Hi All,

Does anyone have any tips on render/sky/lighting settings to make a Bryce scene look like a photograph?

Bryce scenes are very interesting in themselves, but I have a project that needs to look like a picture taken with a camera.

The biggest concern is sharpness (crispness) and clarity, as the final image will have to be compressed via JPEG, which tends to blur and introduce artifacts. So the better the original image, the less problems with compression, right?

I'd appreciate any suggestions, and some examples would be great!

Thanks so much!

Not so, I mean in theory you are correct, but if you are looking for photo-quality results from a .jpg image, you are fooling yourself. If you are producing web-ready images, unless everyone you know has a T1 you are stuck with .jpg for now, and that means compression. Taken out of context, I would say that if you are having a problem achieving realistic results in Bryce, consider picking up some books on it or browsing the forum with a "realistic" search. Chances are it's the lighting and/or the ambience that is making you feel like your images aren't photo-quality. Truth be told, most photos DON'T look realistic, only our brains accept them as real because we "know" they are. Use this to your advantage. (bows to you)

I have found the best way to learn how to light realisticly in Bryce, or any other 3D program is to study real life lighting that would be used in photography. Study classical lighting set-ups in photography, that is the best thing I can suggest. Also, kelvin temperatures and how they realate to the sun, different kinds of light bulbs, etc. Really sharp and clear renders usually don't look real beacuse they are too clean, sharp, etc. I usually have to dirty my renders up to make them look more like a photo. But, then again, I don't know what your specific subject is. One thing I can say about jpg compression, try to stay away from large areas of single colors. Meaning the more busy your textures in your pic are the less compression you will be able to see. (hope that makes sense) AgentSmith

One way to get over some of the drawbacks with compression is to step down the original image by increments till you get the best result in a small file. As for Bryce, I tend to keep the ambience settings on all textures very low and mostly off altogether. The rule of thumb I use is low ambience in the background and none for anything up close. Good luck!

Actually, it's the other way around. The more crisp the image the more problems you'll get with compression, because the artefacts will be more noticable! And sorry to be the bearer of bad news - and much as I love Bryce - you will NEVER get any landscape render that resembles photorealism, no matter how good you are. The problem is not the clarity, but the lighting. Unless you're running a render farm, you won't be able to get the simulated radiosity necessary for photorealism (unless you're working with a VERY simple scene). But if you're determined to try, I would do the following:- 1) Don't use skylab at all 2) Disable the sun 3) Use between 3 and 6 volumetric slabs for your clouds, to give a convincing 3d effect 4) Use a single, bright, distant, soft light for your sun 5) Use between 50 and 500 lights for ambience (depending on how powerful your machine is) in a dome over your scene 6) Use more, ranged lights as required to simulate reflected highlights, e.g. from water, wet foliage, etc. 7) Use a large HDRI dome over your entire scene, textured from a sky photo, for the "background" sky and to enhance the ambient lighting via reflections 8) Render, and wait several days 9) Wait several more days 10) Say "balls to this", go out and take a photo, or at least buy Max5! ;) Good luck, though, I'd like to see what you come up with! :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=210538

I think that's an awesome picture, Tuttle, but your pessimism is misplaced! We've all seen and made hundreds of beautiful photo-realistic scenes and landscapes in Bryce...! No offense intended, but NEVER is like FOREVER. It's Renderosity, not Nebulosity! But out of curiosity, what kind of machine are you using, Clyde? Tuttle? I'm not sure if comparing render times will make us better artists, but it'd be nice to know what hardware is most effective. My own benchmarks starring a score of constructs have shown me that network rendering is the way to go. I've got my 1hr39min Pentium 3/600 benchmark scene down to 22 min, and that's just with two AMD 1.2's attached. Maybe I'll post the data... The other cold, hard fact: A 64MB DDR Geforce 2 shaved off a whopping 40 seconds! (cackles) Thanks, NVidia, for everything! My point is, it should never take DAYS to render! Call up some buddies, make them drop of their machines for a night. You only need Bryce 5 on one machine, anyway... (I always stash Lightning on Other People's Hard Drives)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=253351&Start=1&Artist=AgentSmith&ByArtist=Yes

Check some of my images, Clyde. Of course, I have a 2.2 gig machine, pushing over a gig of RAM. I also have a 120 gig drive, so I can keep everything right where I want them. I have a large gallery, and some of the images show what can be done with terrains and lighting, just through experimentation and using things in different ways from what is expected. For instance, the sun can be used for ambience and a global light, with linear dropoff and other limations removed, can become the new sun, using much lower intensities than you would with normal lighting. My images are all sharper than you will see posted. However, they show sharper here than they do at some other places, but grainier than at still others. Even a jpeg, going off at 100%, can appear just about as good as a bitmapped image, but it won't show that way at these galleries. To get a sharper image, just make sure you lower the haze some, leaving enough to show distances, get good light right on your important characters, moving it around until you show just what you want to see, constantly doing test renders to check on your work. Having a strong system does help in that department, though. If and when you see my images, remember that each one took from ten minutes to twenty minutes rendering. That's all. Because of that, I can do a lot of little renders, using a few passes, just to be sure I get the light right and there is a balance. Fooling around with lighting especially can be the difference between creating a grainy image and a much sharper one. My terrains are made by mixing and matching various texture maps. The busier the better, I always say. You'll see that in my images, where a few maps tossed around can make a simple terrain mesh look like it's full of cracks, crevices, gravel, little bits of this and that. Who knows what's there? It's important to keep a check on the level assigned to the busy texturing, though, so you don't go overboard and make a flat, uninteresting sandpile, or, on the other hand, an ugly closeup of goofy shapes that look like gobs of wet, colored goo. I play in the deep texture editor, too, in order to alter whatever I see, then I test the results in the staging area. Good luck in your quest. Walt

First of all, do NOT use bryce to make the jpeg....save as a bmp and use some other program to make it into a jpeg. Make sure gamma correction is turned off. Set antiAliasing to fine art (or higher if you have b5). Do not use the fast preview mode. Go to the skylab and set shadow intensity to about 50...the default 90 is too high for anything but outer space scenes. I've been experimenting with turning on the cast shadows in the cloud cover, and higher ambiance/diffusion in the material lab, with interesting results. Ambiance settings can make or break a scene. 80% diffuse and 20% ambiant is a good start, but not a set rule...different lighting will need different settings. Hope this helps....

"show sharper here than they do at some other places, but grainier than at still others" I have ran across people saying this this before. I myself have never seen any of my pictures, on any website, that looks any different whatsoever as it does just bringing it up from my hard drive. They all look exactly the same whether its here, or at the 4-5 other places my stuff is at. Maybe that's just me, though. Man! MikeArizma, you have 462 pics in your gallery, that's an average of an upload every two days for the past two and half years...how do you and all your clones do it? Lol. AgentSmith

I would add something to the rendering to fine art (or higher if you have b5. The members have shown me that the higher anti-aliasing only really helps you if you are trying to show finer textures in the far distance. If your scene doesn't have a lot of distance depth to it (say, like a still life) using fine anti-aliasing isn't going to truly help your picture. This, of course varies picture to picture. There are no really cut and dried rules when to use it and when not to. I just would like to cut down on the frustrated new users who are wondering their simple pic is taking 10 hours to render. AgentSmith

shadowdragonlord - I use a 1.7AMD with 1Gb (& Radeon 64Mb). I hear what you say about great landscapes, and I've seen a lot of excellent stuff created with Bryce, but I've still never seen any landscape that looks remotely like a photo! Mike's landscapes are great, for instance, and Hobbit's are out of this world, but nobody would ever look at them and ask if they are real (as, of course, I'm sure the artists intend!) But point me in the direction of a photorealistic Bryce render and I'll eat my words! :) Or any render, come to that (oh, apart from simple Terragen distant hills, which can sometimes be convincing)! Having said that, there is a picture of an old car in an overgrown garage that was done for a Max 5 demo that is almost impossible to tell to be a render. I'll check out the URL when I've got time - it is absolutely astonishing.

Attached Link: http://www.cgchannel.com/news/showfeature.jsp?newsid=531

Gulp! :) He's even got the polish marks on the paintwork! Wow! But I'm only going to eat half my words, because this is more an object render than a landscape, although there is a bit of landscape in the background. Pretty impressive, though, I must admit!!! Will the next Bryce challenge be to produce something similar out of spheres and cubes? ;)

Attached Link: http://www.discreet.com/products/3dsmax/

Yeah, those polish marks really help sell it... Lol...tough crowd, hard to please. I failed to understand it had to be a landscape, lol. I'm not all knowing when it comes to great Bryce landscape artists. Check out Clays stuff or this guy, he made the cover art for the Bryce 4 box, maybe you've seen his stuff. http://members.attcanada.ca/~m.murphy/3d.thumbs.html AS

Ah, I regurgitate some of my words!!!! The mustang background is a mapped photo! I thought it was too damn good to be true!

Oops - posted at the same time there. Yeah, I've seen Clay & Murphy's stuff and it's awesome! I just wish I had their patience when it comes to building landscapes (and their skill!)

AgentSmith, http://members.attcanada.ca/~m.murphy/seasons.html is in Poser 5 manual, as an example of art created in Poser. What gives?

It's true that creating photorealistic scenery isn't happening in Bryce, and my purpose in generating scenery isn't to do that at all. Actually, I want my images to look more like paintings. For me, it's artwork. The argument concerning photorealistic scenery might be that if you cannot tell the difference, why not use photos worked into the image? There are digital cameras and 3D graphics programs. They can work together, of course. And even though the super high-end stuff at ILM and other professional outfits proves that you can do about anything digital, they still utilize actual scenery shots while adding in the digital characters, such as what was done in Jurassic Park. I read where they duplicate scenery, including ungulating waters, only where necessary when looking for stark realism. AgentSmith, I usually do one or two images per day, but go off line for vacations or when I'm working on a batch of images for other purposes, such as when I was loading up at the Fine Arts department of the Marketplace here. I sometimes work with writers or supply some work to schools (supplying material for role playing games), etc., all upon request. Not much money in it yet, but there's always a little hope for that down the road apiece. My work flows quickly, as I have never read the manuals fully (which seems to be a hinderance) and learned by experimentation or an occasional tutorial by people who, like me, discovered things in their own way. Poser and Bryce work together fine for me, plus my rendering times are very, very short. Each image you see took from ten to twenty minutes, with an occasional one that took over a half hour. Because of that, the only time taken is the design of the image itself. I then post them here and at the 3D Commune, where the comments come in larger numbers. I post there under my real name, using WMBagley for the spelling and case. From my perspective, my work shows here a bit sharper than at the Commune. It's fairly obvious to me on this computer. There is another site, although I haven't posted there in many moons, which showed them as sharp as they are on my own screen before posting. It's not in this country, so I have totally forgotten the site URL. I posted there as a guest artist.

Clyde!. I would be interested to see an example photograph that shows the kind of resolution/realism you are seeking. I have been trying to imagine what the final result is that you wish to achieve in Bryce. It seems to me there are as many styles of photographing a landscape as there are styles of creating one in 2D or 3D mediums. One of the claims of Bryce is that it can create "realworld images of landscapes". Give us a benchmark and I shall have a go at creating something just to see what is what. Cheers.

Hi Again, Well, you have showed me that it CAN be done. Now, I just have to get learning all that lighting and I guess, put up with enormous render times. (17 hours??) All your images are along the lines of what I was thinking, so now I have, along with your inspiration, some homework to do! I'm running a G4 867 MHZ single processor MAC. I don't want to open the door of MAC vs. PC, so let's not go there. The G4 is what I have and it works, and it's what I have to work with. I have no complaints about it. (Except of course, that there are a lot more programs for Windows than MAC, but Windows is a larger user base, so that makes sense.) It seems to me from what I am reading that it comes down to lighting? If I understand you all correctly, it is better to use a LOT of lights, strategically placed, rather than depend on the sky lighting? Texture mapping is also an important issue (the higher res the texture map, the better?) Well, I have so much to learn! And to try out! Thanks for all you input and ideas. You ALWAYS come through and answer my questions. Huge render times, huh? Sigh. Still, it's way better than it used to be, when we only had 256 colors to use. Thanks again for all your input. I only hope that COREL is watching this forum and seeing all that you have made Bryce do. You take it way beyond anything hinted at in the manuals.

Yeah, basically if you're going for true photorealism you need a
load of lights, arranged pretty carefully around your scene. If you
want the painterly approach you can make do with very few lights,
maybe even just one, and let textures and post do the rest. Another
problem with photorealism is that you'd have to be godlike with
your postwork in order for it not to show! Texture mapping is key,
too. I think the mistake that is made a lot is to go mad with bump
maps, when if you look around you there are very few objects that
have great grooves and crevices in them!! (Apart from my ex's
face). Anyway, good luck! I'll go back to watching my monthly
challenge pic build up by one line of pixels every 10 minutes!! :

Hi Again, Brendan asked for the image that I was inspiring me to ask the question about Bryde that I did, so here it is: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/gallery/cubicvr/church.html This is a QuickTime VR image, and it seems to me to be sharp and clear (although there are some anti-aliasing problems.) The photo was obviously take in the organ loft. Stay with me here for a moment. If you look at the benches in the organ loft, you can see (or so it seems to me) that Bryce can certainly make a bench that would render almost as nicely. But, of course, as you move on through the image (try looking up at the roof), you'll see some wonderful detail that a camera would get, but it just wouldn't be as clear (or so it seems to me) in Bryce. I know this is mixing apples (pardon the pun) and oranges, as Bryce is more bent on landscapes (and it does a really cool job, as I have seen from some of your images) than building interiors. However, my experience with Bryce in VR is that it can't come close to matching this image for quality, even if it were to work well as a standard "flat" image. What do you all think, would Bryce be up to an image of this style? Seeing that picture is what prompted me to ask the question.

Bryce can do interiors as well as landscapes. Don't sell Bryce short, it's a lot more powerful than people give it credit for and for the price you can't beat it. It can do some things that the high-end programs can't acheive.

Did someone move the goalpost?

Damn, goalposts as well? ;) Clyde, there's nothing in that photo than you couldn't produce in Bryce, and with MUCH better clarity if you use the higher render settings (64 r/p+). That image is not particularly clear IMO. Given patience (and the daddy of all computers) you could model and render that whole scene in Bryce. Trouble is, of course, you're looking at what? - 20,000 objects, 2,000 light sources? so it would be the work of many, many months to accomplish. I reckon to do all that you'd need 1-2Gb memory, and a very fast CPU and a good few weeks' render time, but there's no reason at all why it couldn't be done. I'd certainly rather attempt that than a realistic outdoor scene (which is what we were talking about, isn't it?) ;)

The 3DSMax render - That's beautiful! See, one of the things that helps make that look real is lighting. There are many other things, but lighting is the keystone, IMO. Mustang, oh sure the background is a photo, sorry thought that was obvious, sorry. What he did there is a perfect example of what I play around with in Bryce. Just lighting, shading and the reflection of a mesh with real world photo's. Martin Murphy's example of Poser Figures, but rendered in Bryce - Curious Labs has no bones about their figures being rendered in other programs, that's half the selling/marketing point of Poser, that the figures are exportable. They want to exploit this fact, thus opening up a larger market for them to sell to. Martin Murphy is now moving on to go and work at George Lucas' ILM, btw. Mike - I wish I had your speed, I work in Poser, but once again I am such a perfectionist, it still takes me forever, lol. As an example of lighting, I will point out your picture "Castle Dark". Great contrast in froeground/background, very Rembrandt. Clyde - The VR in question is complex, yes you could simulate that interior in Bryce, it would take quite a while to build all the objects, but it could be done. Once again, it's getting the lighting correct. And, the best places (IMO) to go and see lighting in the real world are big churches. On the other hand the are the hardest to replicate in 3D. It's very hard to match in quality what a real camera can do, all that 3D can do is come close. The VR's anti-aliasing problem-not really a problem, it's just the nature of the VR, especially noticed when you have high contrast between objects. You will see this "effect" more in the bright areas than you will the darker areas. Take a look at this Bryce modeler's objects, they relate somewhat to objects that would have to be created for that church. He's very good. http://www.wappen3d.com/engl.htm AgentSmith

One more thing! the Jpeg with the white background was saved with a high setting of 97.34k, the black background at a medium setting 67.1k. both 72dpi. I expect they could go even lower if needed.

It could be that I have a warped view of the world in as much as I work with a screen res of 1600 x 1200 85Hz on a Lacie Electron 22 Blue. It could be that we all view stuff here in very different ways indeed? Any techi type views on this subject would interest me. Cheers! to all.

Noise is what gives you the photo like feel. This is because photographic film is very grainy. Look at some negatives under a magnifying glass to see what I mean. Unfortunately, you can't ever get this effect exactly in 3d art, because a pixel is at least 4 times bigger than a film grain. You could get it only if you renderedf at 300dpi/ppi and then printed the image. Unless people have super high res displays capable of displaying a 300dpi image, then all it does it look really big for everyone. You can however come close...One way to acheive this effect is to use post work with some sophisticated noise filters and grain. Other 3d applications have this capability built in. It is reffered to as entropy or grain or texture or whatever. In bryce, you can fake this by doing the following: Setup your scene. Make sure shadows are set to below 60% if you are using the sun, enable soft shadows. Make EVERY MATERIAL AT LEAST 9% reflective. Enable blurry reflections in the render options. Set the Rays per pixel to 16. Do a plop test render and notice the noise effect. For more reflective materials that you want to have sharp reflections, make the specular halo below 50% grey. This will blur the reflections less. For materials you want to look non-reflective, set the specular halo to 98% white. This will blur them as much as possible.

Attached Link: http://www.kjngrafix.com/gallery/inspiration.jpg

Hi All, Thanks again for your added information! Madmax_br5: Re: Inspiration.jpg. That's BRYCE? WOW! I can hardly tell. Did you do this one? Very nice! Brendan: Your columens look wonderful. Did you use standard materials, or special ones for the marble? You mentioned using atmospheric effects in discrete areas. Do you mean sky lab settings? If so, how does one make them NOT universal (i.e. fog, affects the whole scene, doesn't it? Or is there a way to say to Bryce, Foggy here, not foggy there? As usual, you all give me a lot to hink about and play with. Stuff I'd not found in the manual or in books, so again THANKS!

No the image is not mine, it is by hanley laudrey. That is his web site. And yes it's bryce.

Clyde, there is a way to make fog patchy. Do not use Atmosphere settings, but use stones or lattices with volumetric cloud textures. Position them where you want. Adjust density to taste. Take care that the stones do not overlap because you will get weird effects. Voila. Madmax, Inspiration is kinda cheating. Yes, it looks very good, but being black and white, it masks things that would be visible in colour.

Thanks clyde, I prefer to use my own scans for most materials, this cuts down render times by huge chunks. The marbles in these pics are scanned from sample 30cm x 30cm floor tiles, if I was not so lazy I would scan more for variety, I use them at 100 - 150dpi for close detail and 72dpi in the background. When importing picts I reckon that the default ambience setting is way too high and fuzzes up the images but that is a matter of taste. Cheers!

Thanks clyde, I prefer to use my own scans for most materials, this cuts down render times by huge chunks. The marbles in these pics are scanned from sample 30cm x 30cm floor tiles, if I was not so lazy I would scan more for variety, I use them at 100 - 150dpi for close detail and 72dpi in the background. When importing picts I reckon that the default ambience setting is way too high and fuzzes up the images but that is a matter of taste. Cheers!