Just playing around... took a while to get this far with material properties, altitude values, blurry transmissions/reflections while still maintaining a soft look... tens of lights... and a 3 hour render =/. Was it worth it? Maybe. Hopefully I can use what I have so far to develope a more 'realistic' render time in a full scene. Anyway, how has everyone been? I checked out the gallery the other day, looked like some nice stuff was piling up. Cheers - ornlu

What I still have to do: Smoother color transitions... lower render times.

Hey Ornlu, welcome back! Looks like an excellent material, and the lighting is pretty convincing. Wadda' ya think about a newer, faster rendering Bryce!? You'll be able to squeeze in more of these experiments,lol.

Hard to give it a thumbs up when it's an abstract, if you know what I mean. It's cool though. Slap it on a candle, or better yet, into a poser ear... then we can see how realistic it is.

More details this is an interesting experiment. I have been looking for a nice wax material.

Nice to see you again Ornlu we've been missing those metaball creations and radiosity experiments

ornluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...........!!!!!!!!!!

Hey Ornlu! Good to see you. The material looks pretty close. Keep at it, I know you'll get it.

so.....what are the settings? can we play with a scene file?

I see the forum has become a little more critical... and perhaps grabby than before. =) Good to see all the familiars though. I am intrigued by Danamo's comment, any more info?

Wax Lips! that's it.

Omigawd Ornlu! You did hear about Bryce being bought from Corel by DAZ didn't you? There's already an announcement that they've figured out how to really speed up Bryce's render engine. I guess you've got a little catching up to do,lol.

Ol' Blue Eyes is back! Drop by more often, Ornlu. You have been missed.

Yeah... apparently I do... lol. Wow, this is great news though. I can't even begin to imagine what we will be able to do. *thinks evil thoughts* Any news about expanding the maximum metaball capacity? or minimizing metaball memory usage? Anyway, here's a redo... This was done differently. blurry transitions and 4 layers of the same model (at slightly smaller sizes made up the effect. Each had 100% blurry transitions and 100% blurry reflections. only two lights were used in the scene (woot). And the render only took 1 hour. So better.. but not suitable for every situation. Now I just have to find a way to do it without using multiple instances of the model. This will still work for a candle etc.

One of the things we've been wanting concerning metaballs is the ability to turn a bunch of metaballs into a mesh. Several other programs can already do this.

After almost 2 years of lurking (hiding), it would take this to get me to post. Ornlu reappears...with beautiful wax..and such an elegant solution in the 2nd example! This one has really got me thinking of possibilities, which is what Bryce is all about. ;)

Thanks, Ornlu!

lee

Welcome back! :) Looks like wax to me!

WooHoo!! Hi Ornlu, you have been missed and it's so good to see you posting some more excruciatingly painful renders again. 8) Catlin

Ditto. ;o) Yeah, wax is a pain since it is basically a perfect candidate for sub-surface scattering. Very hard to simulate. But, these two examples are better than anything I was able to produce! AgentSmith

i think AS hit it on the head. because of that sub-surface scattering, more light would also pass through or transmit (if you will) causing more of a glowing effect inside those boxes and alot less shadowing would be noticeable. then again, !that would depend on the opacity of the material its supposed to be. in this case, wax, where the deciding factors would be a combination of density and opacity. (i prefer opacity over transperancy because wax will be more or less opac and not more or less transperant) if any of that makes any sence.

Do you turn off all the shadow casting, recieving, etc, when putting this together? I think that was the problem I was having when I tried to make a decent candle, I hadn't removed the shadow properties. Catlin

Yeah, if you leave the default shadow options it won't work at all.