Quote - Hey if you are in the SD Area in the next couple of days I will show you how,Now I Also will be showing how to use Bryce for Game level designing and artwork..
also on the agenda is useing Bryce to layer artwork for a CD/DVD cover..Actual CD is out useing Bryce at...

www.michaelhershman.com

Yes I used Bryce to layout the CD before I finished in PSP...

I wish I could go, those all sound facinating.  Unfortunately a new job and living a long way from SD make that difficult :(  Now, if you webcast or YouTube them, I'll be there :)

As to the topic at hand, I've tried using Bryce's vegetation tools, but haven't been happy with the results yet (i.e. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1076229).  It's time to start taking a look at some references to try to improve :)

Thanks for the help, guys.

Out of curiosity, could someone mirror the memory patch to a free upload site (i.e. filefront.com)?  E-frontier's file manager is having technical difficulties at the moment, and I can't seem to find another mirror.

Looks like it's the memory.  From e-frontier's website:
"This memory handling updater will allow Poser 4.03 users who have greater than 1 GB of total memory (RAM + virtual memory = more than 1 GB) to run normally. Please use this to update Poser 4/Artist ONLY- Pro Pack users should download the Pro Pack Memory Updater."

Now, if only I could get the site to let me download the darn file.

I ran some tests network rendering with the two faster computers, and discovered that in Bryce 6/Lightning 2 the host isn't used to render the scene.  Monitoring CPU usage showed the host at zero percent most of the time, with spikes up to 20%.  Definitely not the behavior of a machine performing a complex render.

If that's true, and there's no way to get the host to work on the render, then a two computer network would be slower due to network overhead.  Or did you mean two clients and one host (three computers total)?

And for further reference, the scene I'm working on is a still image.

I think I found a solution.

I selected the mesh, clicked 'E' (Edit Object), and then clicked the "smooth" sphere.  This appears to have solved the problem.  Unfortunately, the documentation doesn't appear to cover this feature, so I'm not certain precisely what it does.

Hm...  Nope, setting diffusion to 100 and ambience to 0 did not solve the problem.  Thanks for the guess, though.

Quote - Did you know that when you render to disk you can press the windows key on your keyboard and get the desktop or other programs while the render is running? Press the tab button then enter to select other running programs off the start bar.

Yes, I had noticed this.  You can also use Alt + Tab to select the programs directly, without pressing the Windows key.  Unfortunately, I still needed the ability to pause a render that would take a week or more.  I do quite a few CPU intensive things on my primary station: rendering, games, image manipulation, compiling, etc. so I need to tell Bryce to back off from time to time.

Here's the solution I currently have running:
I'm using the tutorial posted above to split the image up into multiple segments.  In my case, these are the left half of the image, the right half of the image, and a thin strip down the middle.  The third component is necessary because of a one-pixel wide flaw running from the top to the bottom of the right-hand side of every image Bryce renders on my machine.  This flaw isn't noticable in a single image...  But stands out pretty badly when you stitch two images together.

My render "farm" is currently composed of two computers:

1. My primary machine, used for just about everything.  Rendering, games, programming, etc.
2. A secondary machine, used primarily for surfing the Internet.

I'm using the primary machine as the host, with the secondary machine used as a client.  When I need the CPU of the primary machine free, I can pause the render quickly while allowing the secondary machine to continue its operation, then resume the render at the host when I no longer need the CPU.

And as a note on the whole "quirky interface" topic, here's one that through me for a loop for quite a while.  In Bryce 5, clicking anywhere within the host's window causes the host to immediately stop rendering, and load a blank document.  "Anywhere" includes the Bryce window's title bar!

To cause the host to begin rendering again, you must find the settings for the render job, and reselect "render at host."  This will cause the host to reload the scene, and resume rendering.

What I know about network rendering:

When rendering an animation, each client renders a single frame at a time.
When rendering a single frame (still image), the image is broken into several small chunks, which are then divided between the clients.

I'm not sure HOW this division is determined...  Whether each client has a fixed number to render, each client recieves new chunks/frames as it finishes its current job, or all clients render in synch, is something that I haven't figured out yet.

dvlenk6, I just noticed your response.  This should work, thanks :)

And thank you, too Gog :)

Still, if anyone knows a direct solution, I'd love to hear it.

I'm trying to render a single still image for print, at a large resolution.  Printed, the single image will be 23 inches by 35 inches, at 200 DPI (it's going to be a poster).  Since this is a huge image, I want to use network rendering (using tile optimization), which is only available by rendering a single-frame animation.

"Render to disk, use an image format such as bmp and it'll render to a numbered series of images, if you have to interrupt the render when you come back tick the skip frames already rendered switch and it'll start from the next frame. Then paste the whole lot together using a video edit package."

Won't work for me.  I only have one frame, which is too large for me to render at a single pass.

"why render an animation at 7600 pixels?? There's no screen that has such a high resolution..."

Because I want to network render a still-image.  Paper has no problem displaying this resolution/dimensions ;)

Attached Link: http://poser.maredias.de/WingMembrane.zip

"I had trouble using Firefox-Mozilla." Weird... That's what I use, and I didn't have any problems. Just make sure you download via FTP or HTTP, not P2P. The P2P service is IE exclusive. Not that it matters, since you got the file. Have fun; I hope you find it useful.

Attached Link: http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=81fbddfe8512905155408aa8

Message edited on: 12/02/2005 19:13

Woo, holidays sure have a habit of derailing me...

Regardless, I've managed to pull everything together. You can download it at http://www.filelodge.com/files/hdd3/51742/Wing%20Membrane.zip.

>>Why remove it, when you can simply make it transparent?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. That's what I meant: group, assign a new material, set to transparent.

>>I've been experimenting with dynamic-cloth membranes, myself. Solves a number of problems caused by Poser's limited rigging, as far as wings are concerned. Presents a few new problems, also, but that's life for you ....

Interesting. I haven't had a chance to play with that stuff yet (I'm still working with Poser 4 here. I gotta remember to upgrade one of these days :) ). The main question I would have is whether or not the dynamic cloth can simulate a sufficiently "stretchy" material.

Thanks, that'll work. Although in my case I'll generally be increasing the document size, since I'm working with still images (just network rendered).