Is there a way to change the effect of the camera lens in bryce? Say I wanted to give the image a fish eye view, I thought I had found it once, but I don't remember, if it was possible.

I've got a book (The Bryce 5 Handbook by Shamms Mortimer, pgs 335-338) that shows something like this. It describes how to take a sphere, flatten it and place it over the front of the camera to act as a lens. I'd say the dimensions of the lens would be something like 2x1x2 proportions (flatter 'front' to 'back' than 'top' to 'bottom' and 'side' to 'side'). Apply a glass material and play with the transparency, specularity and refraction. The one that shows the closes to what you're probably wanting is transparency 100 and specularity 0. The caption says to 'alter the refraction index' but it doesn't say to what. The original settings mentioned have refraction of 22, but I don't know if you'd go up or down from them (but I'd guess up.) Hope this helps! Susan

Yes .. Infact its pretty easy to change the lense.. HERE.. check this out...

First: Click here..

Then, adjust this option to your specific lense paramiter. 120 is just an extream example.. But yeah.. You get the basic idea..

Attached Link: http://www.castironflamingo.com/tutorial/camerareference/index.html

Here is some camera references that may help you out. Arleen

The most used options for a fish-eye lens are postwork filters, but these distort the original image and will thus result in a bit lower quality. Another way to make a fish-eye lens is to place a sphere in the scene and set all it's material-properties to 0% except for the reflection wich should be set to 100%. The sphere will now reflect in the scene and the reflection will be distorted like it's seen through a fish-eye lens. Point the camera at the sphere and you can render the distorted reflection.

Aye, good advice, but a sphere is NOT a lense. Take two spheres, offset them only a bit, on one axis. Boolean intersect the two, then parent and track this Grouping to the camera. Now you have a REAL fake lense! With this method, you can adjust the depth, and the refraction level on the lense, and simulate many real-lense-experiences. One can even produce truly Bryce-generated Lense Flare this way, by tweaking the bump slightly, and the specularity of course! The only drawback to Brycean lenses is the render time increase, I suggest setting up the scene with the lense set to "Hidden" first, then rendering. And, make sure the TIR is set to at least 2, for the best results... To make it REALLY interesting, make TWO lenses, and put them inside a hollowed out cylinder. Boom! A telescope... If you need a quick example, let me know!

A sphere is not a lense, but a fisheye lense is spherical. That's why it has the distorted 180 degree FOV doesn't it?

Aye, they are spehrical, but a lense is still a piece of cut glass. Imagine a magnifying glass, how it focuses light, and you can burn little ants and stuff with this light... Here's a quick illustration. The glass on the left is a sphere, the glass on the right is two spheres set to Boolean Intersection (one Positive, one Intersect). The difference is apparent. Just an idea to play with! Lenses like this increase render time dramatically, but make the Bryce camera act in cool ways...

And an in-scene example. This is just a quick scene, with the lense set to "Hidden".

The same scene, same camera. NOthing has changed except that I turned the "lens" back on (unHidden). The Material Lab alone gives us more control over this type of camera work than any REAL camera ever made...! (sorry, I didn't let it finish the AA pass...)