Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=549935

hello ladies and germs, and even fellow bryce users :) with everyones help (and i bothered ALOT of people, thank you all so much), i was able to post a somewhat serious image in the bryce gallery (thanks for the kind comments...:) now that ive "tasted the goods", i am left w/ more questions than answers.... 1st thing i found out is that there is no "magic formula" for bryce scene construction.... there is no "set way" of scaling objects or textures.... its all about "creating an illusion" as it was kindly put :) just do what looks right in other words..... sounds silly, but its SO true... (im sure you guys figured this out by now...) ( ( ) because there is always a butt somewhere.... there were effects that i was just unable to achieve for my image.... for instance i tried creating the illusion of "visible" light rays shining down from behind the female figure... nothing i did worked... i wanted to add "air" to the entire scene.... not fog, but air... (does that make sense?!?) i was unable to control the "dirt" on the ground... it looks more like thick mud than a dirt road... is it just me, or is water the most impossible thing to adjust??? touch the water, and the ENTIRE scene changes... incredible. i could not "predetermine" what effect my changes would make... ((that goes triple for the sky controls... but um... yall KNOW that :)) i followed tutorials and was finally able to get the wings to work, whew.... the BIGGEST problem however was in the positioning of objects... getting objects flush with the terrain. (that "arrow" doesnt do crap!) the egg clusters next to the trees... the planks floating over the water.... all of these gave much trouble. maybe there is an easier way to do this, but it was beyond me... using the "attributes" settings didnt help, as "bryce units" are funky... it seems i have begun to blab, as im sure these topics are covered elsewhere. (and most likely in abundance...) just wanted to say thanks to those who inspired and helped me, and discuss my "trouble areas" with my first 'real' encounter with bryce...

For the rays of light you need to use a spot light with visible and volumetric switched on. Also play with haze/fog and volumetric world settings to give atmosphere, volumetric world is expensive on render time though.

Very nice image for a first try......better than a lot of people's several tries LOL In positioning you have severals views that you can use besides the camera views (left/right, top/bottom, back/front). Finding out what things affect what would require a lot of trial and error or you could go to amazon.com and buy "Real World Bryce" and it'll explain everything you ever wanted to know about Bryce and some stuff you don't :)

Nice job for your first "serious" scene. As Aldaron said, grab Real World Bryce. Excellent book for everyone from beginners to advanced. Well written and informative. You can't go wrong with it.

Now that's pretty damn adventurous for a first and you should be proud of what you have achieved. It's funny reading your thoughts on Bryce 'cos it sounds just like mine when I first started, everything was a struggle and confusing. All you can have faith in is that as time goes by and you manipulate and tweak your way though more and more images things become much more natural and your struggles become less. Of course that doesn't mean you'll never have to ask another question but it will get easier. 8) Catlin

One trick I've learned, and probably everyone who's used the progam for a good while knows, is to use the "spray can" to help in placing objects, or trees(vegetation etc.) The different views help a lot when you are placing things in your scene, but sometimes the wireframes of terrains and such aren't sufficiently high enough resolution to accurately position something exactly where you want it. If you really want to see if something is going to be visable in a render, set your render quality to one of the lowest settings and spraypaint the object in question. If it shows up, you're good to go. I've found that it takes a lot of guesswork out of composing a scene. Dan