks :) RENAME THIS FILES EXTENSION TO ZIP WHEN SAVING or it will appear to be a garbled text file.

Will give a try, thanks. Would this work with multiple planes? Or would that increase the render times to Rumplestiltkin time frames?

Congrats JD, here's a little tip from something I've been working on, By using an inverted lightdome on a hdri globe you can get true true radiosity off of an image.

Ornlu, Ij ust posted a question about HDR and Bryce as a new message. After reading it, could you explain further on your tip here? Thanks :)

Your method is much better than mine though. What did you get for a render time on that?

TMGraphics, I assume your wondering about using it for a large area? Well, if you lookat the scene file you will see that the light size is actually almost the size of the truck. The plane I used for that image was a infinate plane only because I didnt have to worry about a sky up above for that render. If you are using the light in the form I used you shouldnt have a need for more planes, just more lights where you want areas lit up. However, if you are going to do a landscape and want certain sections lit using thismethod then you wouldnt want to use an infinaite plane, rather a normal plane. In that case if you were using multiple planes I think this: I noticed using this lighting method that render times are more dependent on the objects the light is hitting rather than the light itself. For example, the truck took 8 hours to render. A cube or torus would take about 10 minutes, using the same exact lighting. Hope that answers your question.

Ornlu, 8 hours at 256 rays :)

More posts on HDRI http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1078758 ^ These were crappy renders though. And didn't use any lights. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1074620 Basically a hdri image is mapped onto the inside of the sphere to simulate an environment.

Only thing about this technique is that I am not sure objects in the scene will get light from surrounding objects besides the light plain. IE if you tested this in a Radiosity room would the spheres get color from the walls even though no direct illumination is applied.

@JDWohlever - Yes, you answered my question, thank you. What are some good ways to "hide" the plane(s)? In C4D you can make the object invisible to the camera and/or the render and still have it affect light and shadows.

Ornlu, Ill test that out tonight. TMGraphics, I do not know of a way to hide in like in C4, however You could place the plane "behind" the camera and then link it so it moves with the camera (link the plane and light to the camera) This way you never see the plane but you get the results ?

Ok, will give that a shot, thanks. Have you tried additional lights in this scene for, say, highlight or a tad bit of backlighting? If, so what were the results and render time difference if any?

That does look good. As we know, radial domes kill the render times, but I still think they can't be beat for radiosity.

wink ;) Try both ;)

To hide, go to attributes, then click "hidden."

This is a excellent technique - thank you very much, especially for the file. Greets, Jimi

madmax, if something's hidden, it's not rendered, and does not influence the picture, right? Or am I missing something?

It's kinda cool. The scene was too dark/contrasty for my taste, lightened it up a bit. Settings still need tweaking, but its an interesting twist. I'll have to try it with human skin textures, see what it looks like. Thanks. AgentSmith

Attached Link: http://claygraphics.phase2.net/Ball.html

a 3 light Animation for such effects, done back when we were beta testing, you need to have Quicktime installed to view. http://claygraphics.phase2.net/Ball.html

@Agent - did you use post to lighten up the image? Gotta love the Silver Surfer :> I'm rendering some test now with this setup, will post soon. TMG

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=261521&Start=19&Artist=Rayraz&ByArtist=Yes

JDWohlever: "wink ;) Try both ;)" Done that: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=261521&Start=19&Artist=Rayraz&ByArtist=Yes

Try using Real Ambience on reflections and glass and complex shapes. Killer rendertimes LOL.

BTW a lightdome is GI simulation. That's something different then radiosity.

No, no post on that little guy. His Diffusion is 100, Ambience and Reflection were taken to 15. All colors set to 255-white. Ground plane; all colors set to 255-white. Starting with Diffusion and runnig down, the numbers are like this; 100,5,1,1,1,0,1,0 Lol, I didn't even think of the Silver Surfer, `til you mentioned it. AS

Here is a test I did with this basic scene setup.

Good catch, JDWohlever. This is fascinating. Ambient materials under the 'true ambience' setting are illuminated by anything light in colour it would seem; be it another ambient material or a diffuse material with a lot of light on it. In the image above, the left hand white square is made of four cubes with a 100 percent ambient white setting. The white square on the right is made as JDWohlever describes above (white diffuse with one max power parallel light pointing at it). They render exactly the same in appearance but the right hand side of the image (bounced light) renders in a quarter of the time! This is great, it speeds up true ambient work a lot. The squashed cube in the middle has mirrored sides. As you can see, this 'ambient illumination' is reflected in both cases. Mirrors work properly still - very useful. BTW, there is no blurry reflection used here. This is just a true ambient light casting test. One thing this technique isn't, of course, is a 'pure, true radiosity' solution. It's a damn fine step towards a realistic looking simulation.

(repeats himself from the last ten "Radiosity" threads) Obnoxious, I know. But if we're going to use words, then we all need to AGREE on the definitions. These institutions are called "Language", in English. What you are viewing is the softest, sweetest shadows, but again, there is nothing radious about it. Inside Bryce's Ray-tracer, there, at no point is there any information pertaining to reflected rays. Don't believe me? Look at your render report. (shrugs) (beats the dead horse, eats him, poops him out) Try rendering the same truch, in Lightwave, with real radiosity. Don't get me wrong, I love Bryce. Just clarifiyng things for newcomers.

Well I agree with you in part shadowdragonlord that some people are using the wrong terms for certain things. But it seems you are wrong about Bryce not having radiosity to a point. It seems that true ambience is Bryce's radiosity setting in some situations. It may not be true radioisty but it does have some. look at the pic in the post above your's, that scene is lit by pure ambience...ie light reflecting off of objects, not direct light.

Now look at my pic using nothing but true abience and 1 light. You can see the red and blue walls bleed thier color onto the floor. There is zero reflection on the floor or the left sphere yet they pick up the walls colors. I'm not yet sure why the back wall and ceiling don't do the same.

The true amb. probably only does one bounce in one direction. Your light is hitting the walls at a 45 degree up angle so the light bounces off at a 45 degree angle. Just a guess. The other idea is the wall on the back and up top are receiving too much of the reallight thus washing out the color light. They are closer to the light source than the floor or ball.

Actually that makes a lot of sense.

Aye, it's a beautiful technique! And I sounded like an ass for saying that Bryce doesn't have any rays for reflections, that's not what I meant. The color-bleed that you're showing is awesome, I'm impressed Aldaron, but mathematically there is nothing radious about it. Reflected light and radiosity aren't the same thing.... I'm done bein obnoxious, though, I don't mean to breed dismay... But there's a reason I'm the Shadowdragonlord, ya know? (laughs at self) Can't wait to see what you guys do with your next images!

Attached Link: http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/radiosity/radiosity.htm

for an explanation of what radiosity is...

Great technical link there, definite save into my faves.