still pretty good, i would however suggest two things: 1. use more radial lights than material ambience controls for ambient light. 2. put a lower deck underneath the deckboards so you don't see the grass underneath them. solid beginning drac

Looking good, my 2p worth:_ If you lower the ambient on the grass material, it should show up as deeper shadows under the decking anyway.... consider using a small terrain with a dirt material under the deck rather then more deck boards as no plants would grow there, also add some struts uder the deck so that it's not floating without support.

The deck looks wierd when you're able to see the grass beneath it. Also, lower to haze a tad bit. Even things close to the camera are appearing washed out and faded. I like where it is going.

I know the deck isn't right and I'd prefer a rougher material too. The porch is a free thing I downloaded from somewhere - I can't make stuff like that yet, and I get completely lost when I try to make changes unless it's more simple objects.. I'll try and change the ambience on the grass. I still don't understand why it looks sunlit underneath the deck though. The table and chairs are the only objects I made myself (from preset shapes), and that's about how far my skills go by now... Thanks a lot for your patience and help :-)

just make a flat cube and place it underneath. as for the grass, it has its ambience settings up :)

I tried the flat cube 3 or 4 times earlier today and again just now. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it's either on top of the deck or invisible/under ground... no matter what I do :(

Ek-art, the reason that the grass looks bright under the deck is your ambience settings. Go to the material for your grass planeor terrain, and make sure that in the TOP part, the ambience button is set to the material you are using. In the MIDDLE part, the second ambience slider, make sure the dot is NOT on a texture at all, but set for numerical value. The only reason you would put a dot in a material channel on the second ambience slider is if you wanted that material to control the ambience. That is, if you had a white-and-black image, when it renders, the white-mapped areas would be bright, and the black-mapped areas would be dark. The trick to matchin up ambience in a scene is making sure that all of your non-light-emitting stuff (in this scene, nothing should be glowing, for example) has the same value. Default is 19.6 or something, make them all zero and then bring up the ones that are too dark! Once you balance all of this out, your scene will be wonderful! Good work so far.

LSD, as far as I can see my ambience settings are correct - in the top part, the first blue dot is lit. In the middle part, I've put it to zero - it's better now, but the grass still shows.. now there's something wrong with the deckboards as if they're sort of melting together... I rendered with the under-floor-flat-cube - the deckboards will go back to normal in next render whithout the flat cube. I turned the haze up to about 50 too, but there are still sharp edges everywhere?

Aye, look how thin the deckboards are. They would snap if you walked on them. This isn't your fault, but it's definitely not adding to the realism. And please don't take my criticism as insulting, we're just getting you up to speed with this program! Frustration will happen, expect it. 3D graphics are ALL about making workarounds, in real life you'd just go take a photo! Is this deck-floor transparency-mapped onto a square? If that's the case, then I suggest moving away from that, and just lining up a bunch of cubes with real dimensions, such as 1.5x3.5 for a 2x4, etc...

LSD, I don't think you're insulting at all!! You're being very helpful and I greatly appreciate it! I was just checking out how the ambience settings are.. What you sid about ambience a copuple of days ago did miracles to the chairs and cushion (I'm quite embarrassed to say I didn't really know what ambience is till then - I'm Danish, forgive me ;)

I find the material on the couches unreal ure going for leopard i guess?? better make them leathery with a bit of shine. the trees are gorgious as arethe mountains in the back.

The trees and vegetation are presets and downloads :) You're right about the material, but it was the best I could find in the presets (chairs don't really go with iceberg og glass material, hmmm..) I'm new to Bryce and still haven't learned to make my own - that day will come, I hope :-)