Hi All, I've seen some really great atmosphere effects here in Bryce 5 by some of you, so I am asking (begging?) for some tips here. The image I have made is part of a challenge from a friend of mine. She wanted to see if I could do an architectural image in Bryce 5 of a Cloister. My image doesn't look very photorealistic in spite of my attempts at lighting. I used the tricks from my tutorial "Bryce Lighting FX" which have worked in indoor scenes, but I am not that good with outdoor scenes. I thought I might get around the issue by generating some atmosphere. I was going for a night scene during a really foggy misty rainstorm. I used haze in the Sky Lab because fog just didn't look right. But the haze tends to make the image look washed out. I made the stone floor reflective (I couldn't get specularity to make it look like the floor was wet and the reflection makes it look too glassy) to imply that it was soaked by the mist. I took the rendered image into Photoshop and made raindrops on a new layer and faded the layer way back so it was just a suggestion of rain. What would any of you do to achieve the effect I am going for? I think I am close, but it does look a bit like a cartoon to me. I KNOW Bryce 5 can do what I want. If I could figure a way to do it! I've have seen some spectacular images by you all in Bryce 5 that have great atmospheric effects. I am sure this is a complete study in itself! Thanks for your suggestions and help! Best to all!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=371364&Start=37&Artist=Rochr&ByArtist=Yes

The scene itself looks good. My suggestion would be some sort of noise on the white marble, it seems a bit crisp. Check out this scene of Rochrs. You may not want as heavy a bump map, yet some noise will look less cartoonish. ICM

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=1933940

Couple of things that strike me instantly... The texture on the wall is unconvincing - it's way too busy and the bump is too visible IMO as for the stone floor, wonder if it would be worth trying something like duplicating it, flattening it a lot, then raising it a tiny bit on the Y axis and putting a water mat on it? I've seen very good tutorials, I think Hytheshade(sp?) had one. Attached link is a thread about rain

Message edited on: 12/09/2004 03:44

Hi All, Thanks for the tips. The scene by Rochrs is fantastic, although a bit too grainy for me, but the lighting is incredible and the image is just so impressive, gives me goosebumps! I use the standard Bryce materials in the scene with some modification. The walls are a bit heavy on the bump side, I rendered them with Antialiasing turned off because they looked too muddy when it was turned on. The columns and white arches are actually the beach sand texture with the color changed. I could boost the bump on those a bit. Ummm, the floor on my scene is made with a picture map. What I did was make a square of the floor using rounded cubes in Bryce 5. I knew having so many in the scene would overload it, (there are already quite a few objects in the scene and I am always afraid of the dreaded "Bryce is out of memory" error. So I opened a new scene in Bryce, laid out the rounded cubes to make a square pattern-- like a tile-- and took a picture from the top view. Then I brought it into the cloister scene as a 2-D plane-- several of them. Since the image was square, it had to be tiled. I couldn't get the image to tile on a long rectangle. Bryce just stretched it out to fit the dimensions of the rectangle. I thought I could make it tile-- I've seen it done I think. But the 2-D planes worked to get the pattern. Anyway, is there a way to take a picture and use it as a bump map? I tried with this one, but nothing happened. I wonder if I used volumetric lighting and rendering if that would help the image look better? I avoid the volumetric world because it takes so long to render. Do you think it would improve things much? I've never been really clear when it is useful except when trying to show light rays. I have to admit, I have no patience with rendering (I want to see my picture!) so I do tend to shortcut wherver possible. Thanks!

What you could do for the floor is to use your picture of the flagstones and import it into the terrain editor via the pictures loader. This will give you a 3D version of your floor. Clip it slightly at the top if necessary, then flatten it out as required once you have created it. You can then tile the terrains to give you a floor, and position a water plane so that it is just below the terrain surface, and shows in the cracks between the flagstones. This will give the floor a 'puddley' look - not quite as nice as an all-over damp sheen, but very realistic, and a useful technique to know. This pic was done in about 2 minutes using a photo of some cobblestones.

PS: there are only 3 terrains used in the above image. If you want to use this technique but memory is a problem, try saving space elsewhere, for instance render your tree (or the whole background part of your image) separately and merge them in photoshop. Re the atmospherics, volumetric world isn't likely to help as it will just lighten your picture. I'd be inclined to up the haze a bit and then play around with the sky settings (sky dome colour, sun colour, etc) until you get the effect you want.

**This pic was done in about 2 minutes using a photo of some cobblestones. ** lol - but was it done with three clicks? ;^)