Just a slight twist, for a very special almost 5 year old (or is it for her Mum?). So it reads.."Hey Pooh, can you imagine the scene, what the village would have looked like at christmas in times past. The family from the big house going to the village for the carol singing, with the staff seeing them off. No fairy lights or any of the other modern trimmings we expect. Still they enjoyed themselves" However I am still not happy with it. I have to do some post work, to soften edges of snow etc, and sort some roofs out. Plus I need smoke from the chimleys. But what else?

Lovely and very clever! Let's hope the river doesn't freeze up so thay can play 'poo-sticks' !

It has a lot of potential. Looks pretty good so far. Just a couple of minor suggestions though. It looks as though your light source is coming from the moon, and maybe some of the house lights. I would think some shadows on this side of your people on the ground would help weight them down a bit. Also just a tad bit of soft ambient light around the window trimmings where the light is shining through would help tie things together. You could probably do that in post. Maybe add some snow piles to the boughs of the pine trees, that of course is up to you. It isn't neccesary just a suggestion. Like I said all this is just observations, I hope it helps. Edited for typos ;-)

Message edited on: 12/11/2004 12:50

The swhadows are missing...

the light is a bit too bright, but then again that might be a very bright moon. i think the problem lies defenitely in the factor that there are no shadows to speak of.. Besides that minor point, it's a magical picture, appreciated very much! (by the mum anyway, DD is already in bed :) )

Message edited on: 12/11/2004 13:13

I think half my problem here is that I am using the sun as the moon, the stars are on a pic object, as is the moon face. Plus I have a high level of ambiance on the snow, without that the snow is very grey.....I always have problems with snow, probably because we don't get a lot round here :-). I know it will take quite a bit of postwork to really sort it out, but I wanted a bit of feedback before I fired up photoshop. Thanks for the imput so far.

Here's some tips I have found helpful when I am doing snow in Bryce. I know exactly what you mean by lowering the ambience and getting that gray look... If you are using a photo texture use the photo for your bump settings then change your diffusion to procedural/white. Then you can lower your ambience somewhat. Sometimes also to diffuse the sun I create a sphere, and engulf the entire scene withinn the sphere. Then you can turn off most of the atmosphere settings in Bryce, use light objects, and map a sky photo texture to the sphere. Sometimes setting the mapping to sphere makes nice effects. It also gets rid of that uniform sun lighting problem that seems to bright when making snow scenes. Also try rotating the sphere, and turning on and off transparency to get different effects. These are all ideas you can try, for future projects. Maybe you will get some use out of these suggestions.

I'd say the the issue lay just around what everyone has been sayin...shadows and snow ambience. Just a touhgt but...you might try using the false dawn sky and placing the moon at the right spot in your scene. Then add a radial light above scene middle. By raing and lowering the light you alter it's effects. Snow at night does looke blueish grey even under a full moon sometimes....at least it does here in Colorado.

Maybe someone can be carrying a lantern to soften the scene and light the main figures.

Tresamie: The man in the tophat already has a lantern.