I was experimenting around with fake HDRI and I discovered a few things. Id like to know what you think. First, I have noticed that if you are just using the sun (which is one of the reasons for doing the fake HDRI), you STILL need to add decent ambience to your objects to get them to look right, otherwise the area on the objects not getting direct light are still to dark. Even if you turn up the reflections very high and use blurry reflections. In fact, the picture above has ambiences of 30 on the objects. I think 30 is high, YET, this is what I think the objects should look like with proper radiosity and ambience. I have the shadows turned down to 25, because I think that NO SHADOWS looks unnatural. This occurs even if your ldri map is very bright. I have experimented with several maps. The one above is a cloud map, and is neutral overall. If I use a dark hdri map, the objects look dark (obviously). A fake HDRI is the same as a sky in that your objects simply pick up the sky, or dome, or surrounding object, colors. The object on the right has specular halo at 225,225,225. The object on the left has specular haol set at 50,50,50. Blurry refelections are set. The object on the left has reflection at 45!!!!! and is diffuse, while the object on the right has reflections at 20 and is reflective. Object on left also has light bump map. Also, when you use the fake HDRI method (ldri map on a non shadowing sphere so that the sun shows through), your object picks up the ground or table or floor just as much as they pick up the surrounding sphere. SO, if you use a dark floor, you DONT get enough bottom light. That is why I tried to use a neutral floor (overall grey). A white floor ,or no floor would be best. I guess my point is that I think you still need to use other lights. I hope that in Bryce 7 (since Bryce 6 will never happen) they have a single button that just says "perfect radiosity, ambience, lighting, and shadows" Lastly, and so as not to start another new thread, when I set soft shadows in premium rendering and click in the button on the sky lab, I still do not get soft shadows and when I reopen the sky lab, soft shadows has now turned itself off. Whats the deal??. I still get soft shadows with supplementary lights. comments??

Screw Bryce 7, I'm holding out for Bryce Studio v10...Lol.. I heard it's going to have Realtim/realworld rendering, and it's supposed to support Full Time Travel....

This is with no light dome GI, right? (And doesn't fake HDRI sound a little half-baked? I think 'Luminance mapping' sounds much cooler.)

KAOM. LOL on the time travel, but lets hope, I could sure use that feature. DRUCK. agreed, since thats all it really is. And yes, no light dome, just the sun. obviously with a light dome it will look much better. I was just hoping to find a way to render quickly without the light dome. Also, the sun was at a more extreme angle than is optimal, but just to get as much from the "luminance mapping" lol, as I could

I like using the sun and a pure white ambient sphere around the scene with no lights, maybe one omni set to about 2 or 3 for shadows.. The light domes are cool, but I like "luminescence mapping"/(fake hdri)...

The reason why it keeps turning off is because of that well know Light Lab BUG that surfaced during Betatesting but was never fixes...

Foleypro: so you mean "thats just the way it is"? You cant have soft shadows with the sun?

Nope it is that intermitent bug to some extent...I have tried to use very small amounts in my lights not my SUN...Maybe a good experiment for me to try,But I think the last time I tried it was going to render until Heck froze over...

Sure you can... just make soft shadows the last setting you make before you start the render and then don't touch it - if you mess around or stop and restart you'll loose the settting and the effect. I think it might've been Dan Whiteside or one of the other 'could tell you where the parity bits are in the file layout' Bryce big guys that clued me in on that.

Thanks DDRUCK. Ill try that

You know, I've always really thought of you as a stuttering, slurring, drunken miller. Weird.

Did you render with True Ambience? And instead of using the sun, I find it works good to place a single radial towards the top of your HDRI sphere, with a value of less than 5, and no dropoff.

I've actually gotten the "Skylab" soft shadows to work twice(only from the "Camera View" and only on "Premimum" setting, with "Soft Shadows" enabled in the "Render Options" panel.),......that's twice out of maybe close to 1000 attempts. That's on a machine running Win2000Pro SP1,......I have Win2000 pro SP2 on all other machines and it has never worked on them. Take it for what it's worth. Wish I could be of more assistance.

Message edited on: 05/23/2004 22:01

Soft shadows seem to fail with sky presets other than the basic. Whenever I used them, I would either mod from the basic sky or work inside a box/sphere with my own lighting setups.

here is a link to Necati's site that has a simple yet effective way to approach HDRI in bryce...seems to work well.
http://www.bryceanworlds.com/pages/simulated_radiosity.html