Sounds like a plan to me.

Good looking burl bowl.

Single grass mesh Instanced 400 times.

And yup, it really is Instancing the mesh. I experimented ; the Bryce Scenefile size went from 81kb (just the single grass mesh) to 511kb (mesh Instanced 400 times, which equals 70,000 polys). Then I did an old school replication of the mesh, again 400 times and scenefile size went up to 7.5MB.

Good times.  :o)

Yes I love the instancing too but it is prone to crashing Bryce. It is still a wonderful new tool. I still struggle with the trees or rocks coming out suspended in the air and if you forget and hit the downward arrow it usually crahes Bryce; I have to manually lower the object and then 2d disperse. I also find out that it instanced a imported obj plant which is great!

Nice job AS and goido.  I really have to take it easy on the instancing, or I get the crash.  I usually turn down the number of instances from the default 150 to 10 or 20.

Why if I can do it first time with this one I can't with anything else.

I will also usually take the number of Instances down to 10-25 also, it just allows for better placement, imo.

Yeah, the Instance Lab is sensitive still. I have some odd experiences and crashes, but beta testers and Daz are on it. They'll eventually squash bugs and expand what's already there.

That is interesting.  When I use displacement, it usually explodes the object I use it on.

Use a value of 25 or less, sometimes way less.

And, right now the Displacement action is not as good as it will be, most all come out rough/pixelated looking. But once Daz can wrangle it in and when (hopefully) we can use 16-bit images to drive the Displacement, it will look much, much better.

I have been experimenting with the displacement and bump in the Mat Lab... Let me tell you... Unless you are going for the weird and abstract looks on all of your renderings, best to stay away... Try it on the DAZ characters, you'll see what I mean... UGH!!!

Has anybody noticed that during the preview rendering that it starts and stops at 3%? It renders fine when it's doing the initial rendering but consequential rendering, the default setting seems to have these fits. I thought it was due to the lights but I removed the lights and it still sputters. Anybody got an idea on how to cure these?

Some fine and interesting stuff there AgentSmith. I love to see you pump out those weird but wonderful doo-dats.  Goido, cool stuff also.

I’m still suffering from my initial traumatic crashing experiences when Bryce first made its Windows PC debut and the almost year long wait it took to get most of the glitches ironed out while they still had my cash in hand. Lesson learned? Yes, now I’ll sit back and wait until the glitches are out first before I plunk my money down. In the meantime I’ll continue with my old friend 3DStudio which has had instancing for ages and never crashes. So someone, please let me know when it’s clear to come out and play with Bryce.

"I’m still suffering from my initial traumatic crashing experiences when Bryce first made its Windows PC debut..."

Rofl...that was fourteen years ago!
(but hey, I do the same thing whenever a new Windows OS comes out - I wait)

The real reason to go get Bryce 7 right now would be to save money on the sale price, whether that's an upgrade or not. Yeah, they'll eventually squash bugs, I just wouldn't want to pay more, later for something I know I'll get anyway.

You know, AS, someone at DAZ forum pointed that out to me... Are you and this person the one and same??? :m_wink:

LOL…yep 14 years and I still cringe when I think about it.  I don’t mind paying for something that works right first time, every time without frustrations and constant crashes. Or mind paying for not feeling like I’ve been duped into buying and then beta testing software while the company holds and makes interest on my money. I’m purchasing not investing. Nope, no way…LOL…they should be paying me to beta test their product. In the very least I would expect the software to crash when I'm beta testing. 

 If I buy Bryce 7 now, I’ll be paying for it in more ways than one…cash and time wasted on crashes and pulling my hair out. No matter how “cheap” it is now it will still cost me more in the long run. I’d rather pay more for it later when it’s whole and all the bugs are out…thank you.

                                           :rolleyes:

@Thunderstone - doubt it? But, I do have the same screenname over there.

@Quest - I respect your authoriti.  ;o)

AgentSmith, thanks…I don’t mean to sound too negative but I’m reading about all these problems here. And I’m sure it will all get straightened out in the wash. I always enjoy using  Bryce and it will always be on my favorites list and part of my tool kit. I just wish it’ll be all ironed out sooner rather than later. In the mean time I’ll continue using my 5.5 and continue to enjoy your way-out and fantastic renders.

I also am using 5.5 until they iron out some of these bugs, but I felt it important to invest in Bryce's future so I bought Bryce7Pro, minor glitches and all. Hopefully enough folks will do this so TPTB at DAZ will feel compelled to continue development of Bryce.

Cool goido.  Are those volume clouds?

Quote - I also am using 5.5 until they iron out some of these bugs, but I felt it important to invest in Bryce's future so I bought Bryce7Pro, minor glitches and all. Hopefully enough folks will do this so TPTB at DAZ will feel compelled to continue development of Bryce.

At DAZ bugs are being squashed every day.  I feel good about the future of B7Pro.  There is a lot of effort going into it.

With a Displacement value of just 3, it brings out in real polygonal detail in what the bump map used to fake.

Beautiful!

Btw, I thought I would mention...anyhone trying to use Displacement on Terrains. The higher res you make your Terrain, the longer the Mat Lab seems to take to react to come up, to make changes, etc.

My last Terrain back there (the snow mtn.) is 2048x2048 and starting and making changes in the Mat Lab would each take about 40 seconds or so. So, best to tweak everything you want and get it all setup and then activate Displacement (and use a low value, under 5.0, imo)

Just didn't want anyone to think they were going crazy or had a crashing computer.

Yes they are and I lowered the Y factor because I read it helps the rendering time. I should  have probably tried soft shadows but they are very cpu intensive. AS great work, I tried the displacement button today and anything past 5, messed up most of the terrains.

Yeah, I let that image render after I went to bed, in case it was going to take a long time because I had indeed activated soft shadows. It took 80 minutes using three, 2.5mhz cores. Original size is 1600x1000.

Those renders look great! Love the clouds Incognitas and Goido.
@AS- excellent terrains, the second example looks almost facelike. It may be possible to replicate Mt. Rushmore in Bryce now without using D/S, or Poser.

It may be possible to replicate Mt. Rushmore in Bryce now without using D/S, or Poser.

That would be cool! And, I know that that the all the people behind the scenes want nothing more than the absolute best of anything for Bryce, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I see this continued development!

I mean, we all look at the same "other programs" that everyone else does and the committee definitely wants all that and more, lol. So believe me, you got some extremely knowledgeable people there pushing the Daz/Bryce programmers.

   This is a quick and dirty render of displacement on a sphere primitive in Carrara. I have some cliff and rock face images from cgtexture.com. I took one and made a greyscale copy with some gaussian blur and dropped it into the displacement and bump channels and applied the color image for the texture. Stack a few of these and rotate them and you've got an almost instant rock stack.
I wonder if the developers are borrowing a few code snippets here and there from Carrara to enhance Bryce's expanded abilities?

Sorry if this question has come up recently and I missed it...   What's giving you more Bryce bang for the buck--the processor or the amount of memory on the graphics card?

@Jack - If I had to pick absolutely one over the other I would choose Ram, since that is what allows you to handle larger scenes more easily (without crashing)

CPU = how fast your render finishes
RAM = how big of a scene you can manage

I mean, all of your parts work hand in hand in whatever you do but that's the basics.

I wonder if the developers are borrowing a few code snippets here and there from Carrara to enhance Bryce's expanded abilities?

• Not that we haven't asked, lol! I believe Carrara and Bryce are completely different code formats (something like that), so some copy/pasting of code can't be done.  ;o(

Quote - This time, after applying a snow material to the Terrain, I used the same channel that drives the Bump to also drive the Displacement.

With a Displacement value of just 3, it brings out in real polygonal detail in what the bump map used to fake.

Is that overhangs?That rarest of events in landscape applications?The sort I had to resort to trickery in Terragan?

***"- Yup, this was my first Displacement experiment done a regular Bryce sphere. You can see how roughly Bryce handles Displacing at this time (it will get better) I've had no crashes with Bryce spheres as of yet. That sphere I Displaced on the middle of page 6 was an imported sphere, I had made that one a much higher res mesh to see if that would help the displacement appear smoother it didn't, lol. Fixing that will be the job for the developers."
***Doh! I saw your render on page 6, but missed the part about the sphere. My initial thought is that it looks a bit like a wooden heart. I'll have to keep trying. Maybe my new system (still gathering parts) will do better.
 
***"I believe Carrara and Bryce are completely different code formats (something like that), so some copy/pasting of code can't be done.  ;o( "
***I freely admit that what I know about software coding would fit on the head of a pin with room left over for quite a few angels to dance, heh, heh. It would be nice if it were that simple.

Very nicely done Incognitas. I like that very much.

Wow, what size terrain is that?

This one is a straight scene and it took 5 hours to render, true ambience look the same but with 5 times extra to render and I finally gave up on the IBL because it crashed my computer. It is still a wonderful program.