Hi All, we tried our Bryce 5 and got questions in how to make the settings for a realistic scenery. For example we imported some Poser-People into Bryce. After we had rendered the scenery, we noticed very dark shadows at the bodies of the objects. No doubt, the shadows are at the right position, but the shadowed parts of the body are too dark (nearly black). We tried a lot to make better renders (settings in atmosphere, sky, clouds, sun,....) but we failed. Any ideas how to make more realistic shadows? Thank's in advance Matthias + Daniel Kruse

Hi Guys, I usually add a radial light set to squared to light up areas of poser figures even when they are outside. You can adjust the intensity up or down to match the rest of your lighting and move the light closer or further away. I use as many as it takes to get the right lighting. Perhaps others have better way to do this but it works for me! g Cie

If you increase the Ambience setting in the Materials editor of the objects with the too dark shadows (sounds like the ground from your decription), it ought to help. Be aware however, that Ambience is a fickle mistress, and if you add too much, your image gets ugly right quick.

A setting of 80-100 diffusion and 20 ambience will serve you for most purposes, but also be aware that ambience relates to the settings in the sky/atmosphere figures, there fore setting a white ambience value of 20 will make no difference at all if global ambience is set to black in the sky menu! It can indeed be a fickle balance with all the settings!

Try going into the sky lab (if you are using the sun for the light source) and reducing the shadow intensity from 90 (default) to something light 50. Also you can change the color of the shadow.

The shadow setting in the sky lab also affects the darkness/intensity of shadows cast by the radial and other lights - I found out by accident. Now, when I create any scene, the FIRST thing I do is go into the skylab and reset the shadows to around 40 or so. Later I usually tweak it, but I've found that the range of 40 - 50 gives the best results in most cases.

If you're not using Soft shadows, this can help. You have to turn on the sun's soft shadow in the Skylab and in Render settings in order to get it to work. The suggestions above are also very good and I have used them all at one time or another. Good Luck!

I've tried all of the above. Personally, I prefer not using ambinance and instead, using spotlights. Best wishes.

Hi All, thank's a million for all the good hints. We are going to try all and hopefully we are satisfied with the result. Have a nice day Daniel + Matthias