Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=369927

Let me know what you think. :)

Sorry, but this "hey, I've a new picture in the gallery" is growing to spam at last. What if everybody posts a message here when he puts a new work in the gallery? Only links to images and no real "discussion topics" will be the result, and we're heading straight forward to that. The gallery is for images, and the forums are for topics. Why does everybody think he has to put some advertising here? I'm getting tired of that, sorry. J.

It comes and goes. Usually it's folks that are just starting out..but Pauljs75's been around for a while. One thing I've noticed is that the whole community here has gotten a bit fragmented, especially with gallery and sub-genre settings. While on the one hand, you can look at just what you want, the flip side is you miss stuff you might like. I tend to set to 'All n' All', and check out the whole megilla..;) I can change the 'hit count' on any of my pics just by posting to one gallery over another. Maybe that's what this is about..over to you, Pauljs75..;)

Derjimi I don't post that much and I just posted a link to my latest image. I used to post the image here for comments but to save bandwidth I now just post the link. If you post an image in the gallery and it gets missed by the Bryce community then you don't get any pointers on what's good or bad and that's the main reason I post a link here. Also if you personally don't want to follow a link no one is forcing you to. Catlin

Hey, other people have done it before. Sorry to offend, besides somebody might be curious to how something was done (Note that no UV maps were used in this pic - not really obvious. So this may make some people curious to how the coloring was done.) Also since gallerys do go by so fast, I figure someone might miss it. At least be happy it wasn't one of countless farie or NVWASIAT (or some variation) pics. LOL ;) P.S. If you don't like something that's blatantly spam, there's nothing that says you can't skip over it. Geez...

And Paul I think your image is hilarious. 8) Cat

derjimi: Just the title of this post alone is enough to delete it from your email if you should choose. Paul: cute image, made me laugh.:)

No fuss about it, here. IMO, it's not spam. I use to look at the galleries before coming here in the forum, so no problem here. Although most of the times I dig that the forum is for WIPs and reviews and gallery for finished images, I don't think a link could do such damage. Just my 2 euroc. S.

Yea wip's are ok...links are more courteous on the space used by us here at renderosity.

I usually post wips for advice and finished works that I think will be appreciated by this community. Does anyone think I should stop posting my humorous pieces like "Renderboy" and "Whizzo Quality Assortment" to the Forum and just put them in the gallery? Don't want to offend, just thought they might give someone a smile who needs one badly. And we all need a smile sometimes. Tjohn

I know you can't actually have 'sig's' at rendo, but in many forums, people put links to 'latest-work' and 'WIP' in the sig at the end of the message. I think this is a good idea, it encourages people to make relevent, positive posts, while still letting them advertise thier art. Hey, why can't we have 'sig's?(text only, of course).

Personally it doesn't bother me. Links to your latest works is OK and it gets people to look so it doesn't get missed. Hell if you miss 1 day looking at the gallery your picture can be back on page 5-10.

I've gone back and forth on posting images and links in the forum but...since Bryce is the tool I use most often I consider THIS forum to be my "neighborhood" if you will. That being said I like to know what my neighbors think when I finish something new, AND I like when they inform me that they have something new up. I'd miss it in the galleries more than likely without the pointer.

So would you like it if every Bryce artist would post messages here when he adds an image to his gallery? These "Look - a new image"-messages are getting more and more, and sometimes you have to scroll down the whole site to find a topic which is really belonging to this forum. I thought this forum is about discussing techniques, WIPs, sharing knowledge - and not for self-advertisment. Just think about it - if every Bryce artist would post messages about new images here - what would the forum be good for? The interesting and helpful topics are getting out of sight soon because of this. If you don't get along with my opinion then it should be ok if I start several dozen new threads with links to my works and spam the whole forum? I don't think so but if I read your answers it should be no problem at all. J.

The links are useful and welcome if there's information about technique or a question along with it - no problem with that. I also like seeing them when they're asking for specific feedback: "I've tried a new technique/style/Bryce function here, what do you think?" They do get 'spammy' when there's only "Look at my new image" - one of the best things about this forum is that there's very little of that. It's safe to assume that we all check the Bryce gallery and look at any new postings that catch our eyes.

Peer pressure should work best. If a member gets a little overly active in the Forum self-promoting their work, just don't look, don't comment. They'll get the message. I haven't seen so much of this that it deserves all this noise. I repeat, if it bothers you, ignore it. No one member owns this Forum, it belongs to us all, and I say all the members should use it as they see fit, as long as they do so with good taste and follow the TOS. If you want to, derjimi, go ahead and spam the Forum with links and images. We can choose to look at them or not. Thanks for airing your opinion. Every member's opinion is important. We should all be able to air those opinions without anger.

Anyhow... I hope this might help others out there curious to how the image was made. Since I did say that no texture maps were used in the actual rendering. This is a neat way to add fancy coloration to Bryce boolean objects (the surboard is one of those standard boolean presets) which one cannot UV map. Also note that this technique can come in handy for blending together different Bryce materials.

The images above were not necessarily rendered in the order shown, but were used more or less that way during the layering postwork.

1. Background layer. This has the subject hidden during render. This layer was also given a blur for a DOF effect. It was also used again, with a mask of the subject cut out. That way I could remove the extraneous bits (look closely and you'll see the loose polys) that I wanted to remove. (I guess I still have some things to learn when playing with poser and trying to make things posable.)
2. This layer has the subject in it. A mask of the subject was used to remove the background stuff. This was done for a DOF effect.
3-5. Pretty much the same as layer 2. It has the subject, but different colors & textures were applied. Also note that one can adjust coloration, contrast, etc. to these layers independantly. These layers were placed over layer 2. Creative use of masking on each layer reveals the layer below. More or less the airbrush was used with the mask for soft transitions and the draw tool for crisp lines.
6. This layer is a distance mask render. I didn't use it much on the subject itself (I wanted to bring it out more than this mask would show), but came in handy to blend the background layer so a DOF effect can be created. It works by having two duplicate layers. One blurred, and one above it with this mask. Controling the layer strength then controls how strong the effect works. I used this because Bryce 4 doesn't have a DOF during normal rendering. I suppose you could also use this in Bryce 5, if you wanted more control during postwork.
7. This is the mask used with most of the layers above. If you look closely, all the stray bits were removed from the mask itself. I ended up merging this mask with layers to erase everything but the subject. Then later freehand masking was done for the color work.
8. This is the completed, postworked image. Flaws were cleaned up, effects painted on, etc. Basically the result of merging all the layers and seeing what else it needs.

Thanks for the tutorial, pauljs75. :-) J.

derjimi, you can always use the forum option of "mark as read" and then only when someone posts something will it show up. That way you can minimize the need to scroll through stuff.

Thanks for the tut Paul it will be useful to know for future work. Cheers Catlin

It would be cool to have a place where you can get decent critisism and tips. This seems to be the way to do it. Once the picture hits the gallery thats it, not too much of a chance to have a conversation. Have to chase the person down in chat, if he or she goes to chat.

In that case, you might as well bin the gallery and have everyone post their pictures in the forum. I tend to agree with derjimi - what if everyone announced every picture they did? Never mind your picture going to page 5-10 of the gallery, any useful forum threads would go to page 5-10 of the forum pretty quickly. It wouldn't be so bad if Renderosity had the forum software that always put the most recently replied to topic at the top. It's hard to keep a discussion going for more than a few days when an interesting thread gets progressively buried by every new topic, whether interesting or not.

Phantast: Do you have notification turned on? Then you get notified of any new post or message added to a post you began or commented on. Easy to keep up with threads you're interested in then, you get e-mails.