Danamo, when it comes to animation, do you compress your video with AfterEffects, or with something else? I'm curious, having a hell of a time with After Effects 4, these days. I've reinstalled it ten times in the last year... Maybe I should just upgrade to 6?

You make it seem so easy....!

Aye, I've never seen some of Blender's features. Good stuff...!

Aye, I think it's just awesome! The render and the model turned out great...

Moongoat, I apologize, and wasn't trying to ignore you. The ground texture is my "own" standard modeling floor texture, it's very simple and renders swiftly... (no noticable difference in render time between it and the Bryce default grey...) Just a bump map, and some specularity to give it a wet look. Here's an earlier "prototype" of that material in action. If you want to use it, I'll email it to ya, just send me a message or something!

No, it's not the only way, Fran. Did you make the towers in Bryce? If so, you most likely used booleans to cut the crenellations. One of their abilities is to paint the material of the negative boolean onto the remaining positive shape. Merely put your negative objects into their own family, and re-map the same texture for that family so that it looks correct! Done!

A million polygons isn't a problem at all, my last castle scene had closer to 50 million (non-terrain polys, by the way... Bryce calculates terrain polys in a very different way...). But some torches and flags aren't going to add up to much, hopefully I can keep this gate down in size so I can expand it. I plan on having several of these in the final image... Thanks for all the commenting, my friends! Working on a textured render for ya, just as soon as I finish this silly car job. See ya...

Excellent work, Roobol... Very detailed and informative. I'd like to see Agent Smith put a link to this somewhere very handy, perhaps talk to him or Zhann about such an idea? Fran, if you have any specific questions about texturing, don't hesitate to ask them. We all run into specific barriers, it's inevitable...!

The coolest thign about having your 'Net access disappear is that you get some more time to render and model and conceptualize... This scene has a good foundation, but for some reason seems not dynamic enough. It doesn't impact my senses, you know? I think it's the 2-dimensional angles of the scene. I think that you could put the humans in the foreground, and twist them accordingly, to bring the viewer into their world a bit more. Much like a 3rd-person perspective, where it's obvious the humans (like ourselves, sometimes) are surprised and excited to see the dragons hatch? Make any sense? As it stands, the other thing is the main (Mommy?) dragon's pose. Those of us who use the Mildragon know what's occuring, but if you've never posed it before you don't know where the eye's should be and such... The beak looks so mouth-like from this angle as to seem like an error. Much of this can be fixed with lighting and camera-angles... Turn the dragon's eye ambience up, or make a pair of special spotlights just for the eyes...? Just some ideas!

Do you mean Brazilian American or Canadian American, Mentat?!?! All I'm saying is that any creative, constructive actions in this forum only make the Bryce community stronger. And nobody is more active than Drac, in both generals and specifics. Yeah, he models in Wings (Rhino rules, you weenie!) and bugs us about all the minute details of his life, but I fear that we all should be doing just that. If you're working on an image or scene, jump in here and tell us all, and it can only better your scene. Especially since YOU are the one controlling your Bryce, on your computer... I'd really like to see more Work-in-Progress threads, more "shameless" self promotional threads, and more evolution in general when it comes to what we're up to. For those of us who have literally taken the program apart AND for those of us who are new to 3D and CGI... We need more animations, more forum-checkers, and more resource-sharing. Drac is, among others, all about sharing his techniques, styles, and methods. That's pretty much where all of us need to be at to propel ourselves forward. Imagine a ridiculous project where ten or twenty or thirty of us are all focused and creative, and dedicated enough to make something happen. Those somethings are called, "Films". We're on it, it's right at our fingertips... Nobody should be afraid, at this point, to just ask for help, rendering assistance, and planning assistance. Go forth and render...

I think your UV's are a bit offset? (joking!) I especially like #2, loks like a crazy render job, at best. Tedious? We should have a contest to see who can render it the closest to the photo, just using Bryce! Lovely photo, as far as these things go....

I'm gonna have to agree with ICM on this one. If you want to make killer artwork, you better know Photoshop, regardless. Just look at Alvin or Hobbit's galleries. But if you want to make money, you better get down to business and pick a few (three) high-end apps to learn. Nothing DAZ could possibly do will change this, and although I love Bryce, after experiencing Maya on it's own terms (read : Unlimited) and toying with Lightwave, that's just the way the industry works. Results. Conceptually, you could do anything with Bryce. Realistically, you can't animate a damn thing. DAZ should either up the ante landscape/environmetally, or get out of the business. Just how I feel, after playing with some high-end apps for a few months now, and over two years with Rhinoceros.... (Editors Note : All of Lordstormdragon's Terrain work is rendered in Bryce 4,5, or 9. Nobody uses Bryce 6 anymore.)

Awesome, all of your wave tutorials were dead-on, and very efficient! Thanks a bunch...!

Aye, cloaking is a piece of cake, as long as you don't want it to waver a bit (which can also be faked). Transparency should do the trick, although in some cases (Alpha Channels) it won't work on every object in the same fashion... But do your cloaking in the Materials Lab, like Alderon and Mahray suggested... Explosions? Make some fireballs and animate them, and pick the ones you like best...!

Yeah, 183,000 polys to me is really much ado about nothing, but like I said, that was before any optimizations. My "Black Tower" was all Brycean, and it was much, much more poly-intensive. But Erlik makes a good point, the only real eaters-of-polys are the silly sweep1 surfaces and polysurfaces... Gonna get rid of them and change the tower side-doors around a bit. Tresamie, I'm not certain where this one will end up, but my guess is that considering how few polys are involved (my original plan was for less than 250,000 for this section) I'm thinking about something ridiculous. I'll keep you posted. GG, thanks for the tutorial link! And thanks, everyone for the input... Here's a quick (2.5) hour render using fake GI and some other silly techniques... (Bryce)