Use fill lights to lighten up the dense shadow areas. Also adding a little haze to your atmosphere might help...

Message edited on: 09/14/2004 14:29

And turn off cast shadows for the fill lights in the Light Lab. This helps simulate the diffuse light that fills shadows in the real world.

Message edited on: 09/14/2004 14:39

I saw a thread a couple of days ago about "True Ambient light". It created a very soft lighted scene without black hole-like shadows.

yes, you could defenitely experiment with "true ambience" but beware that it will take significantly longer rendertimes. You can use the ambient channel of your texture to adjust the brightness/intensity of the indirect light (the TA effect). higher ambient setting will increase the intensity, too high will make things unrealistic though probably, tweak around a little I'd say :) you could also use a radial or such for a fill light to shine some soft light on the shadowed area's that'll work faster then TA, but will also possibly create a different look then TA.

Rayraz, are talking about the Ambience dot in the texture editor? The thing when you pull the lozenge to the left makes stuff glow with its own preternatural light? Is that what you did above Pog? If that's it, why do they call it 'True Ambience'. Sounds a little like Schartzenegger's 'True Lies' to me.

Yes, they are talking about the render setting. And yes, True Ambience takes FOREVER. It does create good effects in some situations, but i think the general concensus is that for a scene like yours, Bandolin... You'd be better off taking a few radial lights, turning the intensity down to 2, maybe 3, and setting them to no cast shadows, and no falloff.

True ambience is a render setting, the ambient texture part I was talking about is the lozenge yeah. True ambience is a different method of calculating ambient light. What happens during a non-ta render is that an object wil get ambient light at a constant intensity all over it's surface, the result is a flat looking object. With TA the ambient light is calculated with lightrays actual lightrays rather then just a constant value. with TA, light casted on an ambient surface will bounce off again and this bounced light can then hit other surfaces where it effects the lighting of that surface too. The effect is much like the rather famous "radiosity" render techniques. The intensity of the bounced light depends on the intensity of the ambient channel in the texture of each object.

Despite my being one of the most stubborn supporters and promoters of True Ambience, I wouldn't recommend it for every type of image. Definitely for absolute photo-realism as the highest priority only, I would say. The advice given by Zhann and tjohn above is of the type that has served Bryce users well for many years before the advanced render options came along; and is a more fruitful avenue for a scene less demanding of 'every day' realism.

In post 4, look at the setting below shadows, make sure ambience is not black and change the sky dome color to a light sky blue and see how that affects your scene.

With reference to post 4 by alvinylaya: The Sun/Moon Shadows intensity setting won't make any difference to the illumination of the unlit side of objects (such as the problematic castle); only to the lightness or darkness of the shadows those objects cast onto other objects (such as the terrain). One of the keys to better realism with simple render techniques is achieving a similar balance of the brightness of unlit areas of objects (ambient material setting) and areas under shadow (Sun/Moon Shadows intensity). That's pretty much a case of doing it by eye, since materials will respond differently to the ambient setting.

I just add a ton of sphere lights and resize them to a large elongation along the walls and keep the intensity down. Also, I turn off shadows with the sphere lights. I use them just as fill in lights, nothing more.

PJF - I think there's a misunderstanding. I never suggested it as a solution to the problem, I was merely suggesting that lowering the Sun/Moon Shadows may help to balance the scene in addition to adding fill lights; Hence I used the words "IN ADDITION..." :-)

So basically, you have to set-up any scene as if it were a real photo shoot. I wonder why Bryce doesn't include a virtual light meter? Man, you guys sound like physicists instead of artists. I mean that as a compliment. If there were a forum like this for managing my money I'd be a millionaire.

alvinylaya, don't sweat it - I was merely trying to prevent a misunderstanding. bandolin was concerned about the dark side of his castle; and you said that you thought he had his Sun/Moon Shadows set too high. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that bandolin might have concluded a direct link. I simply sought to head that possibility off at the pass.

:-D