Ok, let's sum it up again after your great input. *** Challenge name: "The Drawing of the Tree" *** Challenge purpose: to gather a considerable amount of tree objects that will be available to all the community when the challenge ends. *** Challenge basic rules: 1. The scene must be a depiction of nature (landscape, lake, waterfall, forest, woods and so on) 2. The scene must contain AT LEAST one tree created in the Bryce TreeLab. Painted trees and 2D trees are allowed, but only if there's one original treelab-created tree in the scene. B4 users can use the trees that come in the object presets tree section or use one of the links provided by Zhann --- here they are: http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/pearl/miracle.html http://www.j.b.allen.btinternet.co.uk/bigsite/treetut1.html http://www.j.b.allen.btinternet.co.uk/bigsite/bigtrtut.html http://www.j.b.allen.btinternet.co.uk/bigsite/ground.html http://www.j.b.allen.btinternet.co.uk/bigsite/forscene.html http://www.billmunnsgallery.com/xtreetut.html http://www.billmunnsgallery.com/treetut.html http://www.brycetech.com or the tree generator pointed by Rayraz --- here's the link: http//:www.treegenerator.fr.st/ or the B4 content CD or other resources that provide similar models (specifying them in the posting, of course). 3. The scene must be lit and atmosphered with Bryce SkyLab and sunlight. I think Bryster's right saying to not allow any other illumination, so SkyLab will be. In night scenes, the use of other light sources is left to the common sense of the participants, exactly as postwork and imports (see next point). 4. Postwork and imports: as usual, I don't want to make an issue of this. Just keep both to a tolerable amount, I don't think there's any need to restrict this in the rules, we all showed common sense in the past challenges. 5. The trees created must be made available for the community at the end of the challenge, preferably in form of screenshots of the settings of the TreeLab. I think it's about all. If you're ok with it and AgentS and the Community approve them, these could be the official challenge rules. I just can't wait to learn from you :) S.

Darn, I just knew that I left something behind. Foliage: the entrants can create their own foliage mat... by playing with the DTE, lol :)

Sounds great, Stefano. And off to the trees we go...

Interesting challenge. It will be exciting to see what you guys come up with.. Good luck to all.

I love this idea, and posting the formula's is an easy way to share!

More DTE? va fang... n/m ;) Drac

Oh I love tree's and forests, this should be fun. 8)

I love forests too. I'm not extremely good with the treelab, but I'll have it figured out by the end of this challenge

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A quick couple of questions. I noticed there are tree presets and leaf preset files. Is it possible to create a JPG or other image and import it into Bryce as an LPS file? How are we to save out the trees? I've tried several alt ctrl combinations and can't seem to get an import export dialog to pop up like in DTE. Do we create an OBP file or save a whole Bryce file with just the one tree? I've hit half a dozen pages in google for bryce and treelab and they all say something like, "this tree was made in the bryce treelab"; Not much help.

Which Bryce ver are you using. I have 5 and I save my trees in my ojects library. As far as sharing our trees (someone correct me if I'm wrong) I believe we do a screen capture of the lab numbers that make up our tree.

I'm using 5 in windows. Just wondering, if I decide to do a Gingko or something I can use an image for the leaf shape. If I save as an object everything should go into the obp and all Bryce 5ers are able to use it. Just wondering if that was the preferred way to do it. I didn't know a thing about textures and saving in the DTE before last month either.

Oops! Just checked. Bryce has a Ginko and image only affects the texture not shape of the leaf. I've already learned something:)

If you use the user leaf preset you get square leaves and you can use mask with your texture to make your own leaf shape. As far as I know the leave and tree presets don't save the texture settings.

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To save a tree, you have to have it selected then hold down the ctrl key and click on the tree icon in the create palette. A box will appear after a few seconds with the save as .bto option.

I said to save the created trees by making a screen capture of the values in the treelab. It's not mandatory, you can of course save them as BTOs, but screenshots are way way smaller and in doing so we'll save a lot of bandwidth. As an example, the image above is only 60K, while some BTOs weigh in the MBytes. You can copy the values in your Treelab and get the same tree.

Ah, I've just read another question about foliage. I will like to exclude phototextures for the leaves and the trunks. All in all, we just learned something useful with the DTE, it would be nice to see if we can come out with some cool leaf/trunk mat. S.

Attached Link: Brycetech's Tree Lab Tutorials

I put a link in the "Spotlight Of The Week", to Tree Lab tutorials on (the always great) Brycetechs site. TRULY great info on the treelab in there. Be sure to let that first page load completely up, it will show thumbs for all the different tree types. (just click on a tree name) AgentSmith

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Yeh! But what about ENTS? Are they allowed or what? I mean, they're perfectly natural aren't they? Sigh! OK anyway I'm up for this.....now where'd I put that cronkshift agitator sprocket?

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All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

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So is it ok to have lights, but not light your scene with them?(I know that sounds crazy) Its just that I use a light source, but its so far away, it doesnt actually emit light onto my scene, is that ok?

Nope, #3 in post #1 pretty much says sun only, no other lights. Why use a light source if it doesn't actually light your scene? (a fake moon/sun?) AS

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So this means we can't have things like candles in windows? Oh well, back to the drawing board. Catlin

Hmm, well it seems totally cool, except I don't understand why one would use the Bryce sun to light a scene, at all? I mean, what it really comes down to is NO SOFT SHADOWS? Also, I'm concerned about using the Skylab in general. I mean, there's a time and a place for such silliness, but do these rules exclude me from using my cool clouds? There's no way the Skylab clouds can keep up with volumetrics. They have no internal shadows... SO, to paraphrase : - NO soft shadows - NO cool clouds Not that anyone cares, but why would I make a scene like that? It seems silly, and all things considered I'm curious how having shitty shadows as MANDATORY on this one is going to help us make better trees... Perhaps I missed an important point that Bryster made, but am I right about this one or am I just being a dork here?

You can get soft whadows with the bryce sun. And your volume clouds could be lit by the sun too.

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Aye, Rayraz, but there's this little glitch in the Skylab? Every time I try and turn soft shadows on, it SEEMS like they are on, but then I go back and the shadows are off again, and it doesn't affect the render at all... Am I doing something wrong? Or should I just use the soft shadow settings in the Render options?

Set the softshadwos on in the skylab and then save your sky to the skylibrary. That way your soft shadow option should stay on. If it still doesn't work you can try loading the sky you saved with soft shadows to get the soft shadow option working. I've never had this not working this way, so I think it should work on your comp too.

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Yup, like Rayraz stated, that's the basic "fix" for that skylab bug.

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Cool, thanks then good sirs, I think I'll be fine then. Didn't mean to whine about something so easily fixed...

I don't know about easily, sometimes I gotta put Bryce in a headlock to make it do what I wanna do, lol.

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....headlock, bodyslam and a bit of a chokehold lol. This will be the first time I try any of the renderosity chalanges. I hope this makes for a good experance. Ive always wanted to learn more about the Tree Lab, and with a few of the links that Ive seen posted here.....I alreadsy have :) Cheers

We should be able to use moonlight, right? Since moonlight is a reflection of the sun's light, then technically the sun is still being used for light. Might allow for a little more variety and creativity in the pictures.