I needed to get a backgorund plate done for a motion capture thing for one of my classes, so I decided to double up and start a bryce project with it. Everything in the scene is a terrain or a lattice save for one cube for the light behind the door, everything is based off of free textures from mayang.com I discovered a really cool way to make materials look really real without any hit to render times. Even on premium settings and all the terrains this image only took a half hour to render! I'll let you guys in on it as updates progress (I have to fill it with all sorts of "basmenty" object now) but I have to finish this project so cheers and thanks for your feedback!

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<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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and it shall be called..."the cave of wonders" I like it. It helps me to have a title early on, sort of sets the stage for the final image, gets the mind going and such :)

I look forward to more information. This really rocks. Very nice indeed.

intruiging, nice work.

almost real! this image is a great image itself

beautiful.. u don't even need to add anything.. it speaks for itself.. btw..what did u discover to "I discovered a really cool way to make materials look really real without any hit to render times. Even on premium settings and all the terrains this image only took a half hour to render! "?

Way cool! I can't wait to see more.

details, man, details!! :) drac (cool render, want babies, etc)

Ok here's a materials tutorial. Find a texture you like, open it in photoshop or similar, and resize the canvas to either 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 dependeing on desired detail. Paint an alpha map for it in a new layer, then paste the map over the alpha and set it to "multiply" at about 20%. (Sorry, don't have time to explain terrain painting right now, do a google search there's lots of info). Then save that alpha map as a tif. Now you can toss the alpha layer, and save the color texture on the sized canvas (it's important you paint the alpha using the texture as a direct reference, becvause otherwise they won;t line up in bryce). Save to color texture as a tif as well. In bryce, make a terrain or lattice, and hit "E" to edit. Set the terrain to the resolution you chose for your texture. (1024 or 2048) In the pictures tab, load the terrain alpha map you created, and paste it to the second box then hit "apply." Clip if you need to then go back to the main window and make it very small on the Y-axis (between 1 and 3 for most objects like walls and floors, 3-6 for thicker objects like beams and such). Plop render to check the thickness, we are going for understated realism, not garbled crazy undulating realism. With the object selected, enter the material lab, and from there the images tell you what to do. Oh and make sure all your lights are set to "squared" falloff as it's much more realistic than linear. You'll need to make them quite a bit brighter to begin with. CHeers!

With the above settings on default render mode the render time was about 5 to six minutes. Then I changed the soft shadow value of the lights in the light lab, turned on premium settings, and that was 30 minutes. Still not bad at all for the effect.

Sweet.

Bookmark

Very nice.

Thanks for sharing Max!

That looks fantastic...i'm really impressed, thanks for the tips!

great! thanks a zillion!

Creepy start!