Ive decided to post regular progress reports on my latest image. Keeping the final idea secret till the end, but itll probably become apparent pretty quick. So far Im working in Bryce 5, but Ill be using Poser 4 later. Dont worry, Ill announce it before I cover any thing in Poser, so as to minimize the chance of anyone being offended. Ill post to this thread, every day I work on the picture so stay tuned

I did cheat and start yesterday, but all I did was decide I couldnt find a free chain link fence that would stand up to scrutiny. Today I built a fence, a lot faster than my neighbor whos been working on a dog run for about two weeks now. Sunday him and three other people filled three post holes with cement. Thats it. Is it dry yet?, Nope., Oh. Do you want to fill another one, or wait till this one dries?, I guess we should wait., Ok. Built my fence entirely of bryce primitives, mostly cylinders and a few squares, with a sphere plopped on top. The chain link part is done with texturing so well get to that in a minute, for now its just a boring square. Check out the wire frame.

Built one section, grouped all the pieces. Duplicated the group and moved the new section over. Twice more and I had enough fence to fill the scene. Course I can always make more if needed. Were looking for a corroded, decaying look to this fence. Probably could have used a procedural texture to do this, but Ive got some really good looking image textures from Awful Soul, one of which is a corroded metal. Had a metallic texture already applied, since I did go through some procedurals before deciding to go with the image. Changed channel A to a picture texture, loaded in g_metal.jpg, and turned off reflectivity for now. The texture tiled about five times across the fence section, so back to the material editor. Tried all the mapping modes and decided on Random.

Now for the chain links. I had found ZahnnsGermanSilver texture not to long ago and thought it would make a great chain link fence. Had to rotate it about 15 degrees to get the angle right, and of course, shiny silver isnt going to work for this picture. Saved the texture to the texture library, loaded up the corroded metal material from earlier, now it gets tricky. Set the transparence for channel B, selected Blend Transparency mode from the Material Options menu, and loaded the texture from Zahnns material into channel B.

Nice fence progress. I will guess that you are making a prison. I will compare my guess to the eventual result and reward myself with tootsie rolls accordingly.

Penn Jillet was on Celebrity Poker Showdown tonight, so thats all I got done. Feel free to post any comments, questions, or critique's. Thanks.

Nice render. Looks like something from one of Mrdodobird's renders. And now I know I'm not the only one who watches celebrity poker showdown.

Hehe! Awesome fence! Great textures. Thanks for the info.

Dang...I missed Penn. Ah, well they'll re-run it. Excellent technique on texturing that fence, btw. AgentSmith

awesome!

Planned on finishing roughing out the scenery tonight. Barely finished this section of wall. Spent some time trying different approaches, and I think this ones going to work. Built the walls out of two cubes, but they were far too sharp. Did a top render and used that image for a terrain. added mounds, then erased every thing but the wall and clipped off the bottom. Moved the terrain into position and adjusted the height.

Finding a suitable material took some time. Decided to use ZahnnsEarth, with a little deep reddish added. Not sure if its blood or rust but it looks good.

So far so good. I'll get alot done this weekend, stay tuned...

Ah! That seriously works PERFECTLY together. You have a great eye for this! AS

Didn't get as much done as I wanted today. Spent a good deal of time trying out different approaches.

Quick review. Everything is still set as default. One light, the sun. (there is a light parented to the light over the door, but its not set up yet.) After every thing is in place, I'll turn off the sun and lower the color of the sky dome, to darken the picture. Soft lighting will then be added back in where needed.

Today I got most of the enviroment done. The building behind the fence is just a cube with a picture texture pulled from a texture by TrekkieGirl. The structure in the background is the corner of the Factory Building by pauljs75, with the same brick texture. The texture doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but will be mostly obscured by fog and darkness. The line between the wall and the ground will be hidden in the final, the point of view hasn't been set yet. Three more objects to add...

Message edited on: 07/19/2004 00:34

1. Made a zombie in poser and exported as an object. 2. Imported the obj into bryce. Rotated it to lay on the ground plane. Altitude rendered from the top camera. 3. Forgot to get screen captures from some steps. Duplicated object. Ungrouped. Enlarged parts of 2nd object in the XYZ axis. reduced size in Y axis, or whichever axis you are viewing in, till 2nd object is about half the height of the original. Altitude rendered. 4. Opened both altitude renders in image editor. Gaussian Blurred image of double object. copy & pasted single object on top of blurred image. 5. Rendered color image to use as texture later. Closed file, so I couldnt go back and get screen captures. 6. Start new document. Created terrain. used composted picture (4) as terrain map. Created material using color render and texture to give decay effect. 7. The final object.

8. In the scene. Im going to fix it so its more distinct. Not to distinct mind you, its just filler in the midground.

worked in poser today. Made a monster thing. Imported it to bryce. working on texture. Here's a pretty picture I made yesterday while my four year old was 'helping' me on the computer.

Finished up in poser. Imported the poser figures and textured them. Still need to add lighting and fog. The monster in the background will be mostly obscured by darkness and mist. Need to work on the beads of sweat on the girl too.

think I'm done. going to do a full size render tonite, and postwork anything needed tomorrow.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=728465

Next time I'm going to finish the pic, then do a play-by-play.