i htought a little quiz might liven things up a bit How was this done ? The prize is knowledge

Looks like a terrain with a transparent hex mesh applied to it similar to the steel cage in the presets.

I agree with aldaron

Now if you want details then you could render an altitude map of the ball then bring that into terrain editor and add a low level grey for the flat area (that way the ball should fit pretty well) then apply your material.

Yeah, the shadow gives it away. And the place where the net slices the ball does too. But, it's a very creative use fr a terrain!

Since we're on the trivia kick, any takers on how this was done?

Hmmm. The easiest way would be a photo of a leaf (and something around the edges tells me it was cut from something in Photoshop) applied to a cylinder with a transparency map. That way you get a curve. And then several lights set above it with various intensities. Am I completely wrong?

wrong answer aldaron, i shoud have mentioned it wasnt the obvious.This probably isnt the best example but the technique may inspire some of you.Ill give it a bit longer yet

airflamesred, 2 metaballs for the net?

no (small cheat) export terrain to poser and use a magnet. I always thoght they were a great idea (if only for freaky faces).If this has anyones cerebral bits dancing let us know thanks A.F.R.

"export terrain to poser and use a magnet" You didn't tell us we were looking for a Poser solution...lol I use terrains )In Bryce)for my leave textures to construct their 3D shape. Transparency added to help show the curves and veins. AgentSmith

A magnet, eh? Very clever use of the magnet. I was tinkering with metaballs trying to do that, and came up with an oddity. I noticed that my transparent positive metaball and my transparent negative metaball actually created a visible "glow" where they interact. It might be a different way to make comets and such. My leaf was made completely in Bryce. I photographed a leaf, and made a mask in Photoshop. I took the mask and created a terrain from it. Then, I made a simple gradient (dark to light to dark) in Photoshop. I applied the gradient to the second picture slot in the Terran Editor, and blended them so I ended up with a curved leaf shaped terrain. (The jagginess that Erlik saw is the terrain, not the material) The terrain was solid (I couldn't figure out how to make it not solid and leaf shaped, I think that's due to the edges, but I'm not sure) so I made another negative terrain with the leaf mask, but I widened the mask a bit in Photoshop so I'd get all the edges. Then I applied a grayscale version of the leaf photo for the texture. I tweaked the photo a bit to get the bump map, and also added a procedural bump as well. With this method I was able to get all different shapes of leaves with different curls right in Bryce 4. I also had success with making a terrain and making the leaf only with textures and transmaps, but it was less convincing, and it was something of a pain to work with in wire frame. Well, the cats out of the bag now. I'm going to go play with magnets. Great exercise afr!

A coupla years ago I did an animation of the Moon revolving around the earth using a terrain in a similar manner as your soccer net. I tried to recreate it here without the textures for the spheres. I grouped the moon and the terrain together and spun them around the earth. Because the grid texture was set to World Space, it didn't rotate. The moon appeared to cause a dimple in the grid as it moved. The effect was very convincing. Steve S.

airflamesred: neat idea. I suspected as much as it reminded me of the poser breathing tut (using magnets). I don't know about metaballs as I'm using B3.1, and it could have been some other app I've never used. AgentSmith: thanks for the idea. I like that. Steve: I think you've discovered gravity.

johnpenn: Yeah, jagginess. I created these dragonfly wings with lattices and masks, and had the same problem. This was the second or third try, after much smoothing and erasing. The webbing was especially troublesome.

Erlik, it's probably that whole 256 shades of gray issue. Normally, that's more grey than your eye will ever see, but in the case of the Terrain Editor, it's just not enough!

Erlik: You don't need latices for that. You can also place the texture on a 2D-plane and give it a bumpmap. It's just as effective and renders much faster.

Rayraz - 2D plane/face+Bump Map : Oh, absolutely, that is THE best way to do leaves. BUT...if your scene calls just for one leaf, or a handful, close-up, the leaf terrain thing works great, to add just that little more "3D" to your pic, that's all. I use the same terrain technique to make all sorts of terrain models that will "fit" my textures, like this key thing I did some time ago. (technically its a Symmetrical Lattice) *Some GREAT tips/tricks being given in here...;o) AgentSmith

Aye, like Bikermouse I'm normally using an oder version of Bryce, but I have Bryce 5 at home. How does one create negative metaballs? I read it somewhere but I don't remember... I know they aren't quite like Biospheres ala Amorphium, but how do I boolean them with other primitives? Didn't know where to post this one...

You can't boolean metaballs. Use the shift key when clicking on the metaball create icon to create a negative metaball. Something I noticed with negative metaballs is they don't show up in the select list. Only way to select them is to click on them or use crtl-right-click.

Since we're playing guess how I did this, I discovered something interesting about lighting in bryce tonight. can you guess how I did this?

You mean the sun? ctrl-alt-shift-doubleclick plus ctrl-alt-click? Mm. No. I know I read something about lights and sun, but I don't remember what. Negative lighting? BTW, Rayraz, I coudln't use a photo, because I didn't have one. I only had a bw representation of a dragonfly wing. Perfect for masking a terrain. And I don't think I could use such a transparency for a photo.

bikermouse this can be done using infinite plane with a glass tex

no infinite planes here. no post effects.