Nice work... Yeah, the Rhino people might have some good ideas for ya, those guys are very cool, too!

Love those procedurals! Gonna give us a screenshot or two on how you did it!??! Looks very nice...

Aye, I suppose if you're JUST talking about edges, then that would work. When it comes to texture clarity and quality, though... Totally different ballpark. (grins... don't make ME post screenshots...)

"experimented heavily in True Ambience and the like... We were able to make light bounce with TA, but since..."

Now let's see ya render an animation with this effect? Not gonna happen... Good to see you still alive, PJF! What have you been up to, anyway?

Message edited on: 01/29/2005 13:02

I disagree with Quest on this one, and always have. I know it's not for animation, but if it WERE : Your final animation is only as good as it's input source files. If you're doing web animation, no AA might be okay. But if you're doing film like I have been, you'd never, EVER get away without anti-aliasing. Compression doesn't make up for AA mistakes. And did you see one single pixel in the Matrix, or on Gollum in the LOTR? Nope, not one. Do you think for one second that compression is what made those movies so clean?

Aye, I could not find ONE SINGLE MIKEY hair online, so GG, like they say in South Park : It's ON! I wouldn't say I'm an anatomy expert, Hythshade, but from the 3D view in Poser, it seemed convincing enough? Funny thing about the human body is that it never really looks right... Like if you try to draw a hand, and then draw from a REAL hand, the REAL hand always looks fake? Make any sense? GG, modeling hair in Rhino is butter, but I'll most likely despise making the damn texture maps...

Aye, I'm interested in seeing the finished render in your light-test room... But I'll have to agree with PJF, this scene doesn't really call for True Ambience... Still, I think it was a lighting experiment, right? And you're trying to figure out how far light will bounce in Bryce and whatnot...? I think it's a great scene setup to test such a thing, but alas, Bryce doesn't bounce light. At one point, PJF (who I consider a "heavyweight", regardless!), myself, and a few others experimented heavily in True Ambience and the like... We were able to make light bounce with TA, but since there are no TA LIGHTS, per se, it is nearly useless as a tool... I DID figure out how to bounce a spotlight off a mirror, but alas, it wasn't something you could do in Bryce. It is easily faked, however. Hopefully they'll give us some cooler options in Bryce 6, give us some new toys and techniques to play with!

(nods) Aye, Drawbridgep, he CAME bald! His head was too shiny... More dirt...? There's never enough dirt in 3D...

Not just Bryce... Even Maya, with all of it's massive optimization methods, renders slowly if you want a decent image. The same holds true in any app. If you want real-time 3D, go play a video game! (they can be fun, too!)

Too bad the hair sucks, otherwise I'd be done with this atrocity!

The light is Bryce's true volumetrics. The glow effects you see come from a combination of KPT6 EQ, KPT5 Noize, and Flaming Pear Aetherize... I suppose I could put him in the shadows, but the point of this scene is also the volumetrics lights, which cast shadows through the bars and off Ben, our slave-boy. If I put him elsewhere, he wouldn't interrupt the lighting and cast cool shadows?

Aye, this is Mikey 2. So the hair sucks that bad? (grins) I've used Kosaburo hairs before, and have all the female hairs. But doing a 'Rosity search brought back no results. Off to Rhino to model a new hair, I'm so sick of using other people's props, anyway...

Message edited on: 01/28/2005 18:28

Aye, methinks that perhaps your Sof-Shadow sun is killing your render times? I know you already know this... But perhaps try a light dome, or Zenith by Madmax, or the wonderfully simple 5-spotlight SS method? (cross-posting hell!) Well good luck, any way you do it, and we'd love to see the final image if they will allow you to show it.

Message edited on: 01/28/2005 17:34

I don't exaclt understand what you're talking about, Eisenhorn... Solid lights? If you meant volumetrics, they are elegant and simple, but I still have never seen a decent Bryce tutorial on solid lights... Do you mean neon tubes? Do you mean glow bulbs? Not sure...

Still, you're talking about massive data and detail loss. My guess is that you'd be better off trying to optimize the scene a bit... The resizing method doesn't in any way equal AA, edges will still be pixellated, etc. What kind of scene is it? What kinds of lights are in the scene, etc? Volumetrics? Volumetrics are the most easily optimized of all Bryce's materials...