Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=346347

Hi everyone. Just wanted to share this. In the picture above (sorry for the heavy compression, you can see the higher quality one at the link above) I used only one radial with soft shadows set to 100%. I was trying to emulate a light coming in from a window on the left and tried some lightdomes because I wanted a bit of realism (not too much, just a bit). Estimated render times were really ugly (ranging from 3 days with 15 radials to 12/14 days[!!!] when I wanted to use 30 or more. So, I trusted ole Bryce premium FX, used only one radial (RGB 29, 29, 29 to avoid pure white) and AAsed at 64rpp with soft shadows on (and a tiny bit of DOF). It rendered in less than 12 hours, and I assure you the result is not worse than using the lightdome (I don't have any WIPs of the other settings because the rendertimes were the abovesaid, so I judge only from the previews). Thought it could be of help and/or encouragement for those who have a slow PC. Have a nice Sunday. Stefano

Awesome render!! Very nice lighting spread across the scene.

great! reminds me of a bro of mines living room table.

Cool pic!! I noticed that atmosphere settings effect render times too. The pic I am working on gave me anything from 20 hours to 8 days as an estimate for render time. I set the mist to 0 rather than where it had been at 70 and the time went down to 2 hours. Removing one complex figure dropped it even further to 20 minutes.

Great render Stefano.

Great render Stefano. Man, how I love Camels (they give me the steady nerves nessicary to work with Bryce 6 hours at a time).

Render times can be a bummer so I usually render each object separtley then assemble them in PhotoShop afterwards adjusting them (color balance, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast) by the object to achieve the final product.

I have some color control issues.

This is wonderful Stephano the lighting is great and creates a very natural feel to the scene............Oh and can I have a cigarette please. :) Catlin

Thanx a lot for your appreciation, guys and gals... I'm always struggling with monstrous render times, so this Only One Radial discovery was really a pleasure. Actually, it enabled me to use Premium Effects, that usually are for me otherwise prohibited 'cuz 64rpp implies minimum 1 week render. I stupidly discarded the previews with the ligthdomes (out of frustration, probably), otherwise I'll post here to show that really there wasn't so much a difference in the outcome. Ah, the only radial I used was almost standard. Dimensions unaltered, Intensity=21, RGB 29,29,29, CastShadows, SoftShadows all way up to 100. Plus, Premium FX with soft shadows and DOF at 0,01 instead of the default 0,10. RenderTime 11h46m (against multiple-days estimated for the previous efforts). And... wow, this is my first pic ever to make it in the Hot20 :) Do i need to thank you again for all the tips that are handed out daily in this forum? Yes, I do: thank you all! Stefano

Stephano the tips you get in here are always whipping some part of your brain into action but it's what's within you, your creativity, that makes the difference between ok and great. And congrats on the Hot one I wish you success. Cat

I got a question, how did you do the smoke?

Thanx a lot catlin for the words above. The smoke was postwork. I applied the "smoke" EyeCandy filter on a separate layer, then used it as a canvas to paint the smoke on on another layer. (EC filter tends to be slightly "flat", but it's very useful because you can set the wind, the turbulence etc). When I was enough satisfied with the mouse-painted third layer, I deleted the filter-layer, adjusted opacity to make my smoke more transparent and merged down. IMO, Bryce voluemtric smoke (applied to a sphere, or a cylinder, or whatever you like) could be way more effective than this... but I (ehm) simply forgot to put it in the image before rendering. :-| I tried to plop-render it after, but (dunno why) the final image showed clearly the outlines of the newly rendered box, so finally I switched to post (BTW, I have nothing against postwork, I use it a lot usually, but this time I simply wanted to do without). Stefano