I was just wondering how other people work? I have this idea, and after much fiddling, I've now taken almost all the mist terrains out again and got it down from 2 & 1/2 hours to around 9 mins... not counting the antialiasing. Still seems a long time though. And hopefully I will eventually have an image I can apply Erliks PhotoShop DOF method to. It just seems to be taking longer than I expected, everytime I look at a render I see glitches I don't want, so I have to tweak and try again. I was just wondering how long other people take - from having all the elements in an image to actually having it even APROACHING ready to show people? That's the question really, how long???

Anywhere from 10 minutes to 200 hours :)

Ten mins????? ten mins????? Kuh! Some people are just too clever by half. 200 hours is more like it.... (gg)

Some of my scenes I create, and then a year later I go back and actually RENDER them. Some of the scenes I have created won't be renderable until processors are two or three times faster. Sometimes my scenes go from developement to final render in a day. It all depends on what you're doing! My Hunting Cabin scene, although pretty simple to me now, took over a year to finish. I started it in Bryce 4 on a 64MB RAM machine, and finished it in 5.01 on a 1024MB RAM machine! It still took half an hour to save, but was only 340MB itself... Some scenes just can't be done yet. Try shining a volume-visible spotlight through a simple volumetric sphere. Ridiculous!

I think Rayraz is pretty close.

I've had few take mere minutes, and others take days.

I've also learned as many others here have, there is a line you draw in the sand for yourself where 3D is much too time consuming and postwork can handle the situation. Once you find the balance (personal pref), it allows for more challenging avenues. LOL, Yes I said "more challenging". I guess always raising the bar is a human condition, otherwise what fun would it be if we didn't torture ourselves with such fun projects.

Fran, you're a learning machine. Nice to see such enthusiasm.

ICM

Message edited on: 05/12/2005 05:28

I LOVE to see the rendering line, slowly, going down. I usually do hypercomplex scenes and then I stare at the monitor fo hours. I do not care about the result, the most important thing is the rendering line! vasq (Bryce addicted)

Fran, don't forget to take into account that I've been doing this for 7.5 years now ;)

One of my pieces, "Wyvernbane's Chambers" took almost six weeks from initial conception to posting it online. For contrast, "Run" took about three hours from start to finish. The biggest problem I still have is knowing when enough stuff in a scene is enough, though usually my computer decides that for me. ;)

Message edited on: 05/12/2005 06:47

My last image and my current one have each taken three weeks to be close to what I'm happy with... and I don't do much else in my days so that's three real time weeks ;) I always hope that what I've learned will mean that the next one will go quicker but I just seem to move onto something else complex to learn. Really detailed terrain editing and texturing, and fiddling with lighting are what are taking so long on this current one.

I blow out my "writers block" by creating abstract scenes in Bryce, only allowing myself 10 minutes or so to create them. Great excecise for me. And, I find most "viewers" like the scenes I create in a single night as opposed to the ones I spend 3 complex weeks on. Mostly, anyway. --------------------- On average...I probably average 3-5 days in creating a scene. --------------------- That would be the basic majority of them. I still have ones that I keep working on here and there and still haven't finished. Maybe I lost the original inspiration behind the piece, which is okay, I just store and keep all those, many times I borrow from those scenes to build others, or go back and finally finish them. For every 1 image in my gallery, I have 10 other scene files on my hard drive that are just "stored". AgentSmith

About 1-3 days. I usually have a ton of almost finished pictures I got bored of :)
I also am a save freak, I usually have 10 saves on one pic thou I seldom ever use any other than the last save.

What really makes the difference of how long it takes to make a pic is how much interferance I get from my girlfriend. Cuz when you are inspired and are on a run things get done, but getting interrupted slows the process down big time. Making food and washing dishes apperently are good things to do if one dosent want to sleep on the couch, but it dosent help with the bryce creations hehe...makes me think, sleeping on the couch isent that bad cuz that's where my computer is lol

Message edited on: 05/12/2005 07:23

I do alot of plop renders for placement and use my imagination in wireframe mode. The only time I render is over night, or before I go to work and then look at the render when I come home. Since most of the tweaking is minor, I use the ESC key to bring back my last render in order to estimate position. But I do very few renders, and they usually take 2-15 hours. Longest render was 49 hours. But I think there was something up with my machine on that one.

maybe 20 minutes-3 hours of modeling in Wings
5 minutes to place objects, set lighting and backgrounds
1 hour to find the @#$% $%^ @#&% mat that 'works' for each thing...;)
maybe another half hour if I'm throwing in Poser ( Bryce as a background, or importing posed figures from Poser) 3 minutes to 14 hours for render
1 minute for the thumbnail
post and enjoy
Longest I ever worked on a pic was 3 days (the Escher Klimmen und Dallern house, 1st go-around..;)
Shortest time was about 3 seconds (but that's a long time ago..;)

If everything is already thought out, it usually take everything from a day to a week. If not, the scene may end up in the trashcan. "For every 1 image in my gallery, I have 10 other scene files on my hard drive that are just "stored"." Oh, i hear you on that one! And nothing is been thrown away, because "some day im going to finish that scene". :)

LOL, if we took all the unfinshed scenes(from everyone) and put them on one coast...we could sink a continent.

Usually about a week that includes staying up each night well into the wee hours of the morning. If the creative flow is coming, I just go with it in order not to disrupt that which I may be lucky enough to experience.

But like others here, if you only knew how many are either stored or just instantly trashed, lol. Cripes. Those are the ones that make me nuts not to mention more then a tad bald from tearing my hair out. ;)

Message edited on: 05/12/2005 15:22

I try to limit my Bryce work to a few hours, though I allow myself to render overnight, since it works without me having to be at the computer. If I spend too much time on any one thing, then the amount I get paid to do the art becomes smaller and smaller when calculated by the hour, and I can't move on to the next piece right away. If there's anything I have to fix, then I do it in post. It's faster, easier, and better looking.

I find typically I range from 1 finished image a week to 3 on average. 2 so far this week, one for here and one for 'rotica. I find it best if I let an image sit for a day or two when I think its done and then go back and give it a good look over again. If I am still happy then it's time to up it. My rendertimes are between 1 to 5 hrs typical (in C4D), the longest was a day each for four layers to be composited in the final render (a la Flak).

I think my shortest start to finish image (including modelling, texturing, scene building) was about 3 weeks which means about 25-30 hours - that was my Ents pic. My image making times tend to be a bit longer as I often take breaks during making an image... 3 or 4 days of no bryce just to let things percolate through every so often (and to escape the monitor, play some sport...). I also tend to wander off and try something different at times during a long image making process (I often go and play around with some organic modelling projects of mine), so the main image project just sort of stops for a while, but when you're on personal projects, you can work at your own pace, so time isn't that much of an issue.

On average 200 hours for a single image over a 10-12 week period. Like Flak I also take brakes and do a lot of other things in between.

But your results are well worth it!