I really enjoyed reading one of the (long) posts about global lighting. Here's my test render. The samovar is a metaball construction. I did a full circle of about 1000 radial lights inside a sphere. Upper lights are the same hue as the sphere, lower lights are the same hue as the ground plane. Ground plane has cast shadows off so that the ground reflects ambient off the object. Also ground lights are about 1/2 the intensity (measured by the L value of the color -- not the actual light intensity which is set at 1) of the upper dome. OK ... so does anyone know where I can get some additional information on the (watch me get this wrong) HDTI effects (or whatever they are called), AND if there is any way to produce one of those spherical texture maps out of one of my own images?? I take a lot of panoramic photos and would like to try using them in Bryce. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can *render* me. (snork).

Attached Link: http://www.hdrimaps.com/

hehe, Close ricky.

Thanks, ICM. Ummm ... HDRI, sorry. OK, so these aren't just a way of using regular images, their in a special format. I'm still going to check out the tutorials. How about the next question then .... any way of turning my panos into something I can map on a sphere???

Attached Link: http://athens.ict.usc.edu/HDRShop/

Try HDR SHop Its exactly for making high-dynamic range panorama, the web page tuts and everything! nice Metaball model by the way roch222

Thank you so much.

Ok, this is where a lot of people get confused. A HDRI image is a HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE IMAGE IE it has an extra level of exposures so that you can change the exposure of an image after it has been taken. Pretty cool. Some of the newer cameras that dish in .raw files have the same features. I believe it has to be 16 bit, but I may be wrong (.raws are anyway) So, to continue, bryce does not understand HDRI images, it can't use luminance channels and thus they have no effect on your final output. In fact, bryce can't even use .hdr files. You have to convert the original HDR image into the LDR counterpart, be it in .tiff .bmp or .jpeg format. Usually you want to overexpose it before doing this. Byce uses the ambient value of a texture to determine the amount of 'shared' color it will bleed on the rest of the objects in your scene. Whites bleed more easily than darks (no true radiosity) because bryce sees them as having a higher ambient value than darker colors. When using a panorama on your sphere, make sure to boolean the sphere first as well, IE make a slightly smaller sphere inside of it and boolean it. This prevents problems with polygon normals and texturing. Your scene will be lit MUCH better by the panorama (on true ambience) when doing this and reflections will be less distorted. You usually don't want to combine the 1000's of lights style with the true ambience HDRI style as the render times will be measured in weeks. It's best to just use a few lights (10) in a small 'halo' up above the image somewhere to get a soft shadow. Hope this helps.

So in response, ANY panoramas work the same as lDR images, so long as you distort it correctly to fit within the sphere.

OK ... I understand about the HDRI images not being used (as is) in Bryce. I'll just be using the HDR Shop program to convert my panos into spherical maps and such for the moment. When I boolean my sphere, which sphere (inner or outer) is to have the photographic texture ... outer right?? I make it photographic and slightly transparent and then the inner sphere is the reflective one ... yes?? Or am I confused. I usually am.

No, the inner sphere should have the texture on it, the outer doesn't matter. You put the panorama on the inner sphere after booleaning. The inner sphere is Negative while the outer sphere is positive. You then group them together to get the booleaned shell. It mainly has to do with object normals. You see when the rays bounce off of inverted polygons (such as the inside of a normal sphere) you get some weird loss (in bryce anyway). By using the negative boolean as your texture source you effectively referse the normals. Instead of pointing outward your poly normals are now pointing in towards your scene. Therefore you get the appropriate ambient light radiation and mapping. Again, hope this helps. I tend to be confusing. lol, I have an article in the upcoming magazine concerning faking radiosity/hdri images in bryce. Although now that I re-read it I forgot a few small details, the sphere inside the sphere was one I forgot. It's more of an understanding how it works article than a building a scene article anyway.

OK, thanks. I will try it. Of course, you realize that if I can't figure this out, you are going to get some desparate and pleading IMs. I'm doing a little experiment right now trying to fake the whole thing on my samovar. Not using the appropriate technique, mind you, just something odd I wanted to try. I'll post the results if it ends up looking even half way decent.

That's how all techniques started out though. I remember when I was just posting images using NO lights at all and just HDRI, (check way back in my gallery), and everyone thought I was nuts... c'est la vie...

Sorry for all the posts, but this is an area that I find fascinating. For example, these images were done using no bryce lights, ONLY true ambience using ldri mappings. One Example Another And a Third

YES YES YES ... this is what I want to learn!!!! Those are so great!!! But there are NO Bryce lights in there?? No light domes? How do you get the surrounding ambient light?? So much to learn, so much to learn.

Y'know I never used a boolean sphere before in my images??? I have to try this Ornlu! So do you apply the texture spherical to the sphere or parametrical?

Rickymaveety: no bryce lights at all, the ambient light is achieved through "true ambience" rendering. It's a little complicated, I explained it above a little. Basically uses ambient values from one object to light another object.

OK ... no lights, not even the sun, just the TA render? I'll try it tonight. Well, no one ever said lighting was going to be easy.

Well, it works better when you use some lights. those were just examples of True ambience taken to the extreme. to get better shadow definition it's good to have a few lights with soft shadows. (though it increases the render time dramatically)

Well, I set up a boolean sphere. Put the pano image on the inner (negative) sphere. It does seem to matter what the outer sphere is -- at least I can't see the inner image unless I make it transparent. Right now it's rendering with TA (no lights). Question -- I look at your test images and I see these great reflections of Athena and the bot in the "mirrored" sphere. No matter that my outer sphere is 100% reflective, I'm not getting those types of reflections. Also, and I suppose it's because it's a TA rendering and my pano is rather bright ... it's really washed out. By the way, I tried using that program to distort my pano so that it would map seamlessly on the sphere, but it doesn't quite work like that. Clearly, there's more to this than meets the eye. I'll post some renders to clarify my questions as soon as I have them done.

Woah, outer sphere or inner sphere is not supposed to be reflective at all. The inner sphere is supposed to be 100% ambient. For the AMBIENT channel of the panorama texture on the inner sphere set the AMBIENT value to 100 or drop the marble on the pano texture.This brightens the brights while not washing out the image.

Did that on the inner sphere, just dropped the marble on ambient for the pano photo. No reflection. But, if I don't make the outer sphere at least transparent, I don't see the pano, just whatever's texturing the outer sphere. Also, if I don't make one of the spheres reflective, how do I (or rather how do YOU) get the objects near the sphere to reflect in it?? When I look at your second example, I see clear reflections. Are those just a part of the map being used?? Can you tell I'm a little confused here??

Oooh, you mean the ball you put in the scene surrounded by the sky map (I'll use skymap to refer to the inner and outer booleaned spheres) is reflective? In that case yes you can. However, it won't benefit (a lot) from true ambience as that has little to do with reflective materials. Though if your ground is not reflective it will light that. Not quite clear on what you mean concerning not being able to see the pano if the outer sphere is not transparent. You sure that you're texturing the inner sphere of the skymap and not the outer sphere of the skymap? Second, are you sure that you have all lights turned off. And it's best to have the sky set to black. with no sun etc. A second way to get more directed light off the sphere in a certain place is to aim a spotlight up at it where the sun should be and set the intensity to 999, make sure it doesn't hit any objects in your scene. Sorry if this wasn't helpfull, I'll get some screenshots tomorrow, atm it's my bedtime yawn.

AAAAAAGHHH!! You mean the camera is INSIDE the boolean??? Oh, duh. I thought you meant that you mapped the little ball in the scene. I had no idea that we were talking about a skymap. OK, I will tackle this again tomorrow. It's my bedtime too and my head's still sore from the bashing I gave it when I saw your scattered light post.