Aye, here's a little fun spot I've been working on for some time... Modeled in Rhino of course, down to the millimeter! It's been quite tedious, I struggled to get this monstrosity into Bryce for days, weeks. Maya took it quite easily, but I find I'm not artistic enough in Maya when it comes to materials and whatnot, and haven't gotten into softbodies yet for water... So, I finally got this model into Bryce! Here's a nearly-finished-rendering GI version, after I Familied/Textured the model, and started on the environment....

Here's the initial wireframe from Rhino. I plan on using bead-curtains for the window areas. I dont' think I'll actually put in glass, although it'd be easy that's not really the kind of house I was going for. Really, I wanted to make a hut, but before I knew it this model took off in complexity...

And a nearly finished wiresolid model in Rhino... At this point I decided the stairs needed to go the other way, since my shot would be from nearly this angle...

Here's another shot from Rhino, all 4 panes.

I had a rally hard time with this model and with my fortress. Importing them to Bryce didn't work very straightforward. I believe it has to do with naming of the objects in Rhino. Things were re-scaled. The stairs were as big as the rest of the house. Nothing fit together. I had to create "null" cubes for scale, and export the model in pieces. Then, using parenting and Copy/Paste Matrix, I was able to put it all back together. I can't say I'm happy with Bryce's OBJ importer, but after a week of importing this one I finally got it together... Then a night for the GI test above, and last night I started really digging into the environment. I'd say it's about a third of the way done. The water needs lots of work, I'll use terrains for that. And more plants, and a small garden, and LOADS of flowers, and of course my favorite couple has to be inserted... But I'd love some ideas, critiques, and any other nonsense anyone would like to send my way! Insults? Derision? Tell me what you think?!?

I think it's gorgeous... whish I could reach your level some day...

Great job LSD. You're my Hero! ;)

Aye, the final render will be a GI render with the standard lightdome, or maybe I'll use Madmax's Zenith technique. The image in #5 rendered in 1hour21minutes, whereas the render in #1 was closer to 15 hours. I don't care about speed on this one, though. The final render can take as long as it wants! Now back to putting in more plants...

You must have the patience of a saint. Phew!

Ouch! Truly great work in progress here. Needless to say, your tenacity with importing is a role model for most of us.

848 objects, 346,793 polys. It's not really that complex of a model. It's mostly the splits that generated the high-poly count. About a quarter of what my fortress was before I optimized it, so if I were to optimize this one at all (you know, turn down the poly count in Rhino and re-export it) I could probably get it below 100K polys. I probably won't bother until I run out of RAM for the rest of the scene, though. Re-optimizing is much easier. You simple select the "parts" you want to re-do (in Bryce), and Group them, and then push "Copy Matrix". Then, you import the identical, low-poly parts from Rhino and click "Paste Matrix". Boom, they are perfectly placed! (hopefully)

Well done! I like the planters ;-)

LSD - Are you running on 5 or 5.5? In B5, it would import everything so the longest dimension was 20.48 (or whatever) units, this appears to have been fixed in 5.5

Hey, I can actually see this one, the sides are all visible at once! ggg I guess you will be using some of the famous mists/fogs? I do feel that the water in the foreground is a little... odd. The ripples look out of proportion to the size of the building. Especially with that plant nearby, and the grass, boat etc. Everything else looks fine, I like the rocks poking through the earth - is that a different terrain to the earth? Are all the rocks one terrain or are they two or three separate ones? What did you use for the earth? Is it one of your own textures?

Mahray, I am boycotting Bryce upgrades until version 9. One night on acid I time-warped, and Bryce 9 is gonna kick so much ass, that they actually re-named it Bryce 4D, since it will be the first time they've made any real changes since Bryce 3! And I have no way of testing it, but I doubt they fixed the .obj issues. It's not actually an OBJ issue, per se, but an issue with how Bryce names objects on import. If you have too many objects of the same name, it doesn't know how to deal with them. So it just re-groups them without Brycean-grouping them, and sets the false groups to 20.48 separately. I have no problem importing small models with only a few dozen parts or so directly... Also, the problem occurs on .dxf and .3ds files as well. Same issue, it's Bryce's internal re-naming at fault. If they fixed it in 5.5, cool, but now that I've done the massive, multi-hour process a few times (fortress and this house) I've got it down to numerically perfect accuracy... Almost! Fran, these images are the same sizes I always post. One of your recent resolution changes must have stuck! About mist : no, Fran, I make my own nowadays. Even the venerable VanLippe materials are clown shoes compared to home-made recipes; most of my mats are multi-channeled. I used them years ago, when learning the DTE, but have found other ways to deal with mist and fog, such as light-based fogs and clouds. This image calls for no fog, though, so it's not an issue really... Aye, the water is pretty much a placeholder. I won't be using any planes or slabs for this scene, when it's done. They just never look natural enough for me, anymore. All of my textures are my own, in almost all of my recent images. That said, the texture for my Millenium Dragon portrait is stock, though... But all the textures you see in this image are blends of procedurals and image-based textures, some from my own camera, some from Mayang's, but all of them multi-channeled. What I mean is that a simple image texture will always look like crap, so you couple it with some procedurals to help randomize things and add complexity, and of course to kill the graininess... There are six terrains here. All of them have one three-channel texture, slope-based, except the distant beach has a bit more yellow in one band, and the behind-the-house terrain has some greens in place of the grey, rocky bands. Oh yeah, the garden terrain has a totally different texture, one I simply call "The One Dirt". I'm about to make some texture packs for sale here and online abroad, but wouldn't mind sharing them freely with anyone interested before I finalize the sets (Earth, Air, Wind, Fire, and Spirit). Of course, Fran, I'll email you the main texture here so you can tear it apart from the inside, if you'd like. Honestly, I can't justify selling anything to my fellow Forum-ers, since it's you guys who taught me how to do them in the first place! But I have no problem feeding off the teeming masses of garbage Brycerenderers that will never read this thread. Think of this thread itself as a coupon, or just laugh aloud at me in my pitiful arrogance! A quick update render : 2:35:36 rendertime, 9xAA, using BryceSun and not the light dome. I don't like the tree or grass clump just to the right of the house much, and the distant beach still needs some more work. I hope to launch into some water-work tonight, after a bit more grass, and the sky needs to be reworked once I meet with my Lady Love, to get her input on the color scheme... Any ideas or dislikes would be very welcome, I need to be challenged! What would you like to see in this scene, to make it feel more natural and homelike? What kinds of animals belong here? And thanks for all the input thus far, everyone!

So what will you use for sea? terrains? (still jumping up & down with excitement as the thought of Earth, Air, Wind, Fire, and Spirit) There seems to be one dark shadow under the house, just behind the row of stakes plants - can't work out what that is. I do feel that the shadow under the house needs to be darker. Probably as dark as that odd shadow actually - but that may be just me. Animals... hmmm... is this the right latitude for dolphins in the sea, they can get pretty much anywhere can't they? Maybe a skunk??? Dunno if they go with palms, Cappuchin monkeys maybe.

Aye, for lighting issues, please refer to the image in post #1... A bit bright, but you get the idea. Methinks that dark "shadow" is texture-based, as all the light in the scene is uniform. So, it's a dip in the terrain where the rock texture (slope-based) is emerging, as opposed to the sandy texture... Aye, I'll probably run an Object-mask of the terrains from overhead, Fran. Then I'll pull that render into Rhino, and create a heightfield mesh from it, similar to Bryce's Terrain Editor, but with actual points you can push and pull in any direction (not just up and down). Then, I'll run a counter curve (projection) along the leading edge and model the waves physically. Meaning, they will actually be waves, not just a flat texture that looks like waves, and since it's not just an up-and-down heightmap you can actually have CURLS in them! But the scene is at a junction between a river and the ocean, an estuary? A delta? The "Mouth"? So the near-water needs to be flowing out, and the far water needs to imply that it's coming from the river, and being disrupted by it's current... Kinda hard to do from this angle. We'll see how it goes! Monkeys would ROCK! Thanks for the idea...

I'd like to see parrots as well. Maybe a little fat black piggy under the house? Along with a few chickens maybe..

Curls!!!?

Chickens are a great idea!

LSD...this is such a beautiful and serene scene you did up here. Bravo!! :)

This is lovely! The only thing I would change on the house would be to make the windows much bigger to let those tropical breezes cool the whole place!

Thanks for the idea, Tresamie! Actually, it wouldn't be difficult to resize the windows...

Another quick update... closer angle, just for fun...

This looks great so far LSD! I'm looking forward to your terrain experiments in Rhino, particularly the ocean surf. I've been goofing around with a similar approach in Wings. Macmondo has been doing cool things with terrains imported into Wings for quite some time.

A very nice design, but where in the world do all these polygones come from? With box modelling you should be able to keep this under 5k or something.

danamo, "Macmondo has been doing cool things with terrains imported into Wings for quite some time." Really? You wouldn't have a link to anything on this would you? Fran