You are far more patient than I am. Well done.

I think you nailed it. Very nice work.

Well, there are 8 identical trees in that render. 2 have a water texture, the other 6 have the cloud texture. And even just one tree makes render time sky rocket. But as fas as I know, you can't make splashes in the foreground without adding a ton of render time anyway. But is render time what's important, or is it the finished render? I guess that depends on the artist and the scene. For me, I don't care if it takes a month to render, I just care about my finished image.

I'd just crop the image so that the subject matter is more prominent. Meta balls are lavalampalicious.

ringbearer, thanks for the link. I read it, and it's close to what I'm looking for, but not quite. The User Leaf uses a 2D plane with a pic on it to create custom leaves, while the default leaves (.lps files) are actual meshes. I want to add my own meshes as leaves. That would allow all sorts of great effects. I'm working around it, and I'll post some results in a few days. (tip: leaf size can be smaller than 1. Just type in the decimal you want. You can achieve some great particle effects this way) Phantast, that is a very interesting comment. I've been thinking about it a while now, and I thought I'd share my thoughts. I understand that a signature should not interfere with the art, and the web plug does seem to meet the guidelines of a signature (though that is actually secondary, I'll cover that later). I tend to feel that the rules are a little different with digital art, just as the medium is. Photoshop will allow a user to sign an image invisibly with metadata. I think that satisifies the concept of a signature, yet it's invisible to the viewer on the web. Perhaps, the signature is a form of advertisement. Many digital artists are still placing the signature on the image and since there are more discrete ways to sign a digital file like with metadata, it has to be an ad -- or a misplaced ideal of tradition. I'll give you the real reason that I mark my images so intrusively: It's an anti-theft measure. Yes, it's sad but true. I've seen too many stolen pictures online, and so if anyone wants to steal my art, it's more difficult for them. That is, a really good photoshopper could steal it without too much trouble but probably wouldn't steal it if he were already so skilled. But an amateur (who is probably more likely to steal, whether it be by ignorance or not) would likely have an ugly blur there if he tried to remove the sig, and so it's really a theft deterrent. And though it would work if it were smaller, if the viewer likes the image, the signature gets people to visit my site, which isn't important to me now (the site is still in its alpha phase) but when the site is complete, it will be a good way to get more people to visit my galleries and get more exposure. And that is why we post art in the first place, isn't it? Ultimately, all of the pics I create and post online are merely reproductions of the real deal. It's just a thumbnail of the real art, which I hold on my computer, or print, or whatever. The real art doesn't bear any obnoxious signature at all (I do agree that it's obnoxious), but the online reproduction does. This could be a really heavy discussion. I'm still thinking about it and I wonder how others feel about it.

Nice work! I really enjoy looking at 3D art when there is nothing in the scene that screams at me because it's obviously computer generated. Subconsciously I know that the whole thing is Bryce, and I know how the entire scene is done. But the image goes beyond it's medium, and I don't even think about it. It's very refreshing to see 3D art that isn't tainted by its creation process. Keep up the good work.

I really have to make a tutorial for that, it's been asked before. It takes a lot of messing around with, but what it is a bunch of lattices. Make a lattice, and edit it. Make it black, and then add some spikes. Add a gaussian blur so the corners round out, then clip it so that all you get is the spikes in a circle. Apply the Misty Afternoon cloud texture to it. It should look to thin. Then, dupe it, (I did it on a path so its easier to move later), and rotate and scale it slightly to give it some volume and to give the illusion that it's not a duplicate. You'll need to play with how many duplicates you make -- to many, and it'll be too thick, too few, and it's too thin. Then, dupe it again, this time, change it's Material to a water so that there's some actual water in the foam. Once you've got a splash, you'll need to rotate it so that it impacts properly, and so that it looks right. I have about 12 lattices in that image, and I might add some more to the bottom of the image. Just know that it adds a lot to render time, and I crashed Bryce many times working on it. It may be a good idea to make a separate file for the wave and save it frequently. You can merge the wave file into your scene later. (I noticed I was crashing when I had a lattice or two or three on the clipboard, so copy/paste was risky on my Mac (180MB RAM dedicated to Bryce). I hope that helps. I'll post a proper tutorial one of these days, I'm just too busy at the moment. It's a tedious process that takes a lot of trial and error, but it's workable. I'm currently working on a way to create that effect (and others) with the Tree Lab. All I have to do is figure out a way to edit the leaf shapes, and it'll be a piece of cake. Anyone know how to add custom leaves to the TreeLab?

Guesstimate is good with me, Thanks AgentSmith! I plan to render that huge with soft lights, but that's going to take in the neighborhood of 6 days, so I'm still working small in the proofing stages. (it still takes 8+ hours with the transparent drapes, and those waves aren't easy on the processor either) I'll res that texture map way up then. I wasn't sure how high to go, but 3000 sounds like a good place to start. Thanks again.

I use a separate transparency map on a different channel in the Materials editor. And to that channel, I import the transparency map as a picture -- set to parametric. Oh, and it's very, very important to have "Blend Transparencies" checked off. That's really about all there is, well, except for actually finding the transparency map pictures that you are using in Poser. I hope that helps

Open your scan in Photoshop, and note the size. Note the actual dimensions and the resolution, or the absolute pixel size (it's less math). Say your scan is 1600 x 1200 pixels (5.3" x 4" @ 300ppi). Render your Bryce image to be at least 1600 x 1200, and you are good to go. FYI: ppi doesn't matter at all until you actually try to print your image. At that point, you will need at least 150 ppi for printing on an inkjet, and 300 ppi for professional printing.

It's not like we're voting for president here. Let the cheaters cheat. The only thing that happens is that they cheapen the award to the point it's meaningless. Ultimately, the award doesn't mean anything anyway, because as said, art is a very personal thing. The viewer will either like or dislike an image regardless of how many or what type of banners are on the page next to it.

Can the mods check the IP addresses of the voter? I don't know if this BB supports IP logging, but that would help eliminate double votes by the same person. As for rankings, a 1-10 rating simply won't work. Just check out the what's new gallery. A piece either gets a 7+ or no rating at all. I, for example, have seen a ton of garbage passed off as art, but it's better not to say anything than say what I truly think of it. Even if I offered constructive criticism, there is some stuff out there that is so bad it would still be too harsh to the author. For good, honest feedback your best bet is to start a thread, in this forum or another, and just ask people what they think. Eventually, you'll get a feel for who can help you more in depth and who just says, "cool, man." I do think that it's interesting how so many people don't comment on bad stuff, especially considering how many trolls there are out there. I'd expect more flame wars to be honest.

Are you talking about for presenting your images on another computer? If so, figure that the majority of the users online are working with 800 x 600. Some artists use higher. I use 1280 x 1024, (and 1024 x 768 at work... older monitor) because I like to see more on screen. (plop render's my friend) So, if you are presenting art to someone else, whether it be over the web or not, try to keep your image within the 640 x 480 dimensions. That way, it's sure to fit into the window, and when the user opens your image, they don't just see the top left corner. Unless that's all you want them to see, and you are hopeful that they will tolerate scrolling to see your pic. For me, if I have to scroll around the pic, I don't enjoy it as much no matter how good it is. And if I have to scroll side to side... forget about it. Putting the "best viewed at x resolution" on the page is an absolutely useless endeavour. Honestly, when was the last time you changed your screen resolution to view a page or an image? If you're like me, the answer is never (Star Wars trailers excepted). Some users can't even res up to 1024 x 768. Some have slower video cards. Some have older monitors. What if the user has an LCD monitor and 800 x 600 is all they can do clearly? So, though you may not be inclined to make separate versions of your work for lower res viewers, I think you'd do well to use Photoshop (or equivalent) to size down your pics for on screen distribution. Your viewers will spend more time looking at your work, they will load faster over the web, and you can always provide a larger resolution version for the truly interested viewer that wants more than 640x480. I hope that's what you are asking. And Agent Smith is dead on about color. Windows is a bit behind in color calibration as it is, and when you add in all the crappy displays out there... it's a jungle. If only there was a fix for the crappy monitor....

I've had trouble with poor (read: no) rotation with 2 key frames. I've had a lot of trouble with the "auto key" feature in the past. I'd manually key in 4 frames (one for each second, that's logical). If you manually key them, it's much easier to work with your animation later, because you know exactly where they are, how many there are, and how far apart they are. Autokeying doesn't seem to be very thorough. It misses a lot.

Though there are some killer images in this thread, truly exceptional work both conceptually and technically. I personally felt the strongest emotion from seeing poor Grover cornered and horrified. Granted, that emotion was humor, but it's still an emotional reaction. Rayraz gets my vote.