Lol, hey everybody!

It's been a little crazy the past 4-5 months and I have quite a few half rendered Bryce 7 beta images floating around from when I was playing with the, at that time, unreleased Anisotropy settings. (with my fave all time material, messed up metal)

I'll start getting them together (and finish rendering them) and post them up in here.  :o)

That's a great material... I like the first one.. It really works with the scratches

They all have their seperate charms...Thanks A.S.

Love them all AS...and nice to see you here...keep em coming.

Speaking or really raising the bar in Bryce.  Well you did it again.

i like the first one.. why is it i can smell the metal out here? 

Yeah, the first one is my fave also. Don't know why, it just "is".

More Mat renders to come on Monday.

AS

Nice to see a Master at work!

We'll call this one #4, and it is probably my fave (so far). I like the two types of age-ing going on, on each end.

Very unfortunately, something about Bryce changed between the version I used to make this scene file and the current Bryce version, so NOW it doesn't render out exactly the same and look as good. I'll have to go back and re-tweak to get it back.

i love no 4 too.. the glow on it is so good..want to poish off the old and make it new again.. 

how did you manage that goldish fade into irony? 

AS has a 'Do the Impossible' button in his version of Bryce. It's a bit like the 'Make Art Like Rockr' button some of us have...............

• Pretty simple. You're just placing two textures in the Matab to drive the Diffussion and Ambience together, Bryce really does the rest. You can check out the other settings here I use here.
  And, after checking, this scene actually uses one procedural and one image texture in addition to using an HDRI for lighting/reflection to help the realism. It can be a tricky balance as just using a different HDRI can cause one to have to re-tweak a lot of settings to bring it back to something that looks good again.

Render #4 there has a retail purchased model in it, but I replaced it with a little mesh I know I made, otherwise it is the same exact scenefile and you can download it here;

http://kirkdunne.com/files/anis_testing_forum_01.zip

Experiment and enjoy!

It looks so good! Smells metallic and feels metallic too! Even the last one without the hdri (my bryce bane...sigh..) looks so good! 

I'll potter into that...if i dare...once i get my laptop back... 

thanks a ton, AS!

Nice work AS

The pitted darker areas in the last one. How do you keep them off the rounded edges? Is there a trick or just tweek them out and cover with specular?

"The pitted darker areas in the last one."

• Anything like that would be a complete accident, I just applied the texture and scaled it up until the detail of the texture appeared dense enough to my taste. Just luck, I guess.  :o)

AS, I love your modesty "Just luck I guess" no acknowledgement that you've been playing with bryce for years and have a good understanding of what is under the hood :).

Nice images BTW.

The only thing I equate it to is playing a piano by ear. There are times I have to look up what the name is of a certain Bryce button is before I would post about it in here, lol.

Thanks again everyboody!!!!   ;o)

Bryce on!

terribly good if you doing an industrial sort of scene..esp where iron ore boils..or a spaceship melting down or something that way. even 

it really reeks metal though..ah phew!

would the chararistics of the mat change if you change it to a really flat surface? 

As always...experiments

Yes, he does. ;-)

@ AS, if you see this

How many times did you crash Bryce while doing this?  This is a serious inquiring.  I have spent the last few days experimenting with picture based mats, with and without hdri, various settings of anistropy, etc... because of what you have inspired in this thread. Some of my results are fairly decent but not without problems.

It is frustrating how many times Bryce crashes.  Is there a secret to minimize crashes? Or is this type experimenting just pushing the software to its limits?

"would the chararistics of the mat change if you change it to a really flat surface?"

• In this case, with this mat, almost all of the effect dissapears. Anisotropy really kinda needs "something" to be activated, like a curve, an angle, at least a good bump going on so that it can have something to react off of.

"How many times did you crash Bryce while doing this?"

• More than a few times and really that was because I would load an HDRI, play with it, not like it, load another, play with it, load another, etc. It seemed like the back and forth would trip it up (and I do a LOT of back and forth). And, the crash rarely happened until I tried to save the scenefile. Other than HDRI's, this USED to happen once in a while to me with going back and forth with the image tetures. (doesn't really seem to anymore). But, of course, we have went through a lot of beta's by now.

So anyway, my constant habit is to save right before trying a new setup of HDRI's.

• Beyond that...lol, (here we go)...it's my theory that with really ANY program can perform better and crash less if the user makes sure that the least amount of other programs running is at a minimum. For over a decade I have done this to a degree that is really kinda obsessive. I've had a small carreer in building and fixing computers but nowadays what I mostly do is just tweak peoples' PC's to get rid of almost all of background programs.

There are SO many programs that want to;

• Start with your computer.
• Take up memory.
• Run in the background, using your cpu.
• Connect to the internet and update.
• Possibly scan your hard drive's (for many reasons) which can KILL your experience no matter what you're doing.

And, I am not talking about just anti-virus types of programs, which of course are the main culprits. There is the OS itself with ALL of its "Services", MS Office, anything from Apple, anything from Google, ANY browser "toolbar", Java, ANY browser, Silverlight, I mean...the list is basically almost every program. Because if it is not connecting or updating its making sure it is THE program to control your jpg's or your mp3's, etc, etc, on and ON, lol. I spend a LOT of time making sure all this crap is turned off on my PC. I turn almost everything off, period.

Other than that;

• Max out your memory to 4GB (32-bit OS) and however high you can afford to go with a 64-bit OS.
• I have always installed my OS on its own hard drive, nothing else goes on it.
• I keep my Virtual Memory on a 2nd, internal hard.
• I keep my Bryce scenefiles on a 3rd, external hard drive.
• CPU's can control all 3 of these hard drives at the same time without all 3 actions having to happen, onto the same hard drive.
• Sacrifice a poly each day to the all great and all powerful Bryce and you'll be good.

- I keep my Virtual Memory on a 2nd, internal hard.
- I keep my Bryce scenefiles on a 3rd, external hard drive.

That sounds like a great idea. i try doing that too.. when I render.. but the amt of processes that seem to be happening seems mindboggling. And I guess too..if the render is taking time.. you tend to go thru fb, mail, radio podcasts ..and all that jazz just to keep your mind from not losing it, without realizing it does use up memory. Bryce still reads 2 gigs even if you have 4. 

norton i  know kills. 

Thanks for the update on "crash protection"  I do tend to go back and forth a lot in those experimental fits I get at times.  Tweak this, adjust that, fiddle with buttons and dials, etc. I have learned that some times the 'puter just has to catch up. 

Example: hi res terrains take time to update.  If you try to make a second or third adjustment before it has time to finish the first operation.   CRASH! WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEND AN ERROR REPORT!.  Well, duh, no.  I don't even let my graphics machine touch the web. 

Memory.  I'm using Win 64 with 4gb memory but maybe I should add more.  Memory isn't that expensive anymore.

I don't have the computer savy to seek out and destroy apps wanting to control the machine other than cleaning out startup.

I usually do custom installs with new programs but honestly it can be overwhelming for my little brain.  Again, example.  Corel Draw includes about half a million (exageration) modules.  How am I to know what is good and basic and what is fluff especially since I've never had or used the program before.  But all that is because of air in my head, not anyone elses problem.

In a nutshell, it is almost comforting to know AS crashes his machine also.