Oh, that's the problem. I missed a part of the purchase process in my overworked haste. (Insert sound of me smacking my head here.)

Thank you. I went ahead and e-mailed in the First Time Buyer Verification.

Message edited on: 02/13/2006 19:43

Gwhicks... Thank you very much for the response and information. Interesting, I don't have all that much experience with setting up poser files/characters/morphs/etc. yet, but I think I understand what you are saying. I'll see if I cna't put it into practice and test it out. At least I have an idea about what might be happening now. Thanks again.

Good work Teyon. ;)

Oh my, I'm having flash backs of helping my parents renovate and rebuild their home. :) How big a house is that Groingrinder? All this talk of isolation has made me realize that the closest town (and it's a very small town) to were I live is 5 miles away. Half of that 5 miles would really get your heart pounding if you walked it. Fortunately, if I drive down off the mountian I'm within range of major cities that can supply everything I need to keep me from going stircrazy. Ticks... hate em. Have to deal with the ticks that feed on the deer population up here. But that's OK, I have to keep alert for mountain lions also when I go for a walk. ;)

I tried again to see if I could recreate the problem your having by setting up a scene as close to the one your using as I possibly could. Still no luck though. I'm at a loss to find a reason for the splotchy, striated, and overly pixelated render. (I'm using Bryce 5 with the patch.) After continued close study I'm convinced that the rendering problem is affecting your 'entire' scene and not just the decanters, shadows and curtain. I can see traces of the problem in 'every' object within your scene. I still suggest saving out the individual objects in your scene and bringing them one by one into a new file. Try a quick plop render after bringing each object into the new file and before bringing in the next one. I bet this scene file renders exactly the same with or without the decanters in it. Not having the patch installed could possibly be the cause, but I would try things like changing your radial lights to spot lights before installing the patch. Also try change the position of the lights and the sun a little. (The patch causes Bryce to crash on you when you work in the DTE? I've never experienced crashes of that nature in either Windows NT or XP.) About the decanter polygon meshes... The render of the decanters with what looks like the default gray material applied to them has me worried becuase the decanter on the far left is rendering with black areas typical of a mesh with missing, reversed, or otherwise tangled polygons. Even though the decanter has a complex shape it should still render in the same smooth grays as the other decanters, which look ok, and should not exhibit the black, splotchy areas. It is possible that this is the rendering problem showing up again and not a problem with the polygon mesh, though. Try removing this decanter from the scene and fixing the rendering problem before examing its polygon mesh for problems. Also, as Erlik noticed, the last two renderings you have posted here look as if they were rendered without anti-aliasing... and yet, your screen capture of your Rendering Options shows that you have Regular Rendering Quality Mode with Anti-Aliasing selected. Is this a sign of yet more rendering trouble I wonder, or did you actually use the Default rendering mode without anti-aliasing? Damn, I really wish I could be of some help with this problem.

Wait a moment... If you are using the 'Standard Glass' material then why does your glass have a slightly rippled or cloudy look to it? This kind of looks like you have applied a texture in the bump channel for the standard glass material. However, the bump texture is mapped to the decanters in such a way that it appears as striations (sp?) on certain sides or surfaces of the decanters. If this is so then it is just possible that those striations could be causing the striations in the shadows as light does or doesn't pass through them uniformly. Just a thought. It could be totally and completely off base, but I thought I would through it out there. :) If the glass material doesn't have a texture mapped incorrectly then something else is certainly wrong with with the way the entire glass material/decanters is/are being rendered and it is carrying over to the shadows.

Hmmmm... Interesting problem. I've been trying to replicate it without any luck. Turning on and off 'Soft Shadows' for the 'Sun' doesn't give me any trouble, nor does turning on and off and changing the settings for 'Total Internal Reflection'. In each instance a bottle with the Standard Glass material renders properly for me. Is there anything else in your scene besides what is seen in the render? Anything at all besides the two radial lights and the camera? Did you double check the glass material or try a different glass material? Seems to me that I had a similar problem to this once and the only way I could get around it was to bring all my separately saved objects into a new file and resent the camera and lights. But I could be remembering that wrong. The ideas that 'Soft Shadows' or 'Total Internal Reflection' settings could be causing the rendering error sounds plausable, but I somehow have trouble believing that either would be the only cause... however, I really don't know. It certainly isn't caustics. I'm look foward to hearing what you find with regard to the cause and solution to this problem. Hope you solve it.

Bryce has been left to languish so long that I'm afraid it may never recover. The decline of each company that has owned and developed it and the growth of Bryce's competition certainly hasn't helped either. I'm with you Zandar in that I've moved on to using higher end software, but now and then I return to Bryce when it helps me do something faster and with more ease then I might be able to do in another software package. Yes, there are still those rare moments. :) And as mentioned by foleypro, when I do use Bryce I'm very careful about scene setup and rendering setting with tregard to how they affect rendering times.

Ohhhh... That explains the layout and the empty areas. :) I didn't realize it was a wrap-around, front and back cover, that needed empty area for the title. Makes sense now. BTW, congrats on being chosen to do the cover. When you wrote "Everybody else made spaceships" in your third post it made it sound like you were competing against other people for cover ideas. My misunderstanding. ;) Glad you like the hand-held idea and sorry I don't have any advice to offer for the female's hair.

Looking good. :) Nice robot design. Looking foward to seeing more.

All the empty space on the right side of the image is a little bothersome. You might crop more off the right side of the image or add a bit more visual detail to this portion of the image. You could crop the image so that the right edge of the large monitor above the keyboard is just outside of the viewing area. Or, you could add visual detail by making the whole workstation look like it is set back in the wall as a shallow alcove, with the edge of the alcove visible in the empty area on the right side of the image. I would think about adding an extra level of detail to the over-all image... simple paneling on the walls (parting lines), markings or accessories on the clothes, etc.

Lighting... You could add some drama to the image by making the lighting less uniform. You already have a start in this direction by focusing a light on the Oriental Gentleman at the keyboard (keep this). Try something like changing the room lighting to spots that focus on the workstation and which produce light and dark areas on the wall where their light cones intersect with it. The idea is to focus the light more on areas where you want the viewer's eyes to go to and not on areas of less importance. I think right now the lighting is a bit too uniform in the image, but it is heading in the right direction. Just continue to focus the lights and create more contrast as you already have started to do. (You could also focus the lights more on the characters and the keyboard, away from the walls, and keep trying to make the screens glow more in contrast to lower lighting on the walls.)

Just my 2 cents worth.

"The only one that shows an arachnid, as far as I know. :-) Everybody else made spaceships." Is there a challenge or contest going on right now to produce an illustration for Vinge's 'Deepness in the Sky'? Yah, I'm out of touch with things. :)

Good work.

Oh... another thought... Instead of having the Oriental gentleman looking directly at the viewer you might have him looking at a hand-held device or something in his hand(s) but still have him facing in the same general direction. This would be another way of adding visual interest to the image and makking the characters look more active and a part of the scene. shouldn't the characters look more interested and worried about the arachnid at the door as shown on the monitor? I'd be worried. ;)

When I look at the two images I want to combine elements of both together into one image. I like the way the light plays on the textures and shapes in the forground of the lighter image. It somehow looks more realistic to me, but the background doesn't quite look as nice as it does in the darker image. I'm not sure why, but part of the problem for me could be the uniformity and brightness with which the background fades out in the brighter image. The spacecraft color, lighting, and position looks better in the darker image. The difference in the images is kind of like comparing morning to evening to me, or summer to winter. :) Nice work!

Very nice and realistic still life. As a matter of personal taste the image looks a bit too bright to me. It is almost washed out in places by the brightness of the lights. Just my 2 cents worth. :) About the postings being out of order... yah, I noticed that also last night, and had one heck of a time getting my own replies posted. Something strange was going on.

bigbadelf,

Thanks for catching those spelling errors. Damn, thats what I get for being in a hurry. Arrrggghhh. Well, at least the errors are just in these two images and not in any others. Too bad I cant easily edit the images in this post to correct them.

AgentSmith,

Hey, thank you, it's a real boost to hear that you think the images look OK. Your work in Bryce has been one of my inspirations.

90% of the lose or scattered dirt is accomplished with terrains poking through other terrains or objects. The other 10% is accomplished with Bryce stones. Even the scattering of very fine dirt particles on the concrete is just a few terrains poking through.

TheBryster,

I can't remember what you call them, but there is a tool in the form of a metal rod with a fork on one end and a handle on the other, that you insert through the drain's grille to turn the valve handle to open and close the valve, if it isn't motor operated. If the unit does fill up with solid matter, then yes, it can be a bit messy to clean out (company uses vacuum trucks design just for such cleaning jobs).

Atomic Anvil,

Thanks. Yep, there are a number of products and methods on the market that do the same or similar thing.

zescanner,

Thank you. :)

pauljs75, Thanks for the comments. :) I didn't design the product, but it is made for instances were it is "required by law" to have the storm drain protected in some manner. It isn't just used in curbside situations alone. The Safe Drain is used in a varity of situations which include using it within and around factories that store hazardous chemicals. It is even used at airports and construction sites to control run-off. The company that sells the SafeDrain also services it if the client so wishes. Also, the SafeDrain comes in a varity of forms with different filtration devices for different situations. It is even possible to control and monitor it by remote. And, yes, some forms of the product allow for less maintance. Jeeze, I sound like a bloom'n advertisement for the dang thing. :)