Hi everyone; Congrats to everyone! My entry was my first Vue pict so I'm honored it went as far as it did, and this whole thing was a lot of fun. I thank Mike and everyone else involved for their hard work. Some of the work people submitted really amazed me... keep up the amazing work! -Brian

Wow -- that's really beautiful, and photorealistic! Nice job. -Brian

Thanks everyone! I'm FINALLY (been saying that for a week now) just about done with my first image. Man I just have to save the dang thing and lock it, I keep letting it render then coming back to tinker. Hasta! Brian

Bloodsong, Man we must be on the same wavelength or something! I have an image very similar that is rendering as we speak -- it's a daytime pict but the mood is close. I'll post it probably tomorrow -- it's my first Vue pict, so at this point I'm just glad to be done with it! But I named my online gallery after a wolf -- I love wolves! Very cool image -- thanks for sharing! -Brian http://lonewolf.tierranet.com

Hi Joerg, It's natural, I think, to feel "guilty" about wanting to make money, especially about something you enjoy doing. To me, the question comes down to whether it's worth the purchase price. Awhile back (waaay back) Metacreations made a Bryce 2 Accessory Kit with tons of materials, and it was worth it. For $5 or $10 bucks, sure, I'd buy yours! Brian

http://www.geocities.com/harrisesprit/ Grant, I've seen your work -- really beautiful stuff. Do you almost exclusively use Vue and Photoshop? I'd love to hear more about how you work with Vue, and techniques for post in Photoshop if you ever care to share them ... any post work you've done is so well integrated, it completes the image instead of just "masking" it, if that makes sense. Good luck! -Brian

Mike -- Another question: is previously posted work allowed or not? Or is "about the same time" ok? Just wondering the specifics of how that will be handled, I'm thinking of entering an image but not sure how to go about posting it on my website first/second, etc. -Brian

What about adding a slow fading effect to the planet? Maybe only the left 3/4 would be visible, or something like that? It may help it look a little more natural. Also, I like the starry background -- is that a pict file? -- here are some suggestions if it is: try darkening it a tad, to make it a tad more subtle -- not sure if that will work. Another idea is: I've never liked bringing in star backgrounds into Bryce because often times the rendering process dulls them. So you can do a mask render and add the bg in afterwards -- sometimes it looks cleaner... -Brian

Hi AgentSmith-- Actually, you can't do this in Bryce. Source "D" in the material editor has always "stood alone" so to speak -- you can use it in any of the slots, but cannot be used in conjuction with the other channels. Bryce has always done "A", "A-B", and "A-B-C" blending, but has always excluded D as sort of an "extra" slot... -Brian

The scene I just finished up now is 33meg in size, at about 28 million polys. I'm impressed with the small file size. There's a couple medium-high res terrains, 1 imported DXF tree branch, another small DXF model, a poser model, more grass and reeds models than I can count. I actually have one bryce scene that's around 120 meg in size. That's a bear to load and save :) But for this scene, Vue seems to handle it pretty easily. -Brian

Thanks for the tips, Mike. Believe me I learned that lesson the hard way in Bryce (about using file names, etc., saving often...) I've lost a lot of work over the years. Vue so far has been great, at least with the latest patch. I'm only regularly getting one bug when selecting multiple layers while holding the CTLR button -- hopefully this will be worked out. I'm psyched that my file sizes are pretty small -- I'm using tons of grass, reeds, etc., it's nice to see the file sizes so small! -Brian

Cool - thanks Mike! Some good examples and it helps make it a bit more obvious. I look forward to playing with it more. I'm finally finishing up my first Vue 4 scene... whew, can't wait to do the final save on it, so to speak, and be done with it :) -Brian

Hi Mike, Oops, sorry, let me clarify. I was fiddling with the falloff for the actual light itself, in the editor window (upper right part of the screen). Where you can adjust the power, softness, etc. Anyhoo, I didn't want to change any settings globally, I just wanted to change a setting for one light... for example, normally a spot light, say at a given power of 50, would project light like so: Light source -> air -> object a -> object b -> "end" "End" meaning that the light, at a power of 50, has no lighting effect at that range, as the object is too far away. Kind of like a dim flashlite in a big room where you can't see the other side. Now, I was looking to do something like: Light source -> air -> object a -> "end" -> object b Meaning, the light source would fade out entirely before hitting object b. I know it's not "realistic" but sometimes that's what you need :) I know I could move the light closer, and then decrease the value, but was hoping there was a slider for the same effect :) -Brian

Hey guys, cool experiments... I have a question about lights but I'll post that in a new thread. :) -Brian

Cool trick :) I'll give it a whirl! Thanks! -Brian