I've been following the tutorial on Daz to make an underwater dolphin and this is what I ended up with. however I've got the render settings quite high and it takes 4.6 Days to Render on a Single PC or 1.5 Days if I use 4 PC's with Bryce Lightning. Any advice comments would be appreciated.

Hi! Hmmm..., i think and know, with a 1800' Pc and "normal" render settings, this scene needs 10 minutes to render, with AA, ok, 20 minutes. Please try normal settings to build your first scenes. (in your interest) Best regards! Th.

Bubbles. Many, many bubbles.

Nice start, but why the high settings? Should be okay on normal settings, you can always tweak them later...

great image, some bubbles mightmake it livelier i agree.;)

yes some bubbles. Now depending on deep you want the water to look you could also add a terrain, texture it to look like the ocean bottom, add a few aquatic plants and some rocks. you could also add a few fish only if you wanted something to break the background up so it doesn't look plain and open.

Also the lighting is hitting your dolphin wrong, try to move it so the dolphin doesn't have the white patches on it and try to lower the setting on the dolphin to take the shine of it. dolphins don't have a shine on them unless they are out of the water :) Edited Text:: since i have been here and using bryce i have not used render settings higher than the regular settings for most images. If you are using a small computer for your bryce work you would be better of doing that or try a render setting in the Super with the RAY PER PIXEL set at 16 or below.

Message edited on: 03/08/2005 00:07

Analog-x, I really like this. The Continental shelf extends out for 200 miles and averages 40-60 feet in depth so an underwater sea bottom would not be out of the question. Even a muted one will add diversity to the image and a muted one will still accentuate the mammal. The lighting seems a little too harsh on the dolphin for an environment, which absorbs light. As a rule, the deeper into the ocean the darker the water since light waves are gradually absorbed out. The bottom of your image seems to emit lighter shades of light, which would only be possible if the light was being reflected off the bottom such as from a white sandy bottom beyond the edge of the image or the bottom of a pool. Scenes like this bring back memories, nice work.

Message edited on: 03/08/2005 16:08

I want to thank everyone for their positive comments and suggestions. I took them all and combined them into what you see.

This image was a Quick Render and it took 27 Minutes to render, the Terrain is the Sand & Rock from the standard terrain materials. The bubbles were made of Glass with the Blue Ripple Material added.

As well I gave our dolphin a few new friends.

I'll have to figure out how to fix the Ground Terrain reflecting of the water up top. As well adjust the light so the Terrain is not as washed out. And I just noticed a little booboo on the bottom right of the image.

Message edited on: 03/08/2005 21:29

Attached Link: Slow Ascent

The ocean floor reflecting up would actually be realistic, although I can understand you dilema, you make anything glass-like in Bryce, and it is automatically reflective, frustrating when you don't want it to be! Terrain - washed out; Take down the ambience, it shouldn't be any higher than 15, & in a scene like this, you may be able to get away with zero. After that, then start taking down the diffusion, bit by bit, while test rendering, until you get what you like. Bubbles - Since you most likely wouldn't see their shadows anywhere anyways, you could disable all their shadow properties. I do this with anything I can, speeds up rendering. Also, (imho), pretty much never use the setting; "Sky Lab>Atmosphere>Volumetric World". This feature unnecessarily increases render times by way too much. Just use haze/fog settings. (fyi) AgentSmith

Excellent Points AgentSmith thank you. I will try them out when I get home, I'm at work right now :( ahhhh... another 8 and a half hours till I get home.