Well, in order to put a one up over my other radiosity tests, I tried to fake radiosity on the next level in these images. The castle is white, it has no specularity and no reflection. The lights are all omni/spot. There is a lighting dome of omni lights, then several spot lights (extremely bright) facing the NON showing walls of the cube. ALL of the lights are white. I put a couple negative spotlights in key places along the top of the castle and cylindrical negative lights on all the edges of the sphere with no falloff (to give that darkened corner look. This was rendered at 800 by 800 effect AA utilizing 900 lights on a server of 4 G4 Macs at my uncle's using true ambiance with a render time of 56 minutes. (My uncle has a G4 server at his house, yeah, I wish I made 300 grand a year too. He just got it, and I convinced him to let me play =P)

Here is an IDENTICAL render, the only thing changed s the colors of the cube. Here you can see the true radiosity taking place. As the castle has completely changed color with 0 reflection and no color change. It's all in the true ambiance.

Forgot to mention one thing, There are two main semi domes that function more like area lights. both are set up on the camera side of the object, you can see the two shadows they generate.

Cool, Ornlu. Always love your lighting experiments and wish I had a computer that could render them ;)

Here's another, you can really see how the two main lighting rigs cast shadows in this image. There are no "blurry" shadows on the two semi domes.

Very cool experiments you come up with Ornlu! You really are a mad scientist...in a good sort of way,lol.

Ok last one for now because I have to go home lol, But here was the last image I rendered. Here the floor is blue while the walls and ceiling are red. The model is clearly tinted red, yet there is a hint of blue on downward facing pieces.

great examples! thank you very much! but my question is.... where did u found such beautiful models?

I forget, They've been on my computer for so long I can't even remember. Here is one more. Then I'll post a ss of the lighting rig.

Here's the lighting rig.

Attached Link: http://www.3d-xtra.bravepages.com/

Wow, thats some great work your doing there Ornlu. Besides the complex lighting arrays you have there could you give me a little more detail of the set up. For instance, is this inside of an enclosed box, do you have atmosphere turned off, etc. Would really like to experiment with this myself. @Vasquez: Thought I recognized those models, you can DL them at the link provide.

THere is no Atmosphere. the sky is set to white and sun/clouds are disabled. Most of the lights have a a value of 1 and are set to either linear fall-off or none. The square spotlights on the 2 walls and ceiling are set to 350 I believe, though I'd have to check it may be higher. The random omni lights are set to not cast shadows to give the ambiant lighting to the room. It may be an unnecessarily complicated lighting rig. But it produces some really sexy renders =P.

hey thank you croowe! Ornlu, I' just starting to think that your PC must be a monster!! How can u manage Bryce with such a huge quantity of lights (as also metaballs)!!!!!?!?!?!?!

Looks like the links are down on that model page...I bookmarked it for later though :)

Well Vasquez, These renders were done on my uncles Apple G4 server. He is an electrical engineer for Boeing and they just recently gave him 4 apple G4 desktops for Cad operation etc. He probably could have done it with one, but when you load the entire schematic for any kind of aircraft and want to edit it in real time. It takes a lot of computing power. So I assembled this scene at my house. And when I drove up to his today I asked him if I could try rendering them over his server. He has bryce/bl installed allready he uses it to load DEM data when rendering aircraft from Cad. My own computer (that I have used for everything other than the renders above) is an -Athlon 2600+xp -Asus Nforce 2 Delux board -1024/1gig of ddr 400 in 2 512 sticks -two 7200 rpm 80 gig hds -Radeon 9600 pro -windows XP PE I don't know the specs on the g4's, but they are good for rendering. Lots of raw power/bandwidth.

pretty cool method ornlu, probably the best ive seen yet. kick arse comp too:)

It's mainly the ram that allows for massive metaball scenes.

Looks pretty cool, Ornlu! The blue-floored image with red lighting? Possibly the best example of radiosity in Bryce I've seen...!

As ever Ornlu this is excellent work. Your examples of what can be done in Bryce with light are always most apreciated. I think I'll try doing something similar to try it out, but probably not with so many lights. Cheers 8) Catlin

Very cool, but the lighting set up looks rather insane to set up. How did you manage to set up all those semicircles with lights and keep everything so neat. Please tell us that you did not just eyeball it. :)

Each of those has 260 omni lights. It's actually just multi replicated. Just multireplicate around an arch like shape. Just takes some math is all. Just simply make one light, turn on show center in attributes, Then you drag that out a ways and multireplicate with turns. A half circle is 180 degrees. so you can make 18 lights with 10 degrees between each, 6 lights with 30 degrees, 9 lights with 20 degrees 36 lights with 5. etc. Then you just start the next teir. Or replicate the first and move it up/scale down. I think that there are also some lightdomes of various sizes that someone posted. I didn't make this one for this project, but for my original radiosity testings quite a while back.

Yep, well, I've gotten pretty decent at modeling chaotic liquids, so I thought.. Why not animate it? I thought I could probably do it with a Lot of paths.. and a lot of metaballs. So, here I go, wish me luck... Probably will take a while though.

Wow ornlu, that is one hell of a system set-up your uncle has,and so cool and propitious that he already had Bryce installed! When you think of the sheer processing power involved in loading the entire schematic for such a complex aircraft,in realtime yet! It's been estimated that the paperwork for the aircraft;blueprints,specifications,change orders,memoes,etc, would weigh more than the actual plane!

To be able to harness that much computational power and the resultant freedom to experiment and run with either a creative whim, or a carefully planned experiment, on such a huge scale, must have been more than intoxicating! I am vicariously enjoying your exploits, and the results of your experiments! Keep up the great work and show 'em what can be done with Bryce.and God bless your Unc for helping to make it possible

I know what you mean. I nearly had an orgasm when I saw how fast it was rendering something that would take 44 hours on my own machine. I won't be able to use it all the time, but certainly for my next metaball render it will be a valuable asset. (the animation I mean)

Aye, I'm really glad you have access to such power, but remember, they are just Macs, Ornlu. I live in a lair of AMD's, and experience ten times such power on a day-to-day scale. Now, if only I had your dedication and presicence to utilize such power! It's not the processing power that makes you delve so deep, Ornlu. It's YOUR mind...! So if you ever feel like visiting just to render, drop me a line! I could learn a lot from watching you click away...

Might be a long drive shadow. I live in Massachusetts. But thanks for the compliments; they are much appreciated.

Attached Link: Planit3D has Helmut's models

This kind of stuff blows me away. The technical that turns into beauty. Great job!

BTW, those buildings are by Helmut Schaub and you can find them at planit3d these days.

In the poll at Planit3D, Bryce is now in joint second place with Lightwave, the No 1 spot is held by Max. Not bad for a lowly bit of software. Catlin