Oftentimes I've had issues with Bryce's skylab. It has some very cool functions and techniques, but since it is at best a 2D image spherical-ized and has no depth, there is a limit to what you can do with it. The "Volumetric World" function is inefficient and even test-rendering it has never been a viable alternative... On my last gallery image, "With the Choedan Kal", I followed an idea from OCDDoug. Putting a radial light with a procedural gel applied to it inside of a volumetric cloud sphere/slab/whatever has really opened up some new and interesting techniques, and nearly replaced the Skylab skies for me... This is a quick, Bryce 4 rendering of ONLY a volumetric sphere and a radial light inside, all Skylab functions turned off. Something different, perhaps it will be worth messing with? It rendered fairly quick in Bryce 4, on the slowest computer ever (according to the benchmark thread...!) at 1 hour 20 minutes, which probably means 20 minutes for anyone else! But I started this thread to explore OTHER cloud-types. Anyone else with different sky methods, or new, non-Skylab techniques? I suppose even new Skylab techniques would be cool too! The most recent, powerful Skylab skies I've seen and played with are AlvinYlaya's sky mats... Not saying there are not other awesome skies, but hats off to Alvin for originality and detail! So dig in, lets see some new sky and cloud techniques! Postwork begone, I'm really curious what we can do with JUST Bryce, any version? I know there are a lot of techniques out there that are personal secrets, let's get some of them out in the open!

hmm, interesting. As far as I'm concerned I've transformed Bryce into a rendering lab for Wings3D. Rarely do I make actual landscape scenes anymore, and most skies that I have done have been either tweaked presets or just plain old photoshop postwork. It's not that I'm not happy with what can be done, it's simply that the amount of work involved is too much for me. I mean I could make a backdrop in Terragen in two clicks flat that would normally take me a whole day in Bryce... Plus I've specialized in a certain area of rendering with Bryce and it's very hard for me to move on. That's just me though. shrug Drac

I'm all for learning new tricks for skys. I struggled for two days trying to make decent clouds that didn't have artifacts in them or look squished up against the inside of the sphere with lighting on them that worked for my scene and still am not terribly happy with it. I've gotten closer to my ideal than ever before, but it's still not quite right. This idea is great! This looks like part of an explosion or something...sort of "aliens out of the clouds" in Independence Day. I'm curious about one thing. When you say a "procedural gel" what do you mean? I know how to use the gel function for caustics or something like that, but what defines the term "procedural?" Susan p.s. Eeek!!! I'm reverting to being a newbie! :o)

I think for any good Bryce image it must have a proper sky.Proper clouds to portray reality,or fantasy depending on what is being created.I view almost every image in the Bryce galleries, and one must have a look at Jstsittinghere's sky creations.I know for a fact how many hours and days she puts in to adjusting and perfecting exceptional skies.I have downloaded the free ones,and have had her make some custom ones for me.Now I am learning some of those techniques,such as the one I entered in the Feb contest. Mainly... her posts are for skies only."Jst making skies".

Well, don't feel bad, i just recently found the other two parts of the skylab...who feels dumb now?

(grins at you all!) Eelie, a procedural material is a fractal math driven one, the other type would be a bitmap material, taken from an image. That's all procedural means. Drac, unacceptable! Make a sky, for once! It will be good for you. You can't be looking at grey FOREVER! (grins) Here are the mats I used on this cloud setup... Alas, Bryce 4's light editor doesn't show the numbers the way Bryce 5's Light Lab does...

This is a great thread, I have often thought to myself that if I ever won the monthly
challenge " insert laughter track here" I would challenge everyone to the skylab. I can't remember any in depth threads dealing with this. I hope everyone jumps on board here on this one because it's a tough nut to crack and I would love to learn some new techniques on the sky lab. I have to agree with you shadow, Avin's Sky Pack is excellent but I love Agoria's Sky Pack, ever seen that one ?

Ok, this is a big DUH! Do you have any idea how many times I've been in the light lab (is that what it's called?) and not noticed that button labeled "procedural?" It's only next to the "image" button that I've used. Sheesh. I'm going back to my corner now. :oD

Used an image from the NASA site as the procedural for this image then some post with Universe IC & PS. The possibilities for skies are endless. (Dracs ships too) ;)

One rather silly bug in Bryce 5 (not B4) with proc light gells - if you save a file with it on it will always be on when you reload the file, even if you save it with it off. This includes batch rendering. Really minor point but it really confused the heck out of me the first time it happened! Best; Dan

Aye, Dan, the workaround is to click the "default material" button in the Material Lab, and then set the Diffuse color to dead white. This will insure that when you re-open the scene, you don't have any crazy gels messing things up...! I love the clouds and nebuale, ICM! GOod stuff...

The big problem I find with clouds is that in Bryce the horizon is at infinity whereas in the real world it is about four miles away on the flat. Stick a basic cloud plane in your scene and you get these ridiculous-receding-to-infinity-smaller-and-smaller clouds.

Skylab? didn't that come down over Australia a while back?..;)If I could just get a low-level fog over the ground, I'd be happy..still playing with volume textures..I'll get it right someday..

One way to give cloud planes more depth without sending render times through the roof is to stack World Space, very low frequency, infinite cloud planes. The above quickie image is 9 mulit-replicated I-planes, 10 BU's offset on the Y axis. With World Space each plane's texture is slightly different so it gives a little "shape" to the clouds. This image took 3:14 to render, at normal AA on a 1.4 gig machine. And thanks for the tip SDL. Best; Dan

Aye, that's a cool technique, Dan! Here's a simple volumetric for cartoon-flavored clouds, although it renders very slow... (basic shading)