As you can see the reflection sucks. The image is supposed to be a Xmas ball on a table (still a WIP). I've made a sphere (x=y=z) and surrounded it by a light dome (115 lights). In both techniques were my first try. Any suggestions. Is it handy to use fake GI, or would soft shadows look just a good?

Oh I only used one big sphere, didn't hollow it out, does that matter??

I can't believe you think this sucks, I think it is amazing. Sharen

Thanks. I also was quite impressed with the results. But the error in the reflection of the HDR map really bothers me. The place where everything warps together in one spot.

Well all I know is I think it is amazing....Sharen

But in real life you are liable to get such imperfections which will make a scene converge at one point. I think it looks great too.

I might contribute the Christmas Ball in the freebie section if people are interested. There is quite some detail in the ball-topping.

This is also a WIP. Different setting, and better reflection. The reflection isn't a HDR image but a panorama fot with a little tweaking. Still need to fix a few things like the edge etc. but I like it a lot better.

fot=photo :) And if anyone can help me with a better looking snow texture, that would be great :)

What mapping mode did you use for the HDRI-sphere in the first image? You might want to try cilindrical or spherical or parametric. It depends on the HDRI reflection-map sometimes. You could also apply a blurr to the background to lose the JPG-artefacts and give a sence of depth. If the reflectionmap doesn't have a the ceiling, you could try to add it with a 2D-plane.

It was mapped spherical. Good tips, I'll try them. But I think I rather go on with the winter background. Which one do you people like best?

I like the winter background myself, I think your HDRI looks great. Lin

I like the snowy image better too. Maybe a little DOF helps blend the ground with the reflection-map. Real ambience could really give this image that little extra touch to make it just that little bit better than the average bryce-render.

I love the ornament. I actually like the reflection in hte first pic better, just not the background too much.

In your first image, it looks like you did not use a full 360 degree panormaic image. It must be equirectangular in order to map all the way around.

BTW that snow is fine! I might add some reflection and render with blurry reflections on, but that will kill your render time.

Thanks for the response What is DOF? And how do I do real Ambience? madmax, if I turn blurry reflections on won't that screw up the nice X-mas ball reflection?

madmax this is a small version of the image I used in the first one. Maybe I can fix it to be more equirectangular.

Attached Link: http://www.renderring.com/hdri/indoormaps.html

Unfortunately, the image lacks the full top and bottom. That is why the image looks all twisted up - because bryce tries to fill in the missing space. Try using the indoor map from my site here instead: http://www.renderring.com/hdri/indoormaps.html

Attached Link: http://cartesiuscreations.com/odds/hdri/hdri.html

or from here: http://cartesiuscreations.com/odds/hdri/hdri.html On the topic of DOF, that is depth of field. It makes a focusing blur like you would have on a real photo. To use it, select the object you want to fouc on and go into the render options. Select premium settings, and then depth of field. Hit the "set to selection" button. WHere it says lens something or other, it should be at a default of .1 Remember, the higher the number, the more blurry it gets. I usually use a setting that is half of the default...or 0.05 About blurry reflections: the amount of blur is determined by the whiteness of the specular halo value. THis means that when the specular halo is set to full white, it will blur it the most, while if it's black, it will not blur it at all. Try a setting of 40% ( middle grey) grey for the ball's specular halo, and about 90% (almost white) for the snow texture. Also make the snow 30% reflective. Make sure to turn blurry reflections on in the render options. The only problem is, making the specular halo darker for the ball will make it look les shiny. There are two way to work around this. Either render the ball without blurry reflections and do a mask render to add it in later, or else just add a small radial light where you want the highlight to be. If the light is shining on the ground, enter the light lab and hit ranged falloff. CHange that to a setting of about 15 and the light should not reach the ground. Last thing - there's no way you're going to be able to render this with a light dome as well. Try it without the light dome first, and the render wonlt take as long. Hope this helps! oh, and forget about true ambience.

Attached Link: http://www.renderring.com/hdri/bloblinks.html

I'll try to post a few examples for you. Meanwhile, check out this animation. http://www.renderring.com/hdri/bloblinks.html

These look great. What everyone has been saying is correct though. There is a BIG difference in a panoramic picture and an equirectangular. If you use a panoramic picture, like the one you used in the first one, you will get that "pinching" of the reflected picture at the top and bottom. This doesn't matter if you can't see that reflection directly, but if you can...you need an equirectangular picture texture to use. Panoramic pictures are a 360 degree horizontal panning of the scene, no "up or down". Equirectangular will cover 360 degrees horizontal by 360 degrees vertical. This is usually done by pointing a (real)camera at a large reflective ball, taking that pic, rotating the camera 90 degrees, and taking a second pic, these pics are then combined in a specific way as to produce a real looking enviromnent, inside a sphere. AgentSmith

This just came out recently. Dosch has made a CD of HDRI's, and is giving one away as a sample. This page shows what format's each of their pictures come in. You want the one that is SPHERICAL. Beware, it's big; 2048x1024, 4.5Mb. And, of course, wrap it spherically to a sphere in Bryce. http://www.doschdesign.com/e_infobase/content.php?action=samples SECONDLY, this is an actual HDRI, it is in the .hdr format, Bryce cannot use these. Go here and get the freeware HDRI viewer "HDRView 1.2", you can use it to open a .hdr on your PC http://athens.ict.usc.edu/FiatLux/hdrview/ There are instructions on that page on how to use this program, it is WAY easy. Basically you open the pic using HDRView, use the plus or minus keys (+ -) to make the pic as bright or dark as you need/want, then right click on the pic to bring up the context menu and choose to save the HDR as a .bmp. Hope this also helps AgentSmith

Other note; Making a hollowed out, booleaned sphere isn't neccessary, I have suggested that in the past because I noticed that sometimes when I didn't, I would get a "snowglobe" effect in glass objects. Sometimes. AgentSmith

Ugh, well one more note, about the Free Dosch HDRI, they put their name on the pic, yup, right in the middle. It's still a nice pic... Just FYI. AS

Thanks for or the help. I'll take a go at it this afternoon. So panoramic images aren't really usefull. The panoramic image in de seconde image I posted was edited by me. I made the sky bigger in photoshop so it would be more equirectangular.

Madmax, I'll try it with a light dome first. I don't mind huge render times and I have two machines (one is really good). So I can render and do other stuff at once. As long as it doesn't take much more than 36 hours. :)

Agent Smith, where on that Dosh Samples page is that image CD? couldn't find it ...

Well...looks like Dosch removed it...looked all over the site, no where to be found.

Panoramic images can be used (actually ANY image can be) as long as you can't see the pinching in any reflections, then it doesn't matter. But, in your projects here, you can very well see the reflections and it does matter so panoramic pics don't do well. An global image can be used just to affect lighting or anything reflective could have enough of a bump on it, so in those cases, any image could be used.

Madmax, that's a brilliant piece of animation there. You just gave me loads of ideas, and I'm away to render some right now. Cheers, TT.

Yeah Madmax that really is a cool animation. If you have a good geforce card you should look here: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20011113_6700 It's an interactive blob als with a nice reflection map surrounding it. If the first pass of a rendering takes 8 minutes, how long will the full take? :S I need to adjust some stuff I think :)

How many rays per pixel is good? And what is a good max ray depth?

Oh, jeez...I would suggest not going that far with the settings. Try just regular AA to begin with? For a test at least?, lol. Ray Depth? I thought you were doing X-Mas ornaments?

That bubble demo is awesome!!

Your HDR Images look real noce - keep 'em comin! I ran across a site with equirectangular images here... http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/4Pi/ TMG

NICE ones TMGraphics.

Ray Depth and TIR only affect transparent objects. But when doing so, I like Ray depth of 12 and TIR of 6. Sometimes those setting look good, sometimes they look like crap.

Ah ok so ray depth doesn't matter. Yeah that bubble rocks. Have you already had matrix errors because you clicked too much? :) Now I'm rendering an 800x600 with 9 RPP

Hmm, guess you're right. I'll first do a test render with regular settings :)

No errors as of yet, I'll go poke the absolute hell out of it, see what happens.

Nope, clicked the bubble demo as fast as I could for a minute straight, no errors. It just got real...polygonal.

maybe it's my config then :D You can also pause it and launch a salvo of clicks then start it again :)

This demo is also really cool http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=demo_pool This one is really beautifull (only for Geforce4 though) http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=demo_grace

I wish they would allow the loading of other maps, very cool little gadget.

In the Tl Water demo you can change the textures.. also press enter and plus And of course you can throw the light into the water :)

Never heard of that, is that for download anywhere?

it's the link I posted :) http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=demo_pool

Dowt! I only saw the first link, gonna go check the other out. Thanks! AS

Some more Equirectangular links - http://philohome2.free.fr/skycollec/skycollec.htm http://www.newhouse.nl/pano/ http://www.pauck.de/marco/photo/panorama/living_in_panoramic_format/living_in_panoramic_format.html http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/4Pi/ http://www.lightsitestudios.com/photographica/env_maps.htm http://www.panopan.com/sw/jsphere/img/index.html (About Fisheye Lenses) http://medfmt.8k.com/bronfe.html (Photoshop tool(s) for creating panoramic images) http://philohome.free.fr/panotutorial/tutlinks.htm (More PanoTool links) http://home.no.net/dmaurer/~dersch/Index.htm Small PanoTool tutorial on about the above link) http://www.3dluvr.com/subagio/domelight/pano.html (Formula for printing with Panoramas) http://philohome.free.fr/lampshade/lampshade.htm That should keep everyone busy for a while! LOL TMG

After some improvements I've made another render. Just regular quality, not with DOF etc yet. I'm quite happy with the results. After adding a second light dome (now the whole scene is covered with lights) the snow suffered a white out. But I don't know if this is a bad thing. There are still one or two glitches I need to finish before I do the premium quality 1024x768 rendering. I've also made little hills at the bottom of the balls so it looks like they're pushed in the snow. So whaddya think about the snow, and any other suggestions? For the final render, what is a nice amount of rays per pixel?