I have seen some extrordinary 3D renders... not specific to Bryce, although there are some. And when setting up renders in Bryce in order for the render time when taken in relation to patience LOL, the trade off between 'realism' and reality really does become apparent.
The following render took 4 days, or to be more exact 189 hours 34 minutes..... :ohmy:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1664909

I'm just wondering how long one is prepared to wait for renders of such high quality?
I know there are purist artists out there that would say 'as long as it takes', and I respect that, but I don't have very much patience when it comes to creation, and I thought that was perhaps the longest I would be prepared to wait.

*Just so as one can relate to the time scale, the render was acheived using an AMD2 6000+ dual core. And Bryce was set up with Super(fine AA) and soft shadows. On my old computer I can't imagine how much longer it would have taken.

So, whats your trade off?

My limit: 60 hours
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1569480

I would prefer not to wait as long and acheive something like this. Done with C4D
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1651714

Time is important, so to keep it simple, I'd rather work a little extra, make extra money, and purchase higher end software.

After using Bryce for years, I guess you reach a zenith and the urge that got me here in the first place and it beckons me to advance and explore. I can create a wide variety of desired artwork with what I have now, though it's time to take another step.(which I'm in the process of saving for)

The trade off in time?........there are limits, thens it's time to re-assess to satisfy the creative critter inside.

Nice work BTW!!

Well I'd do it but in smaller increments 'cos I need my PC for other stuff and my other half mutters about the electricity bill so I have to be discrete about night time rendering.It would probably take a month or so that way though..Not that I have your talent..

@ ICM: Hehehe, a render farm would help I guess Rod, and I must say that I think you'd be quite capable of creating the Elphic Fabergé image in Bryce. I think the time spent in creating the tattoo machine 2, you'd have much more patience than I..... creating in the style I have isn't so time consuming. I could never acheive the Tattoo machine mastery simply because of the lack of patience on my part...... LOL!

@ Incognitas:  I always though electricity was cheaper at night, you might want to check that out with your provider, i'm sure it'd give you the persuading edge over your other half. And besides, I don't have any more talent than you or anyone else..... it's all down to how much of ones efforts one wishes to expend in ones given expertise. In other words there is a precise balance in the universe.
 

I personally would rather produce more realistic renders than renders that look obviously computer generated. The problem with getting as much realism as you can is that you have to use real world lighting, soft shadows reflections, etc. and those require higher than normal settings and that translates into unknown rendering times. I have found those render times that are on the edge of the screen are usually not in the ballpark with their accuracy and they just tell you the elapsed time only and not the estimated time until finished!
I would be more apt to use better settings and be willing to wait it out if, and I say IF,  Bryce had a way of telling me how long it is going to take to render at the current settings - maybe I would be willing to reduce the settings and settle for a less-than'realistic render if I had an inkling about the settings/endertime trade-off.
As it is now, it's a crap-shoot in how long your computer is going to be tied up to finish the renders and those of us that don't have render farm capability are in it for the duration - if they really want the render at the settings they have chosen and have the patience.

Well to be honest, if Bryce really could tell how long a render would take, and be accurate, I probably would find another pastime. It's the unknown factor sometimes that keeps me thinking............ just a few more hours.
I do most of the rendering over night, so it doesn't tie up the PC so much but the last render was more of an experiment and so it was more or less continuous. I'm glad I did it though.
I guess the more one wants to get out of it, the more one will have to wait. But for me, if it takes too long, I will usually give up on it.

Bryce just outright lies about estimated render times when it comes to glass/water, lol.

My longest render time was around 60 hours which couldn't be avoided since the scene was just a giant block of glass and a whole mess of radial lights. But, I'll never do it again, unless I use a dedicated rendering computer.

I have found that when I rely on any other disciplines other than say, hardcore volumetrics, soft shadows or especially Super (fine AA), I am a happier person, lol Just because the end render does come faster, and even after seeing a final render I'll want to go back and tweak things again (and again) and re-render, so these days I would always build a scene with speed in mind.

Although,sometimes, obviously you just have to use soft shadows. In your scene, dhama I would agree it was the best way to go. I have tried post-working soft shadows into glass/water, and while the effect might look good to another viewer, it still doesn't look quite as polished to me. So, I would have to take the render time hit.

Bryce TRULY needs to be made to handle dual core cpu's though! What with quad cores available now, and 8-core cpu's coming out before the year is up, this would be a miracle of an update for the program.

I have yet to do a realistic render but my very best took me overnight to finish rendering at super fine. Now that I am using Bryce 6.1 I am wondering if those early rendering could use a revisit to see just how long it will take to re-render. It probably won't matter but if the results are better than the original, I will probably say to myself "Go for it."

heck, my longest so far is 14 hours...;)

Personally, I've found beer times render time to be an acceptable tradeoff. :)

Otherwise I won't do over four hours max. (Old 450mhz processor, Win98). My old machine will hang after that. For me super-fine is just a dream. :(

Quote - Bryce just outright lies about estimated render times when it comes to glass/water, lol.

Is that because it still has outdated coding? I read Daz overhauled the code quite a lot, but maybe they concentrated too much on getting the thing stable or add new sparkly goodies.

Quote - My longest render time was around 60 hours which couldn't be avoided since the scene was just a giant block of glass and a whole mess of radial lights. But, I'll never do it again, unless I use a dedicated rendering computer.

I guess peoples render times are going to vary quite a lot because of different configurations. I used to think my old computer was fast at rendering...... and even back into the old days of Bryce3D, but that could have been that I read somewhere that Bryce rendering should be given a lot of patience because of the many millions of computations the processor has to make.
But the same old story, get a faster computer and push it to the limits till you can afford the next speed marvel.

Quote - I have found that when I rely on any other disciplines other than say, hardcore volumetrics, soft shadows or especially Super (fine AA), I am a happier person, lol Just because the end render does come faster, and even after seeing a final render I'll want to go back and tweak things again (and again) and re-render, so these days I would always build a scene with speed in mind.

Well, one could always do quite a bit in postwork, but I always feel thats cheating slighty.... doesn't stop me sometimes, but thats my 'trade off' I guess. And then there is the option of just rendering a small portion of the scene if you've only tweaked.... but hey, who am I to teach you to suck eggs. LOL :laugh:

Quote -
Although,sometimes, obviously you just have to use soft shadows. In your scene, dhama I would agree it was the best way to go. I have tried post-working soft shadows into glass/water, and while the effect might look good to another viewer, it still doesn't look quite as polished to me. So, I would have to take the render time hit.

I love soft shadows, but I guess it depends on the scene. Like you say, if it's water or glass etc. then it will take a long time.

Quote - Bryce TRULY needs to be made to handle dual core cpu's though! What with quad cores available now, and 8-core cpu's coming out before the year is up, this would be a miracle of an update for the program.

Just wondering if there is an ultimate limit..... I mean if there will ever be a computer capable of rendering the most complex scene, in a matter of seconds? I think the way to go is programming the code more efficiantly rather than speeding up processors to the extent one could almost microwave ones dinner in the PC case *(sorry Mac users, no favouritism meant)

*> Quote - I have yet to do a realistic render but my very best took me overnight to finish rendering at super fine. Now that I am using Bryce 6.1 I am wondering if those early rendering could use a revisit to see just how long it will take to re-render. It probably won't matter but if the results are better than the original, I will probably say to myself "Go for it."

Thats just how I feel, but usually the new stuff gets so much that the older stuff never gets re-done. I have done it a couple of times though.

Quote - Personally, I've found beer times render time to be an acceptable tradeoff. :)

Exactly!....beer, beer, beer.....bed, bed, bed!

Last year I had to provide a client with a high res pic. I didn't have the pc to do a big enough job. Basically they wanted to blow it up onto 30ft banners etc. I sent them the Bryce file to render it themselves. Anyway when I finally met the guys who were doing it, they said that they had to buy a "super" computer just to render it. Even then it took them 6 weeks!

*Last year I had to provide a client with a high res pic. I didn't have the pc to do a big enough job. Basically they wanted to blow it up onto 30ft banners etc. I sent them the Bryce file to render it themselves. Anyway when I finally met the guys who were doing it, they said that they had to buy a "super" computer just to render it. Even then it took them 6 weeks!

*I'm surprised they didn't hire it out to a render farm CO. , would have been less expensive cash and time wise.

I read an article about the movie Ice age, that team bought a shop full of PCs rather than ONE monster machine, did all of the footage work with network/rendering.

Worst I've had was an 11 day render but that was bryce 5 on my old pentium 2 box....

To support Rod the majority of modern film work is done on render farms, Lord of the Rings was something like a 256 machine render farm....
 

 "Bryce TRULY needs to be made to handle dual core cpu's though! What with quad cores available now, and 8-core cpu's coming out before the year is up, this would be a miracle of an update for the program"

I'm real slow this morning and maybe I totally misunderstand but Bryce does handle as many cores as there in your machine. At least it does on my dual PC and Quad Mac with B6.1.13.1.

So does mine although IF I have to save mid render it resets itself back to default.Very very annoying as you then cannot reset it with out resetting the render completely.

I'm presently doing something in Daz Studio and it's 75% through the render and 4 hours have elapsed...If I'd known that what I thought would be a quick render was going to take longer than that I might have not bothered.I'd rather have Bryce's lies (and the ability to save mid render) than software that tells me nothing about how long a piece of string is likely to be.:bored:

Here's a good tip that came up at the DAZ Bryce forums: To restart a render at High Priority, first start a new scene and set it to High, then load the file you want to restart . It should now restart at High priority. Works for me on the Mac but I haven't personally tried this on the PC but PC users say it works as well.

Also - the Bryce render estimate in the Normal AA mode does not include the time it tkaes for the AA pass. Since the AA test is pixel based there's no way to estimate that time except by doing the test.

But the Premium modes are pretty acurate after the second pass because they oversample every pixel so there's no AA test.

Hope that made sense!

Thanks for that tip..

Yeah, I wish I could set up for dual core in preferences instead of from a pull down menu.

Quote - So does mine although IF I have to save mid render it resets itself back to default.Very very annoying as you then cannot reset it with out resetting the render completely.

I'm presently doing something in Daz Studio and it's 75% through the render and 4 hours have elapsed...If I'd known that what I thought would be a quick render was going to take longer than that I might have not bothered.I'd rather have Bryce's lies (and the ability to save mid render) than software that tells me nothing about how long a piece of string is likely to be.:bored:

Eventually it took 8 hrs..That is the longest Daz Studio render I've ever done..and I cheated with a back drop as well.

My trade off for realizm is simple.  The more realistic I want my scenes to look, the more simple I make them.  I've given up the idea of making photo quality images in bryce all together.  Of course that is easy to do when this is just a fun hobby. 

As of now, I use TONS of photo shop layers to achieve realism in my renders.  My images these days are a combination of different renders of the same scene using different textures, lighting, and even adding more objects. 

Instead of rendering a scene with 50 trees.  i render 10 scenes with 5 trees each along with an object mask render for each.  After that, its off to photo shop to add each set of trees in the scene with their own layers.  I'll do that with almost every object in my scenes.  This is a great way to keep tweaking a scene and add more and more stuff until I think its done, without waiting days for a render.

My forest allure picture was the first image I created with this technique.  I used about 7 different renders for the trees and foliage alone. 

Quote -
Instead of rendering a scene with 50 trees.  i render 10 scenes with 5 trees each along with an object mask render for each.  After that, its off to photo shop to add each set of trees in the scene with their own layers.  I'll do that with almost every object in my scenes.  This is a great way to keep tweaking a scene and add more and more stuff until I think its done, without waiting days for a render.

My forest allure picture was the first image I created with this technique.  I used about 7 different renders for the trees and foliage alone. 

That is a good tip. Have you thought about doing a tutorial on this?

A good idea or concept is worth some extra time to render. I have a lot of patience waiting for renders as I don´t have much time to use the computer anyway. So it can run renders for days if necessary. You learn offcause to be careful with using glass and water. Wich is a pity as you get nice images with those kind of mats.
I think the HDRI-option is great for achieving realism and i wished there was more HDRI:s out there to get for free or at a low cost.

I've tried IBL rendering but i've never got as good a result than without. And your right, I wish there were more to choose from; Daz should have supplied at least 50 halfway decent with Bryce 6, not the useless rubbish they did supply.

Quote - I've tried IBL rendering but i've never got as good a result than without. And your right, I wish there were more to choose from; Daz should have supplied at least 50 halfway decent with Bryce 6, not the useless rubbish they did supply.

Well, I usually agree... Anytime you get a software that isn't quite up to snuff on some things, they usually try to placate the users by giving them the blings and sparkles... In this case, HDRI's supposedly good... In some cases, it works if you're hip to fiddle about. In my case, for this rendering, "Stone and the Myst",  I used the installed HDRI and fiddle about with the control til I got the desired effect. In this case, it looks like a close up of a real model, which is something I have never got a chance to do in 5.5. For me, this is an eye opener and a pat on the back.  :lol: Now I'm off to see if I can do something that I have wanted to do for so long... You'll know it when you see it...

:b_funny:

On my old pc the Crystal Palace project took 12 hours just to SAVE!!!

that was a monster of an image!

Quote - On my old pc the Crystal Palace project took 12 hours just to SAVE!!!

Ah I understand why you are a cardinal now.You have the patience of a saint sir.

Quote - The following render took 4 days, or to be more exact 189 hours 34 minutes......

UMmMMmMMm, 189 hours is over a week. 3 hours shy of 8 days ;^D

My longest was a Bryce when I first started. Bryce render # 004 and it took over 187 hours on a 1GHz IBM with 256 MBs of RAM. I had 12 Volumetric lights in it and a bit of transparancy. I stll have the image and I will never post the piece of C-Rap I can tell ya!!!

Hehehe... eagle eyes... yeah you are right... I was taking 48 hours as a day and a night instead of 24 LOL... been watching that damned render too long.

Quote - > Quote - The following render took 4 days, or to be more exact 189 hours 34 minutes......

UMmMMmMMm, 189 hours is over a week. 3 hours shy of 8 days ;^D

My longest was a Bryce when I first started. Bryce render # 004 and it took over 187 hours on a 1GHz IBM with 256 MBs of RAM. I had 12 Volumetric lights in it and a bit of transparancy. I stll have the image and I will never post the piece of C-Rap I can tell ya!!!

My longest render to date was over a week, on a quad core PC, I had to stop it before it finished since it obviously wasn't going to make the deadline by the end.

But it was an animation and it was my own fault it slowed up near the end, as objects with complex materials were getting closer to the camera.

In the end I changed the output to .bmp files rather than a single avi, and just stopped it when I couldn't wait any more and used what had been rendered rather than wait and fail to have anything.