Hello, I am trying to make a Material in Bryce that is black velvet. Maybe some of the more experienced folks can give me some ideas-? I know velvet must be an extremely difficult material to simulate (since it looks so unusual in person even). Here's a test shot. At first I thought it looked like velvet, but then I thought, hey, this just looks like black and gray spots. :( Any suggestions?

Attached Link: http://www.brycetech.com/

if you look at your image you can quickly see the problematic areas...for instance..the shirt has no shadows. This is a function of "ambience" in the material lab...go in there and turn that silly thing off! also, if you still dont get some shadows..you can try to apply a very small amount of bump to the image. see this page: http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/brycealive2aptex2.html scroll down the the "green" part of the table in addition, there would be an option to create a more "shiny" effect to the material if you also use the bump channel as to drive the specularity of the material. luck BT

Well, I deliberately turned the shadows off for that image. I agree that "Ambient" is not real, but with only one light source it prevents pitch-black shadow areas, which also is not realistic in a sunlit scene. What to do... But as far as Velvet goes, I examined some actual black velvet. Strangest thing about it is that the "specular" highlights of it are in the areas that are 90 degrees to the light source, while areas facing the light source are the darkest! I think having a "specular" value DARKER than the "diffuse" value is something that Bryce was not meant to do. Without making it extremely complicated, it might be possible to "fake it" with a mask render and then reverse the values; but then again, that would reverse the shadow values too... Hmmmmmmm... I'll try that and get back to you...

I,m only a relative beginner to Bryce but when I,m really stuck getting a texture I find sometimes just taking a digital photo of the real subject and using it as a texture map usually works ok,may have to play about with the settings a bit but worth a try,nothing to lose eh:)

You could try this: Put your colour texture in the first channel, and set the ambience and diffuse colour to this channel. Set you Diffusion to 90, your ambience to 23.5. Put a bump texture in the second channel, set your bump channel to this, at about 2.50 or 1.50 bump hieght...Use a simple fractal noise, with the frequency turned right up inside the DTE, and in the Material Editor, about 4500 frequency in both rooms. Make the bump channel world space. Now, (and this should make the main difference,)set your specularity to about 36 or 37.2, make your specular colour grey, a very, very light grey, almost white. next make your specular halo colour slightly lighter than the previous.... Play with this bit a little until you get it just right. Use multiple light sources set at low levels to break up the colour continuity a little... email me back and let me Know how you went... Nice model by the way.