as i'm making a scene with rather a lot of glass in it, i've realised Bryce doesn't actualy focus, break, or refract light, like it should - E.G. Light shone through a magnifying glass shape doesn't focus, light shone through a prism doesn't break - is there a renderrer out there that will load Bryce scenes and render them with 'true' light ? i'd be verry, verry happy to know. Thanks in advance. Angelus_ChaoS

What you describe is Caustics. Bryce is Stochastic without Photon Mapping, and therefore...
no Caustics :-(

...but master Drawbridge has a great way to fake it; http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1855756

do i sense some sarcasm here?

Huh? You must be crazy - I really like that scene :-/

heh, that -is- a cool scene ^_^ Although i'm not looking to 'fake' it, because i'm lazy that way - i'm looking for a renderrer that -will- work with Caustics.
Besides the new Maya. that thing costs SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS !
... Now if it'd have [cencored] with me, cook my dinners, and cleaned my house, i might consider buying it, but the girlfriend might feel threatened. She feels i'm spending too much time at the computer as is...

Message edited on: 04/20/2005 14:48

Attached Link: Simulating prismatic caustics in LightWave

I don't know Bryce's capabilities well enough (yet) to judge whether a LightWave trick could be adapted to get a similar effect in Bryce. In case it's useful to any Brycers out there I'm enclosing a link to the LightWave tutorial. HTH! Mark

Oh well in that case - go for Cinema4D+AdvancedRender module. As I've said elsewhere in this forum, so far I've found nothing I can't do with it's renderer. Caustics is just the tip of the iceberg in that one! Really, try the demo and forget Maya, you really don't need to spend that sort of money to get a first class renderer. A lot of people are fooled into thinking that the various renderers are more superior to others than they actually are. Full marks gotta go to the marketers, because in most cases, the major differences between them is the way they give control "over" the renderer, and not what the renderer is "actually" capable of. Trust me on this ;-) So keep the girlfriend, and let C4D do the rest 8-)

Well, that might work... Thanks for all the replies, people !

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=647441

Don't discount faking it. Sometimes it's fun seeing what you can fake in Bryce without postwork. A prism effect without postwork (except signature).

@tjohn That looks stylish, would look great as a large poster :-)

Don't forget yafray. It soes caustics. I'm still trying to figure it out, though. Oh and ot: Dell botched my harddrive but I should get a new one in the next couple days. I also took this opportunity to upgrade my laptop to 1gb of ram. It should be fun once I get a fully functioning harddrive.

Aye, I disagree with Pumeco only on the topic of Maya... And also only because I actually use the program, and it's apparent he hasn't had that opportunity yet. I'm not going to tell you to go shell out for Maya, although I did and couldn't be happier. If you want to go professional, Cinema 4D is not yet an option in the real world. Although it's getting there really fast! But alas, Cinema 4D is still a Ray-Tracer, as far as I know. Nothing short of Photon-mapping or the new Maxwell rendering engine will give you truly realistic light-through transparency. Even the ridiculously powerful realtime engine Unreal uses fakes for this kind of stuff. Mostly, this is because the "rays" in "ray-tracing" are not light rays at all, but data-rays. They convey particular, 24-bit color information about specific pixels, and do not behave like Photons in any way. So what you're looking at if you want real, accurate caustics is something that will use one of the high-end renderers, such as Renderman or mental ray. These programs are VERY complex and ultimately versatile and powerful, and can take years of study to learn. So if you're just looking for caustics alone, then learn to fake it, or try out something like Cinema 4D or even 3DStudio, or Ligthwave which has dropped in price again recently... OR, just learn to fake it! Oftentimes, the results cannot be distinguished in a simple, still-frame render. Especially if you spend some time with it! The main difference is that you won't be able to animate such things fludily in Bryce, and of course render times. Bryce will take eons to render such a scene, compared to just a few seconds or minutes in mental ray... And since you already have a scene set up in Bryce, why not learn to fake it in the meantime? You can always use the experience in other, unseen ways... It's not about what our programs can do, but what WE can do WITH them! (nobody ever thought that Bryce would even have keyframing, back in version 1!)

Attached Link: http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/modules/advanced_render/advanced_render_e.html

Little correction LSD, Cinema 4D has a regular ScanLine renderer built-in, but Advanced rendering module (about $400) is just that, does everything big brothers can (not as efficient as MentalRay and not absolutely the same features) but hey, it's there...:D

Aye, but once again, I'm not certain that Cinema 4D uses photon-mapping at all? I could be wrong, and correct me if so. Nowhere have I seen any reference to this technology in regards to Cinema4D... But I have read about many different methods to achieve caustics and also GI and radiosity. Does Cinema 4D use photon-mapping? Someone must know!

Attached Link: http://www.maxoncomputer.com/tutorial_detail.asp?tutorialID=192&site=

Here we go :D

Aye, you're right! It does use photons... Just had to dig for a bit from your first link. Looks pretty amazing, too! I figure Cinema 4D will be catching up quickly in terms of widespread use... And the C4D gallery here is growing quickly too.

Bitches are not dropping prices, lol, it costs $1200 for Cinema4D r9 bundle (base+advanced renderer), bit too much for me, i can only dream about it, so far, I'm hoping that Vue Infinite is gonna give me more serious lightning, I'm still thinking about buying it, I can afford $600 much better then $1200, unless I'm gonna starve myself to death, lol ! :D

Message edited on: 04/22/2005 00:49

Carrara does caustics and photon mapping.. but will not break white light down into a prism, AFAIK... and the price is much more reasonable....

Message edited on: 04/22/2005 03:28