The problem is, there are no useful tutorials on the Internet. I've done some Google searches and the majority of the useful looking results lead me to dead sites. There was one tutorial that had some promise - http://pappathan.net/_tut/Bryce_Panoscene/bryce_panoscn.html - but it was badly written and created on an older version of Bryce and I can't follow it.

I was wondering if anyone would have the time to help walk me through some of the rough steps needed to create a night sky. I've been trying for the last three days on my own, trial and error, and I'm ending up in a massive mess. My renders are either gory and painful. Or they are pitch black.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Well, the only trick I know is if you turn down the intensity of the stars, and turn up the numbers, the stars get smaller (and in my opinion, more realistic).

Thanks for the tip on the stars, I will try that. At the moment, I have no stars showing up at all. I'm busy fighting with my moon and my water, trying to make the moonlight reflect off the water. Oh, and trying to fix why everything is purple and red

I would use a spotlight to create the light source for your moon. I have a tutorial here that explains how to enhance the light in a scene. It would work just as easily for a night scene although you may wish to reduce the brightness of the spotlight.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=2281

I find that when working with Bryce you can get some great results from the skylab but at the expense of illuminating your scene correctly. I'm going to have a play with Bryce and see if I can replicate the image then I'll share the results with you.

Ctrl + alt and click in the scene for direct placement of the moon. Does this still work in B7?

Orbital will be on top of the matter that much is for sure.

Thankyou so much for that link. I will check it out tomorrow. It's after 3AM now, and my brain refuses to concentrate on Bryce any longer. I managed to make some nice lookin' renders, but nothing at all like what I want.

You're exactly right about the sky lab making nice effects at the cost of lighting. I think that is why all my skies and water were going pitch black and just horrible. I still don't know how I managed to get a purple moon and red sky and blue water - obviously not at the same time, but in various attempts. It does get frustrating when it all seems to be hit and miss with turning the dials of what will work and what won't.

But hey, it's all practice.

Best of luck trying to replicate the image. I will be very interested to know what results you get. But for now - I need sleep.

Quote - Ctrl + alt and click in the scene for direct placement of the moon. Does this still work in B7?

Orbital will be on top of the matter that much is for sure.

I found Ctrl+ Alt doesn't work in Bryce 7.... but I discovered Ctrl+Alt+Shift does work for placing the moon/sun in the scene.

Next I took the image with the clouds and dragged it over the original as a seperate layer. I set the blend mode of this layer to overlay then flattened the image. The overlay really overdoes the contrast so I duplicated the flattened image opened filters and selected guassian blur. I set the amount at 12 , clicked ok then set that layer to screen with opacity set at 60%. Then I flattened the image again before wisping the edges of the clouds with a splatter brush selected in the smudge tool.

 Just another tip when using Bryce star fields. If you pull the perspective out a couple of clicks on the camera the stars will look more realistic. You may have to adjust any models in the periphal vision by tilting them to look straight. Otherwised they can appear stretched and as if they are leaning.

You may already have figured this out: turning up haze will block visibility of stars.

I have never tried the spotlight trick Orbital suggested.  I have only lined up radial lights along the water surface to get the reflections effect. His method seems to be a simpler way.

Wow!!!!

Both images are just incredible!

@grafikeer - that is a cool looking effect you've got there. I will have to try it. While it does have the moon/sun show up very well, it doesn't have the night-time glow about it that I'm after. I'm looking for a more ethereal quality with the night-time scape, which orbital has captured very well with the blue tinge to everything.

I think I would be putting the stars in during post-work unless tweaking with Bryce's settings make them look more like stars and less like little dots on the screen. I have a plug-in for Photoshop that makes very realistic stars so I can sneak them in there. :)

@ orbital - that is exactly the kind of look I'm after! The night-time glow, the bright moon, the wisps of cloud and the ethereal glow that shines over everything. A cool white light would be better, but the blue does look incredible!

I will give it another try today to recreate the scene... but I'll probably have to send up a flare for some advice with what options for the sky and such that you used. But if you got the intensity of the image from post-work, then I won't worry so much if my renders don't look right with being dull and flat. (A purple moon might be a bit of an issue though)

grafikeer- the ripples and texture of the water looks amazing. And making the adjustments in Photoshop make the sky/moon really pop when the mountains are more silhoutted than they were originally.

And the softer, more pastel blue of the sky makes it look more of a night sky.

Quote - Ok this is as near as I can get it. The main problem is that it doesn't matter how hard I try the moon won't go any brighter than that. I tried different skies and setting but in each case the moon ends up like that. Also I decided against using the skylab clouds and opted for volumetric spheres instead. I had to tweak the colour settings etc, but they are far more satisfactory than the clouds the skylab produces because they interact better with light and don't look so flat. I also used the spotlight technique mentioned before. The only way to get better results is to do postwork which I'll explain below.

I had a little play and came up with this...All Bryce.

That is a very nice effect on the water, pipp44... very rough looking water.

I haven't managed to get back into Bryce yet today- had a major disaster on my domain that I've been trying to fix. But I'm itching to get back into Bryce and get this night scene sorted.

Orbital's method of using the "volumetric spheres" instead of the Skylab, which I agree with since the clouds are rather flat and don't behave well in Skylab - or they don't behave well for a newbie like me - how exactly do I set up a "volumetric sphere"?

I can guess it's one of the tools on the top bar, but which one? Create Sphere? Create radial light? Create dome light?

If it is the "Create Sphere" option, are the clouds one of the texture options... like the glass? I'll continue to have a play around - I'm about to try the spotlight that orbital suggested but thought I'd ask about the sphere thing and to show you what I've managed so far.

But I like the look, so the 'how' I got it for a very simple scene is probably irrelevent.

Orbital - Do you remember what settings you used for the clouds?

I like grafikeer's approach but if you would rather continure on the path you are taking, a couple suggestions might help.

Use soft edges on your spotlight (click the little "E" when you have a light selected to get into the light edited screen) but beware this lengthens render time tremendously.

Increase the bump frequency of your water mat.

To make the clouds using spheres, make very large spheres and play with the "base density" slider in the material lab.

Special note: avoid overlapping cloud spheres with each other or other objects.  It can cause some ugly artifacts.

Another thing I forgot to mention.  If you like a small amount of horizon haze in your scene you can always adjust the color of the haze and reduce its intensity value very low.

I used the fluffy clouds material in volumetric menu. I am using B5 btw, so you will have a different set of menus to me. The trick is to edit the colours of the cloud in the mat lab.

I just changed the ambient and diffuse colours to resemble the image you are recreating. The problem you may have is that your sky is different to mine so interaction may be different. Looking at your water I would turn the specularity of that mat down a bit then the light reflection would not seem so harsh.

Other things to consider is adjusting the camera angle, make the terrains further away but bigger. The scale of the water waves suggests the terrains are too close compared to what you are trying to portray.

I know that sounds like I'm picking on your efforts, but I am impressed with how far you've come. When we all started out it seemed like a nightmare. Like a child learning to talk!

P.S I think grafikeers method is brilliant btw, and would be an easier route for you to follow. I'm sure he'd let you have that sky setting to if you asked him.

This is 800X640 using standard lighing/reg AA--render time 1min 10sec

If you want the sky setting,it's yours!Just site mail me your email address and I will send it off!

I'll keep the files I have so far but I think I will start again and follow grafikeer's approach and see how I go. (I might not get such freaky results with the colour with guidelines to follow instead of just going off on my own)

The blue is pretty... but the last time I checked, on planet Earth, water doesn't get that bright at night, hehe.

@Orbital - I don't mind that you're picking my work apart. You're pointing out what can be done better, and offering suggestions of what I can try to get the effect I'm after. It probably helps you to guide me in the right direction because you've seen what I'm aiming towards, instead of just a vague "I have this idea and it won't work".

I know getting everything placed and the camera moved around is my weak spot. The images I posted, the basic concept is there, but it just needs fine tuning. The sense of distance isn't really achieved when there are massive waves/ripples at the base of the image.

And while a big moon probably isn't going to be realistic, the moon is the focal point of the image- the image is built around the moon and the moonlight, so for that point I want to keep it as large as possible but without it taking up 80% of the image.

@grafikeer - site mail on it's way. Thanks!!!!

Back to Bryce I go and see how big a mess of this I can make today grins

I don't know if your camera is set up properly. When Bryce opens have the default camera set as directors. Also for some reason the camera is set at a 135 degree angle compared to any objects you create. This makes orientation very hard when building scenes. Anyway if thats the case have a look at this. Also there is some very good tutorials on there to try.

As a pointer do as many tutorials as possible doesn't matter if they not related to the scene you want to build. It will help you learn more features and help you get orientated.

http://brycetech.daz3d.com/

I toggle between Directors Camera, Camera view and Top view- Top view is mainly for the hills and such, moving those away from the camera.

I will check out that link right away. Thanks, orbital!

I probably really don't need to do this, but just playing, this is what I got by merging the two together.

Just for the sake of simplicity, I have left out the mountains until I get the sky right.

I'll keep at it. I will get there eventually with this picture :)

Starting to look great!
Add some clouds and it will look a lot better still.

Corrie

Heh, thanks Corrie. Clouds aren't a top priority just yet... but I am pleased with how it's coming along

This is what I am closing with tonight and I think it's really looking good. I was trying to place a spotlight to reflect off the tops of the icebergs at the back, but that was proving very difficult to get it positioned properly and if I don't stop I'll be still at it at 3 in the morning.

But the iceberg in the foreground does have a light. What messed up the background ones was that I moved them further from the camera, to open up the scene a bit so everything wasn't crowded around the front but now I can't seem to get the light to touch them.

Oh well.

Tell me what you think of this one :)

This is looking good,and you're welcome ...a trick I use(and it's primitive I know) in order to get my spotlight lined up with the sun,or in this case the moon,is to quickly render enough to get the exact position of the light source,put your finger on it,click wireframe mode and move the spotlight to line up with  your finger. This gets you in the right area,and you can tweak from there...of course,you have to wipe off the screen a lot,but them's the breaks! I think you are getting close!

There is an easier method to get the spotlight lined up with the moon/sun- just line the spotlight up with the asterisk that marks where the sun/moon are in the image. Of course it didn't help really when I moved the mountains back away from the camera - a different image to the one I posted - but I'll have another crack at it today.

Wow!!! That is an incredible recreation... I love it! With making the layout portrait, you really get a sense of scale and distance.

WOW, you two are making some awesome scenes here!
Looking really good to me.

Corrie

Thanks, Corrie!

I'm doing my best working this program out- I am really pleased to see how everything is finally starting to click together. I don't think I will be making anything but night scenes for a while. Each time I start fresh, I get a completely different result. I'm learning a lot about this new program :)

That's the way I learned it, too.
Keep trying and learning.
Don't forget to have fun with it, too. :-)

Corrie

I have played around with many skies and waters, and so far haven't found the magic combination to give me something light enough to post-work the hell out of it, and still keep the moon. But for now, I like this final result.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out. And especially thanks to orbital and grafikeer for their input - and for grafikeer sending me the full moon preset. (It seems to be my favourite sky right now because I know it works :) )

Gorgeous!
Maybe you can put the moon partly behind the cloud a bit for a more mysterious effect?
Well, that's my idea. :-)

Corrie

Yes, I think I will do that- now I've figured out what I'm doing in post-work with the moon, I'll play a little more with the clouds.