I'm particularly proud of the Clouds emerging from the mountains (lit by no less than 6 lights including a negative light). The sheep and swans were made in W3D. Thanks to AgentSmith for the hosting of, and Colin for the Seagul.

However, I need more stuff to flesh it out. I'd like to make a road that goes to the bridge and follows the terrain (BTW thanks chohole, for such an elegant rustic bridge). I've tried the swooping road tutorial, but it doesn't quite work for my scene. I'd also like to make a low stone fence (the kind you see in Ireland) that follows the road.

Do the trees on the mountains look convincing (despite the fact that the mountains look like crap, I'll be changing those later)? Also, the water wheel itself needs to look wet. How do you do that?

Thanks to Kathye for her help with the Willow Tree, I don't know what I would've done w/o her presets in the tree lab.

I also need more stuff around the river bank, rocks and reeds and stuff. And a flock of birds in the middle somewhere. Oh, and a kid fishing by the river (Poser figure). And a great big NVIATWAS in the foreground...

...(just kidding)

What do you think about the sunlight? Too bright, too dark. I'd like it to be around 4PM. You know, a lazy afternoon.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 08:34

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 08:37

I think the trees on the mountains might be a bit high, considering that they are supposed to be rather far away. Also I've got a feeling the willow might be a little on the small side? but that might just be me.

The fury tree in front, looks out of place, maybe change that to a cherry tree or something. The tree down by the mill is fricken awesome and me want it! The mountain, dont look too bad, perhaps the trees that are by the bank, change them a bit, shorten, then down...they wouldnt be so big... How about a stump, or an old log with some flowers growing out of it? And the river definately needs a few rocks placed in it, to break up the water, its very flat looking...needs to look like it is flowing downstream? could do that in postwork...?? Just some suggestions.

I had a feeling scaling might be an issue. I agree the mountain trees are a little tall. But keep in mind (and I know you didn't know this) that the Mill building is 2 stories high, the peak of the roof being 10m (~30ft) high. The willow that used to be in my back yard wasn't more than 10-12m and it was a 50 yr. old tree.

A stump with flowers sounds great. I guess I could do that in Wings. I hadn't thought of rocks in the river, great suggestion. I'd like to keep post work to a minimum though. As I feel its kinda cheating. Especially since I'm very good in Photoshop and not so in Bryce. The furry tree is supposed to be a cedar and its out of control. I don't know why Bryce is rendering it like that. I'll play around with it a bit more.

Thanks

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 09:10

Bandolin, my friend, there's nothing "cheating" about postwork! 3D art is about artwork. And there's no room for honor in making artwork, you either make what you wanted to or you don't. Besides, 99% of the 3D world already thinks you're cheating by using presets and other people's models. pre-made Treelab quicky trees. Height-mapped terrains are also cheating, from a modelers point of view! You should have done it with NURBS. And you should have modeled EVERY LAST TREE from SCRATCH using NOTEPAD, you cheater! So don't worry about the honor aspects of it, that's just ridiculous! So far, the scene is coming along great. I suggest tossing a few Treelab trees, with the same texture for their leaves as you're using on the mountain trees, right near the front of your spikey-tree terrains. Help add some detail to those areas... The tree in the foreground, left-most of the bunch, looks obnoxious. It's leaves are far too big, and the texture is a cartoon in comparison to the rest of the scene. To make the water wheel wet, increase it's specular halo and possibly turn on some reflections. YOu can use a few well-placed metaballs sharing your stream's water texture to make the wheel look like it's spraying some water, splashing in the air... Making roads isn't too difficult, how many terrains are you using here for the main grassland? If it's just one, although it doesn't appear that way, then piece of cake. You can do it in Photoshop. If it's more than one... Well, there's always a workaround. Keep us posted on your progress!

bandolin just my 2cents worth here. the trees on the mountain on the right should be thinned out a bit. try removing some of them to show a bit of the monutain texture.

For the road, I suggest copy/pasting the terrain into photoshop. Then create a selection in the shape of your road and feather it slightly. Noiw decrease the brightness level a little bit. Save it and go back to bryce. Duplicate the land terrain and load the photoshopped terrain as the height map in the terrain lab. Now go back to the main bryce window and move the non-roaded terrain slightly below the one with the road. This way, even though the terrain is below the other one with the bump, it will poke through where the road is. SO texture the lower terrain a muddy brown color and it might look like a road, might not. The other way you could do it would be: Add the ground terrain as a preset in your object library. Create a new scene with a square aspect ratio (1:1) and load the terrain preset. Now, disable sunlight and haze and make the material for the terrain 100% ambient and 0 diffuse (bright enough ambient so it looks about the same as it did before). Here's the tricky part. Rotate the camera so that it is completely facing the ground (exactly -90 degrees on the x-axis). In top view, position it so that it is directly centered over the terrain. Now in the camera attributes, change the field of view to 1 degree (as low as it will go). Now move the camera up on the y axis until the field of view can encompass the entire terrain object perfectly. This will take a lot of tweaking to get right, and you will have to move the camera left/right and the terrain even though it was aligned before. It needs to be as perfect as possible, i.e. the terrain edge lines up perfectly with the window. Setup your document as 512x512 and your render size as 2048x2048. Now plop Render. See if the material is too dark or too light and adjust. What this does is give you an isometric (perspective-free) texture map to edit. Paint a road onto this image in photoshop and apply it as a texture to the terrain in the other scene. It should line up perfectly if enough time was devoted to the above steps :)

Oh and for sunlight, you could try my zenith sunlight rig freebie. Just be sure to disable the original sun when you load it! :)

To me the trees in the background are a little big. The water in your creek looks odd. Have you tried any of the water presets, a few ripples, a little reflection. One way to do a road is to duplicate the terrain and then in the terrain editor drop the height of everything that is not the road. Then move the terrain a tiny bit up. Apply a suitable texture and you should get a raised road. The hard part is sorting out where the bridge is located in the terrain so that it lines up correctly.

I think Max has the best advice for roads... I think that also for fun and realism you should decrease the height of the terrain slightly where the road is. This makes the road look well traveled. As for the cheating thing... while the Storm Dragon's certainly right, it's also a really good thing to try and boost your Bryce skills first before starting to use postwork. That way your final scenes using both Photoshop and Bryce will look that much better for looking great in both raw and post (I think this is what you had in mind?). In other words I think that this is a laudable goal (which is laughable coming from me whose Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro skills are nothing short of amazingly sickening =P). One more thing, and it might just be a personal thing that only applies to me. Personally I notice that trees of a certain type tend to grow together because of the way that trees reproduce (unless of course they are planted by humans, but that's another story). So personally I would avoid having trees of different types growing right next to each other, as you do in the foreground. What I would do is to have forests of each type of tree spread out across the landscape (oh, come on, don't be a wuss! It's only thirty minutes to save and two days to render, what are you complaining about? lol)--looks a bit empty to me which was probably intentional--or else just make all three trees in the lower right the same sort. Just some thoughts and yes the mountains in the background need to be improved in my opinion as well.

LSD What I meant by cheating is not that I think Post-work is bad, its that I'm learning Bryce and I want to solve problems Bryce-wise before adding post-work. My photoshop skills are excellent, I've been using PS since it used to be called Digital Darkroom and was only a Greyscale editor. The great fun I'm having with Bryce is trying to solve problems IN Bryce. Once I learn the Brycean ropes I'll start enchancing my work post-wise. You're suggestion about usng real trees at the base of the mountain is excellent. I hadn't thought of that. The grassy terrain is but 1 hi-rez terrain. Madmax I'm familiar with the 1st technique you're mentioning. But for some reason I just can't seem to get it right. But I'll keep trying. You're second solution, if I'm understanding correctly, will not give me a raised road, but simply a texture over the grass. I've already tried you Zenith lighting and it looked awesome the way it cast long shadows. But it made it look like dawn or dusk. I think the problem with my water is that its overly anti-aliased. The render has smoothed out all the ripples. But you're right, the water needs more turbulence. But not too much turbulence because I want a slow moving lazy river. Thank you so much for your comments.

Just one thing: decrease the ambience on your mats. The shadows are way too washed out for such a strong summery sunlight. And change the colour of sunlight to a very slight yellow. VERY slight. You'll get a warmer light. BTW, rushes don't grow so far from the bank. :-) And the weeping willow should be bigger, cause they don't get so thick without gaining size.

You could try this... if you just want a lazy river, and since your POV is not close to the water (thus you don't have to mess with distortions and such). You can take a mirror, make it transparent (the amount of transparency depends upon your taste), and apply a bump map to it. The trouble with your river is that it's too unnaturally blue, water that shallow is just transparent, with maybe a hint of blue which you'll get from your reflection of the sky. But water itself of course is not naturally blue. If you want the water to be deeper, then you can just do the same thing, only use fog settings, or if you can't get those to work you can try a sphere/cube with the texture "Marley's Ghost" that comes with Bryce applied to it. But I have yet to see any river that is that color =) As for the willow, if you're saying that the building is large, and that's why the willow looks so small (12m is quite a ways from a 2m tall human's standpoint), you may want to consider taking some steps to make the building look taller. Such as adding more detail for instance, or putting something nearby whose scale we automatically recognize, like a poser figure or maybe one of your sheep (great job on those BTW). Also the size of the sheep nearby makes the building look smaller. Hope this is helpful to you and good luck!

Bandolin, if you feel like having one of us try it, the road I mean, just post or email me the image map for the terrain and I could give it a shot. Madmax would probably go for it as well! Just an idea...