hello all... i am trying to get into the swing of things using bryce4, but beyond rending cool glass spheres i havent done much... i would like to know how scenes are made... ((um, give me a bit...)) ive seen many images in the gallery where people are standing in places like forests and swamps... as far as scenes go, these are poser objects, terrains, trees and plants, and even a water planes. (if im not mistaken...) when i bring in my poser people, and add a terrain, the people dwarf the mountain, the ground has no "dips, crevices, or holes" in it, and the water has no depth. i would like to know the best way to go about making full scenes, in all types of environments, but everything either shows up looking "flat", or the size proportions are WAY off....... any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.....

Plenty of people here will be glad to advise you, the best way is to be more specific by posting one of your efforts in the Forum, and tell us what you are trying to accomplish. Then we can give you instructions that will bring you closer to your goals. You might also want to consider reading a little deeper into the posts in this Forum. You'll find things like tutorials, helpful links, some pretty outrageous humor...it's not all just bitching and moaning. :^) Welcome to the Bryce Forum! Love your member name: "It's a bughunt, man, a bughunt!" John

Also get "Real World Bryce" which can be bought at amazon.com for about $25 USD. It's the Bryce bible :) What you are asking for is very general in nature and would take a book to explain. For the size thing models can be resized using the edit menu at the top of the screen. Find some tutorials by doing a search on google for "bryce tutorials". You should find more than enough to get you started.

Real World Bryce is down to $25? dang, everything is coming down..well, almost everything..;)
Scene composition can be as easy or as complicated as you like. Here's a whole list of bad habits I use to make scenes..;)

1. 1st thing is to decide where you want your center of attention to be..if you've messed up somewhere, sometimes you can get around it by drawing the viewer's attention somewhere else..;) 2) Sometimes you use a sense of balance..shapes or terrain equally on front, center, back, left, and right.
2. Scale. sometimes the way you place things next to other things (people next to terrains, for example) will make mountians look 5' tall, or turn regular folks into giants, etc.
3. All rules are meant to be broken. That's what separates good art from great art. Great artists steal..;)
4. See what you like. Monkey see, monkey do. If you see a Bryce pic you really like, try to figure out where things are placed, how they're textured, how they're lit (lighting itself can do as much for a picture as anything else,).
   I have no doubt that there are complete Composition classes at art colleges, so you can get as intense about it as you like. I use edges a lot (I actually take a sort of Stagecraft approach; if you don't see it, don't render it. You'd be surprised what the 'standard' view of some of these pics are like..;) That's why I put some things on the edge, to imply a sense of something there, even when it's not..hope this helps.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=528445

on this test render, i scaled down the size of the poser figure. wayyyyyyyyyyyy down, to look somewhat descent in proportion next to a mountain. i also scaled down the tree. notice how "whack" the mountain sides look? the ground also looks like a pool of plastic clay stuff crap. even if i add a water plane, there arent any recesses in the ground for it to "show"...

a book does seem to be the way to go, but im just getting started... the user guide for bryce is not the easiest reading.

the link brings you to an image showing something similar to what i mean.......... the ground looks like a GROUND. the water shows and the ground has "depth" to it... (its not flat... it has "bumps" and those nooks and crannies like granma used to make.) there are tons of similar images, i just grabbed 1 at random.... (its very nice btw)

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=370890

that link shows a blend of the mountain with the ground/water... but the dinosaur is IN the water..... not standing on a water plane. (also very nice)

thanks a bunch, and ill try to post more of what i mean 'while' im trying to find a book......

There are tutorials that come with Bryce 4 in the help menu (move the cursor to the top of the screen if it doesn't show, been a long time since I used 4). This tutorial shows how to create a desert with 2 mountains and a lake cut into the ground. This should get you started. The terrain is usually "sculpted" in the terrain editor by selecting the terrain and clicking the little "e". The dinosaur is simply lowered into the water plane/object so it stands in the water and not on it.

maybe its on the content cd? i havent messed w/ that much, so let me check there... thanks

Attached Link: Landscape Composition Rules (from Johannes Vloothuis)

Hi, heres a helpful link about landscape composition. Hubert

it was kinda hard to follow, but as im new at this, ill let myself off easy :) it wasnt until i scaled up the grouped objects that you could actually make out a waterfall/river scene... so im left to believe its a scale issue im having.... it also never dawned on me to "raise" the water plane... one more thing. the default view... its called the director camera. is this camera supposed to mimic an average persons visual scope?!? meaning, is it set up to be as if you are looking out from an averages persons head? it sounds silly, but it does make a difference. (as opposed to looking out from an ants visual scope, hence the reason to enlarge items...) even better, are we supposed to switch to the other camera, and use that as our "eye"... thanks again people, all the help is REALLY appreciated.

Dude, she is going to get some serious windburn on top of the mountain, being nekked and all. Bughunter, in this forum, you have found an endless supply of information. If you have questions, there is at least one person, guaranteed that can answer it for you, if not 50. All you need to do is ask. The wealth of knowledge is endless. What has been said so far about the "Real World Bryce" book is the truth. It is THE book to get for us Brycers when starting out and later on as you gain experience. Excellent for refrence or if you need to refresh your memory. It's well worth the money. Here are a few sites with good tutorials to get you started on the road to frustration, sleepless nights and associating with known psychopaths in this forum: http://www.brycetech.com/ (Probably the best page around) http://www.petersharpe.com/Tutorials.htm http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/pearl/terraintut/fractaltile.html (excellent tut for learning how to tile terrains) These will keep you plenty busy for a while. Remember, the only stipid question is the question not asked. BOOM

you are far too kind sir!

last 1, i promise... again, i scaled WAY up the wazoo on this one... so much, i was in the sky w/ the "camera"... (it got real "misty" for some reason, so im assuming those were clouds...) so i came down a bit, and here it is..... so is it just me, or do most people end up having to scale their terrains in order to get it to look "proportionate". and what about when you add your poser figures?!? if you wanted the "look" of a character near a mountainside, do you scale the poser figure down next to nothingness? how do you scale for an oceanfront scene?!? a cave sunken in shallow water?!? (am i asking too much?)

The directors camera has a much greater capability to be positioned/more controls. However it is invisible in the scene. I use the directors to set up my shot, play around with the visual composition, etc. I then set the camera to the same as the director. This way i can always find my way back even if I am not happy with my altered view and have not saved in one of the buttons. You can render from either. Itis all illusion. Treat it like a movie set. Scale is not mandatory but the illusion of it is. Have fun and play!

Don't forget to give your terrains as much resolution as your computer can handle. Something else to keep in mind is the larger your objects the more the atmospheric haze setting will interact with them. If you are using atmospheric haze settings and they are not as intense as you would like select evertthing in your scene and scale it up some. Welcome to the Bryce forum.

Smoothing your terrains before leaving the terrain editor will make them look better.

Most of the time I work without a ground plain and add terrains in front of the camera and try to join them all together seamlessly. You will also have more realistic water in many cases if you use terrains for water 'cause then you can have actual 3D waves instead of a flat plain with a material and bump map applied.

You might try starting with one thing at a time, and working on that: i.e., a terrain, tree, etc. The simple the scene the better, so you can gradually see how to construct a scene. Check out the trees on the Content CD under Plant Library. Getting a sense of scale is tough. I still find myself struggling with this and I've been Brycing for about 5 years. Just experiment a lot, and resize and reposition your objects until they look right. Following tutorials can be helpful as well, like some of the links posted above. Don't be afraid to ask questions in here, lots of folks are always willing to help. But most of all, have fun :-) Doug

Open up a magazine, find a scene you like & try to emulate something close, You'll be surprised how close you get. As everyone else stated...ask,ask,read, & ask. Welcome & Enjoy

I find it's best to get completely out of the mindset of looking at Bryce scenes as representations of the real world. Bryce is just another 3D program that happens to have a slight default emphasis on 'landscaping'. My approach is to regard Bryce scenes as sort of like "visual effects" that are used in movies and television. All that matters is making something look real from the point of view of the camera position/s. Here's some specific info: All imported objects come in at a fixed size (on their biggest dimension) of 40.96 'Bryce units'. If you import a standard Poser figure, it will be 40.96 units big 'head to toe'. If you import a model of an aircraft carrier, it will be 40.96 units from 'bow to stern'. Bryce doesn't 'know' what these things are 'supposed' to be - they are just 3D models. So you have to scale objects so that they fit together, or use perspective tricks to make it seem like they fit together. Perspective tricks combined with adjustments to the Bryce 'atmosphere' are the key to successful Bryce landscaping. Check out the scene here: http://www.gauchito.com/bryce/render_times/ It looks realistic from the camera position, but weird from other angles. It's not a North American lakeside view; it's a visual trick to simulate one. I think this file is on the Bryce content CD somewhere, or you can download it at the link. Open it up in Bryce (remember it's a Bryce3 file (br3)) and examine how it was done.

The Peter Sharpe Link is a great one for tuts. I think the scaling thing is just something you get used to in bryce, I think the best way tp learn is do what you're doing get in there and play. Just note the comments on terrain resolution, it's almost always worth beefing up the res. Welcome and hope to see more posts soon. Gog