In the summer issue volume 8, edition #12, of E F X Art & design. page 59. The image is called Pixalrift. It looks like many blocks arrayed in such a fashion as to form a sort of valley. To try and duplicate this, I followed the authors very small tut by creating a 3 x 3 pixel image, applied a diagnal gradient from black to white, resized my image to 1024 x 1024(Bryce terrain size), then scale transformed my 3 x 3 pixel image to cover my image size. I then applied a twirl filter to this. So far all Ok. I go into Bryce, bring my image into the terrain editor. Create my terrain and render. Problem Bryce wants to see sharp white between the pixels and create spikes so to speak. well I managed to include a picture without locking up my comp.

That's gotta be the most bizzare way to start a terrain... Anyway, I replicated it on my pc with no problem or spikes, so I don't know what exactly is going askew on your attempt. I'm not sure what you are doing on this fact though; "resized my image to 1024 x 1024(Bryce terrain size)" THEN "scale transformed my 3 x 3 pixel image to cover my image size." I don't understand, you resized twice? Or you resized your canvas, then resized your image to cover the canvas? If that's what you did, don't do it that way. All you need to do is to take your 3x3 gradient image and go to "Image">"Image Resize", type in the 1024 x 1024 and that should be it for resizing, one step. Then apply the twirl, maybe even a gaussian blur after that, but you might not need to. If none of this helps...just start with a new image that begins at 1024x1024, skip the 3x3 stuff. I tried that also, worked fine. Hope any of that rambling helped. Agent Smith

Thanks AgentSmith, I've been working it through using several methods, the latter where I resized my canvas as opposed to resizing the image gave me better results as far as clairity of blocks. What material and light settings are you adding to your image in Bryce?

I had just applied the "Bryce Blue-Green" to the terrain with two white spotlights aiming down at the spheres (softened the spotlights edges to about 15), this was all just to see if I could get the basic setup to work. But, I'm not sure what material the author used for the terrain since it almost white in the spotlight and then purplish to black as it approaches the camera. Probably just a slightly reflective off-white, so it would mimick the color of the sky where the spotlights are weakest.

here's what I just rendered, kinda looks as though something was draped ove the surface.