..for them to defeat all of earths combined armed forces... this is part of a DVD animation I'm making which uses a Carrara/Bryce composites at the beginning. This one is all carrara 8 particle generators (surface) and a default atmosphere its rendering now and as the interesting images render, I'll post them. Lots of kewl ones coming... It'll probably take about 3 days for this 30 seconds of vid to render..and then on to the next clip. :) BT

Looks very cool. Looking forward to seeing more! Am I understanding you that the debris in the foreground is created with particle generators? - Dex

yep its all generators... :)

A great idea and the render looks cool! -Kix

just in case you want to post-mortemly (post-work'ly?) add a halo around that perfectly round Sun, with animated streams and a halo, even tracking the motion of the sun through a few keyframes as the camera moves, here's something I did: www.thebest3d.com/carrara/spaceship > look towards the bottom, where the Sunwent from similar to yours to glary and animated streaks. Sometimes one forgets about the visual fx you wanted and a few hours or days of rendering later you wonder how you could make it more what you had in mind.

thanx all hiya phil..long time no chat :) I was just talking about you today when I saw the dogwaffle promo in 3dworld. and yes, in the final version there will be a lens flare (from after effects) where the sun is. It makes it look much nicer. heres a frame from about 4 seconds in... more coming :) BT

I like the debris and rubble. Care to share your technique? I can't wait to see more. Great work!

man you gotta try that in Dogwaffle ;-) I mean, it's been developed by a Hollywood special fx artist for exactly that need he has himself. You can create a variety of fx brushes with animated strokes and halos and rings. There's also a simple and a more sophisticated lens flare engine. But hey, you've got A.E. so you're all set LOL

phil want to grab that image and edit in dw to show us what it can do? I have dw (the one I got from you) but Ive never learned how to use it. :) as for the technique, maybe I can sit down this evening and type it up. Its not really hard, but it takes a little time because ya gotta prepare models in advance. BT

Attached Link: www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/bryce

already on it. but I have to wait until tomorrow. Got my daughter's soccer banquet tonight. check rochr's Bryce transformation in the meantime: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/bryce there is a simple lens flare and a Aura/GHalo tool in the Linear tool (defaults to straight lines)- also does linear alpha fader and other variants, lightning, etc... you prolly have a really old version look around in www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/art and www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts to see what's possible with the newer versions 2.1, 3.2, 3.5... Anyway, I'll experiment with your image.

How come you guys aren't using the lens flare dealy in Carrara straight up? -Kix

...so I can do image correction (and compositing) without affecting the lens flare... :) but a fair question indeed. BT

those are great too, yes. not sure why he doesn't. I've seen some artefacts that opne might not want at times in a render (that was with CS3, maybe C5 has it fixed). Light cones from spot lights tend to disable anti-aliasing in CS3 for example (that's different from lens flares I know). Anyway, there are tons of types of lens flares. And sometimes it's nicer to have a non-flared 'nude' (aka bare) rendering and try various add-ons / post fx without having to re-render it all over. post work can be much faster. But I'm speaking for myself. Not sure what BT's plans are in this instance. There are some Nova effects in here too: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/tuts/backgrounds Thing is if you find a lens flare is too intense, 3 hours after doing the 3D rendering, do you want to re-render it? A small preview window can not show everything there is to see in the final render. Dogwaffle for example has a tool called 'Fade last action' in the top of the Filter menu, or as a middle-click-drag on the undo button. It let's you reduce the intensity of the most recent tool's action, a bit like an interactive undo that lets you fade from between 100% down to 0% seamlessly until you get it exactly right.

Now I understand! -Kix