Before the inter-personal render wars start to flame too high, let me interject a quick question to liftan, if you're still tracking your own thread. While everyone is taking the time to write out their explanations to your questions, what makes these densely packed paragraphs more readable than the manual? Don't get me wrong. I hate wading through complex bulky blocks of text too but if you're at the beginning why not start with the manual. It has to be faster than waiting for someone to reply and regurgitate the same info from the book. I agree it is worth it when a friendly voice can distill a chapter into one wise sentence but you still eventually have to put your time in. Wishing someone could save me from the GIANT Lightwave 7 manual and just pour the info into my brain, deci6el.

They are simple questions with answers already typed out in the manual. The manual won't hurt you. Just look up the specific words you question in the index. In brief, might I suggest making a VERY simple scene and keep your render options very simple. Make some benchmarks. Increase the numbers and compare your pictures and their render times. By keeping picture resolution small and the contents simple your render times will be fast but will give you scale by which you can measure the consequences of certain settings. This is better than doing a multi-character scene in a dense forest and finding out three days later that depth of field wasn't the way to go. There is nothing wrong with you're Bryce5. Have fun.

What's going on inside the diamonds fits the definition of caustic. Currently and for the past 5 years or so most CG people only use the term to refer to the light that passes all the way through the object and is projected, reflected or in other ways perturbed onto another object. A great example on American Televison right now is the Visine "water drop" commercial. The light that passes through the water drop becomes this magnifying-glass-burn of light that dances around as the droplet changes shape. Simple, silly, but really beautiful. AND it gets the red out!

Yes, good to see some pure design or abstract or whatever you want to call it. Good to see this and the others' examples of how to put metaballs through their paces.

Yeah, it's smart modeling when you know that complex objects can be hinted at or completed with primitives and yet the textures/mtls take it all the way home. Ok. The soldering iron you had. That was one of the objects I really liked but the all the labels are really well done. And the plastic bag! It looks really good. Ok. I don't mean to blow it out of proportion but its worth underscoring how important good textures gets 3D work to look better than average. Again, way to go. Hey, someday, you can scale your peg board down and use it as a cracker. (I always thought peg board looked like giant graham crackers, not just yours) :)

Wow! Very nice job on all the... well, everything. You didn't just whip out all those models just for this Challenge did you? If so, you are really fast.

Wow. Look at that! Sorry you're on the other side of the envelope from me at this point. I've been to impatient with the render times so far. But by all means, GO GO GO. Get to the bottom of this! I love stat tests like this. Thanks for posting it.

For the head mtl I will suggest my standard comment: Lower the ambience. That's one primary reason a lot of objs look washed out. Make the ambient color darker and lower the ambient value. If that's too much contrast work your way back up until you get a good balance. The lighting may be a bit flat. Too much coming from the front and flattening out the other shadows you're getting from above. Get the Head TR map that came with the poser head. You'll find it in Poser/Runtime/Textures. Select the eyelash mesh in bryce and set the transparency to use that map. Set the mtl to blend transparency (rather than additive). Last but not least, the color texture for the head, you might want to try varying it a little more, so its not all one homogeneous color. Did I say a few suggestions? You're intent (by your telling) came through loud and clear so congrats! You're description matched what I saw.

Not happy with the head texture? For advice I would have to know what you were expecting it to be. Were you looking for more texture, more color? What did you want to say with the image? Decapitation on a bed of ball bearings? Mind you, this is not a criticism. I'm just trying to get a sense of where you were trying to go. Then maybe I can have an opinion whether you got close to that goal or not. Currently I'm getting the choked, suffocating, "I've-had-it-up-to-here" feeling from your picture. Again, that's not a vote about whether the picture is successful or not, that's just how I'm reading it. BTW, welcome. Posting pics is great in this forum. People are generally Very helpful. I hope I have not broken that reputation.

Check out the opening of Saving Pvt. Ryan for reference. There's nothing to say that what you have isn't rep. of underwater blood. Everything in life isn't perfectly lit and defined. Not satisfied? Fair enough. Try lowering the base density, in order to create several masses of what would be multi-clouds of the more viscous blood finding its path through the colder less dense water. Because we all know blood is thicker than water. lol

Lot's of good entries and I'm voting for deci6el I would've voted that way even if I hadn't made it. It's just the kind of picture I like.

BaDaBing! Or.."gathers no moss" for the sticklers. And the terrain I started with was "mossy rock" but it was too grid-like. No post fx this challenge, just bryce.

Very beautiful work. Nice to see all segments of the great timeline being accounted for. Beautiful folds and a great opportunity to creat some fabo textures. Now what's with the severed arm?

Being slightly impatient I don't delve into tutorials too much. Not because I have any lack of need to learn, I'm more apt to hack at my own solution before taking the time to read. As for fire, you'll see a few frames at the above link where I had a wharehouse that was on fire. In painter I had a flame brush (which is just a predifined flame shape) that when used is additive so that as the brush builds up, it tends to get brighter. A lot of paint programs in their effort to emulate paint tend to combine color subractively, which works well when that's what you want. The fire brush in painter must have a corallary in Photoshop. Define your flame shape and paint away using an additive compositing method. As for doing it all in Bryce I've never been completely satisfied with the results. Some textures do a fabulous job but only get you 85% there. Historically, I am a compositor and have no allegience to any one tool. Start with what you like but use whatever you need to make it right. That's an old compositor's motto I just made up. cheers