Aye, it is a nice ring...!

I have my minimum set to equal the amount of physical RAM each machine uses... So on my main rig, it's at 512. The max is set to 1.5 GB. This gives me a lot of breathing room. Also, this computer almost never crashes. It's the most stable PC I've built...

Aye, a wonderful technique, AgentSmith. In the last image, I used this techinque to drive multiple advanced filters. Melancholytron, and Aetherize, from Flaming Pear. And of course the inevitable KPT6 Equalizer. EQ has changed my life, in many ways, and to me is the difference between a finished image and a WIP. And I'm starting to love Photoshop itself, it's such a great program!

Remember that 8 Xeons are still a far cry from a pair of Athlon MP's, cuddle...! Unless the price is right, of course, in which case I say GO FOR IT! Keep us posted on this one, if it works out and how quick you can churn out the Bryce Benchmark render! Good stuff, makes me kinda excited...

Aye, I think I follow what you're saying, Incarnadine. The reason this came up tonight is that the above render is already as premium as I need it to be. Turning on DOF in Bryce would drive this file (and PC) to it's knees. I can't afford 3 or 4 days of downtime right now... It's not a necessary thing just yet, but I needed to be able to automate the process for use in AE later this month, and the ring was just a test for that, really. Then it got out of hand... I had hoped to use True Ambience on this one, too, but with all the reflections/refractions and ridiculous materials the render times were just preposterous... I'm off to try rendering the ring in Maya to see how that turns out...

Exactly what I'm looking for, Agent Smith.... Thank you very, very much! I've been trying to pull this off for years...

It seems like it would be so simple...

Alas... (sorry, cross-posted with you AS, maybe it IS so simple?)

Message edited on: 01/07/2005 05:52

Awesome water, Innovater! I fear I'm just not optimizing Maya correctly, or something. I know it looks more realistic, but not as colorful as the Brycean water mess I made. I'm interested in knowing how you made that image, my Maya water was a NURBS plane tweaked a bit, with the Render Globals set pretty high... I tried many previous passes, and the one in this thread is the best I could do. I can't remember if I was using GI or FG, but I believe I was using Mental Ray?

I don't think so. As far as I know, Bryce doesn't support multiple processors in Windows. I've used Lighting on many PC's, but never on an Athlon MP. And, if it's not an Athlon MP, then you should save the dough and just buy a really nice Athlon XP or 64...! 8 processors? I've never seen one that could keep up with my Athlon singles, for daily use anyway... I could be wrong about multi-threading, though. I've never tried it on an MP. And I don't believe that Intel chips still exist, no matter what anyone tells me...!

Good to see you posting again, Diolma! I've never heard of AC3D, I use Rhino, but the table turned out well. Perhaps just scale up the bottom parts? You could even do that in Bryce, if AC3D lets you separate them...

If you switch to faster RAM, make sure your motherboard will support it. If you are running an Athlon 2400 (which by the way is one of the best processors you can buy, reliable and fast), then what you are looking at by jumping to 333 is a speed boost to your chip. So, let's see, you'll be running at 1.8MHz instead of 1.4? I could be off a bit, it's been awhile since I used a 2400... But make sure your motherboard will support it, and remember, you can't use your old RAM with your new RAM. It might work at first, but eventually it will cause instability...

(grins at Len!) I'm a STORM dragon, not a fire dragon, my friend... I guess that to me, artwork is a big thing because it takes "work". When dealing with digital art, people often ccuse us of not doing any "work", and having the CPU do all the work. My deal would be that if I'm up for ten hours modeling fake water in Rhino, then test-rendering over and over and over, then to me that is considered "work"; it's tedious, obnoxious, and very reminiscent of some of my hand-drawn images which have taken me 50 to 100 hours to draw. And therefore, artWORK. Paint-rolling a canvas with black paint is not "work", and therefore, not artwork. Artistic? Maybe... Can any single one of us reproduce that? Yep. Piece of cake. And in regard to Bryce itself, when I look at galleries and see something that I could match almost exactly, in mere minutes if not seconds, receiving massive praise for being wonderful and imaginitive (shiny spheres, "surreal" images, etc.), I tend to become angry. Any one of us could reproduce some of those images. Then, you'll see stuff by Englewolf and Ornlu which is similar in nature, but loaded with technical beauty and obvious energy spent... I see images from people, where it's obvious to me, being familiar with the medium (Bryce), that the person slaved over the image in some way... And regardless of how smooth or beautiful or nice the image is, I know that it meant a lot ot that person and helped them grow. Look at Hobbit's pictures, and you'll see what I mean. There are plenty of others, and I mean PLENTY! You'll see stuff by Englewolf and Ornlu which is simple in nature, but loaded with technical beauty and obvious energy spent... countless test-renderings and refinations. So in regards to digital "art", if the CPU is doing all the work, or Bryce itself godforbid, then how is it artwork? (not trying to sound elitist, although it's difficult when using a ridiculous screen name...!)

My point, Alvin, was that there are governing bodies, and rulebooks for words, of which "art" is a subset. They call them, "Dicitonaries".