I'm sure by now you're all tired of seeing my castles up here. Matter of fact, I'm getting rather tired of doing them (mostly because the render time is getting longer than I care for...) Therefore, here's my final for this one, unless someone has some really good ideas, in which case I'll maybe do one more remake. Comments, suggestions, criticism, insults, name calling, mud slinging, foul language, and anything else you feel like sending my way are more than welcome. =) Thanks fasttraxx and bonestructure for the tips on making tree shadows.. it's a pity i'd already added the trees by the time I'd read their posts. =) I guess I should also thank fasttraxx for all the textures of his that I used: grass, wall, mountain, and drawbridge textures were all his. Thanks everyone else for all the comments and suggestions so far. Rosh

You probably shouldn't do it, cause it'll kill your render time, but when a castle had a moat, the moat usually encouraged plants and moss and bushes and such to grow around it. The water you know. I might put another mountain, a bit smoother and darker behind the castle. The flags tend to lead the viewers eye out of the picture, and it needs something to lead it back around. I don't blame you if you just leave it at this tho. Render times get to be nasty. All in all it looks good. The second best castle I've ever seen, and the first best was made by a professional model maker, so it ain't too dang shabby.

Very nice Rosh! What did you use to make the castle?? Eric Walters

Well Rosh, you have outdone yourself again. I especially like the forest although that is what is killing your render time. One thing though. When you had a moat, usualy you didn't want the enemy to be able to jump over it ;-). Everything else looks great. How long exactly did it take to render (out of curiosity). Great job Tempest P.S. for Adam Tempest strikes again!!!

Thanks everyone, for the compliments and comments.. Agreed, bushes and such around the moat would look good, but I do not want to render this again. Again, tempest, I agree with the fact that the moat is a bit thin, but the drawbridge has to be able to reach across it, and, well, it's as thick as possible for the length of the drawbridge... It is wider than it looks at this angle, though. Hmm... bonestructure, care to point me in the direction of this first best castle? I'd love the chance to pick up ideas... The 2nd mountain idea, also, would be nice, except I doubt I'm going to do another castle for a while. Eric, I made the castle in 3ds max r3, and rendered it in Bryce 4. Tempest, it took maybe 2 1/2 hours, which for me is forever, as I have no patience or life outside of my computer. Also, since much of what I was doing was little details, I had to render multiple times in the course of working on it so as to see if the effect I sought was working. Really, my system was crying while I was working with the trees and everything. I could literally hear it, so I think forest scenes are no-no's for me with bryce for now. All in all, I'm happy with the overall outcome, so I'm adding this to my web page gallery as-is, probably sometime tomorrow. I'm also gonna post this up in the gallery in a moment, so I expect everyone to go give me a rating. Thanks everyone! Rosh

Thanks for the info Rosh. At times I live in my computer as well! A question though. Having 3ds max r3 (A VERY expensive program) why render in Bryce? I have Strata SS Pro and although some of the modelling features are behind the times (it used to be a "high end" program but has not been updated for a couple of years) the rendering quality (advanced raytracing, radiosity, etc) is still high end according to reviews. Unfortunately, I have not had much success getting Poser textures to render well in SSPRo-so I use Bryce4 for rendering. Is that the case for you as well? I read somewhere that the modeling features in Max are top flight-but rendering perhaps not? It would be nice to have one Program that would be terrific at modeling, character creation, landscapes and terrain, animation-and High end for realistic renders-of course there is MAYA-for the price of a compact car! :-) Eric Walters

Umm... Max is awesome for rendering and everything, but I'm much more comfortable in Bryce, for one thing, plus I find it much easier to do landscapes, mountains, skies, etc. in bryce. I'm not really all that good with Max anyway, so for all I know it can do all of that well. Since I'm still learning (slowly), I go back to bryce for my renders, since I know what I'm doing with it. Rosh

I understand! I just saw some posts in the Strata forum about getting Poser textures to render. Maybe its time to revisit SSPRO! regards, Eric Walters

You may want to try this (which I picked up from Computer Arts 38). Set up your tree exactly as you want it, filling as much of the frame as you can. Set the whole background (sky and ground) to black and light the tree. Then render it and save it with an alpha channel (PSD does this I think). Rotate the tree slightly and do it again. Then, bring in the pictures of the trees as a 2D object in Bryce - using the alpha channel to make the black parts of the picture transparent. Position and scale the 2D objects accordingly. Voila, complex trees which are exactly 1 polygon and which cast a shadow Paul

Hey, thanks paul.. I'll remember that next time. =) Rosh