Attached Link: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3224705&postcount=195

Now there is an intresting idea. Multi-layer render where already used before, and i do recall that quite recently a Bryce user did something similair. Let's have a go it ^___^

I imagine several of our more advanced PS(and PSP) users, such as ICM, Quest, etc. already use this technique to some extent, but this is an eye-opening reminder of what can be done with this. Thanks.

cool presentation did something like this for a banner I did for Drac, using Rochr's cargo vessel

I saw the Weta Digital extra on the extended version of Return of the King yesterday. Man, talk about compositing. That scene with the mumakil towards the end, it had tons of layers. Background, figures, lights, live actors, dust, smoke... Wheee! Just as a point of interest, Shelob had about 200 textures on her. BTW, that simple pine picture in my gallery has five layers. :-) Pity that the technique doesn't work completely in Bryce. We ain't got specular render as such.

Not a specular render as such, however if you do a render with the proper lighting and a glass material & a black BG, you can mask layer that with a luminosity, screen, or sometimes overlay layer effect. Lots of trial & error. Also multiples of the same render with different effects can change things drastically.

I've been using multi-pass rendering in Bryce for the last 4+ years. I don't do it with every scene but with more complex ones I do. I'll composite my various Bryce render passes in Photoshop (color, diffuse, specularity, reflection, shadows, volumetrics, object masks, and distance), and then create additional Photoshop layers to composite in (glow, glare, flares, more volumetrics, and dof) It truly helps in tweaking out your scene to your own detailed liking, after the rendering is done, and obviously since it is all done in layers, the effects are immediate. You cannot create in Bryce all the types of "passes" that exsist (in other programs), but you can do quite a bit of them. I have basically created materials to apply to the various objects in a scene to facilitate the creation of these passes, which all of it takes longer to do than programs that can do it automatically, yet...in the end I have SO much control in the tweaking of my picture in Photoshop, its worth it for scenes that could benefit from such post-manipulation. AgentSmith

Well, the most important thing about layers is first to create a duplicate layer of the original render. So you never lose the original. :-) And I use quite a lot of layer transparency when I do compositing. 5%, 25%, 75%... Whatever looks good at the moment.

Very interesting, but with Bryce's prohibitive render times how practical is this technique when rendering for print?

about half of my images have some compositing in them, (done in PhotoPaint), layered blends - absolutely, although not as often.

Thats one of the main reasons I use multi-pass renders in Bryce, for print. I need to be able to manipulate elements of the scene as completely as possible after rendering. Re-rendering at those sizes...that is what is prohibitive, lol. Most of the rendering passes are extremely quick compared to the color/beauty pass, so no, they aren't prohibitive in rendering time at all. AS

"at all". Well....let me append to that; if one of your passes is reflective or especially a volumetric pass, then yes, the render times will long(er) as usual, but if you would have done a one-shot render with those elements in there anyway, it's not going to really add to the TOTAL time spent rendering. The obvious advatage is being able to manipulate those seperate passes later. If a client says, "I LOVE it...can we not have as much smoke? Then its the difference between replying with "Uh...I need another 3 days to render.", OR replying, "Sure...(mouse click)...how's that?" AS

Thanks AS, and thank you Paul for the link. :)

Absolutely, from the very beginning it became obvious that Bryce, as good as it is, is limited in rendering all the desire lighting and color physics needed. And in some cases even if it could, the render times are often extreme. From very early on, myself and others mentioned that as much as we loved Bryce, it was limited. And that all other outside graphic software was but another tool to be used to bring your artistic image to completion.

Basically it remainsas a fundamental Bryce artist, try to do as much in Bryce as you can but know when Bryce has reached its limitations. At that point, use your graphic toolbox and add YOUR personal flare to your image.

There have been times when Bryce Purists said if you cant show us exclusively using Bryce, it isnt Bryce. And we had the Bryce Purist wars. And we would be amazed at all that Bryce artists put into their creations and it all astounded us, their creativity and improvisation. But time has gone on and weve seen that not too much has been happening with Bryce development and as all inspiring and as ingenious as Bryce artists became to propel their software of preference ahead, weve been left behind while all others surpassed us into the future.

So yes, we need other tools, tools that Bryce cant or hasnt provided or tools that Bryce can provide but take forever to render. And thats where programs like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, Painter, UVMapper, Wings3D, Blender, 3DMax, Maya, Lightwave, C4D and all others come in. to pick up where Bryce is reluctant to thread.

Layering is a very powerful way of making your render do what you had intended it to do from the beginning. It gives you more liberty with your creation with more hands on than leaving it solely to the final render. After all, it is your creation to do with as you see fit.

reluctant to thread? (lol, I still blame corel for our having to catch up)

Don't misunderstand, some of you; using multi-pass rendering isn't a workaround for a limited rendering program. ALL the highest end programs use multi-pass rendering all the time. Actually, most especially the high-end programs, and especially with commercials and movies.

This technique basically just takes the various elements of what a program CAN render, breaks them down seperately, and allows for greater post-render flexibilty.

*Although there are, as stated earlier, layers produced just in Photoshop, that is used in the composite. Layers that Bryce does NOT produce (glare, flare) But, I have seen even the highest end programs on the highest end projects do exactly the same thing. If they can do it in post composite, and don't have to actually render it, they'll go with that almost every time. (it's ALL about saving time, period)

Which is another reason I eventually stopped listening to those who say Bryce is a toy, because it can't do this or that, or it didn't cost me $3500, etc, etc.

I also noticed those nay-sayers were always the people who never had any renders in their OWN high-end gallery...;o)

AS

Have used this also, it's great!

the main difference between multi-pass in Bryce and render layers in other programs is that in Bryce you have to set up several scenes to do so, or at least make changes to one scene. imagine if Bryce had "layers" just like Photoshop! well, the big-dogs all do that... but they are two separate things. render-layers and scene layers in Maya, for example, are totally different, giving you a vast amount of flexibility which is of course the name of the game with that proggy. but yeah, my main point was this : sometimes it IS faster to render out different layers! I see all kinds of people wasting their time with Bryce's internal DOF settings, for example, which are garbage. multiply your render times?!?! WHAT?!?! just render a distance mask, and do the blur in postwork. Save yourself hours and hours of waiting for low-quality results anyway... ICM, good workaround for the specularity render! an interesting approach, thanks for the tip...

Attached Link: http://www.3drender.com/light/compositing/index.html

AS, didnt mean to fluff your feathers. I too feel that Corel is to blame but lets not hatch that discussion again. Im sure Corel has been dragged through coals enough. Maybe not enough for some of us.

The link above is another site which I bookmarked a few years ago while working with 3DMax for reference reasons and for a better explanation of the layering process.

Then give a look here:

3DRender

Oh no, no feather fluffing at all! ;o) We still have new Bryce users running around, wanted to make sure they got the full monty, lol. Yup, those two links are still the best examples of the basics of multi-pass, imo. AS