In the image you can see the forground looks, hmmm fake. What i wanted to get was that rough ground look but no matter what i do i can't seem to get the right look about it. I have ajusted the bump, messed around with other settings and nothing seems to change it. Also if there is anything else you can see that may improve this image please let me know. I sat up till 4pm doing this, its for a young lad that loves UFOs and anything like it, i was asked at 7pm if i could do a quick wallpaper for him. I hope the person that did the UFO model wont mind me using it for that reason. If so i'll try to do my own in Bryce, just this is one of the best i have found so far.

Love the flouroscent of the spaceship! Instead of using bryce to create the stars..use flaming pear (post work in photoshop)..
as for the forgeound..I like the texture.. what you may want to do though is edit the terrain until you get that bumpy effect on the terrain itself..and then use the texture. The part at the back of the aliens look really really flat.
Love the green light... makes it look bloody unreal..and alien.. what with it's cutting straight edge! Tiny issue..the front alien has his feet totally hidden/ cut... which sort of spoils it.. the foreground being bumped/curves, the back forground straight. Makes it unnatural. Know what I mean??
My two bits....

Message edited on: 09/27/2004 22:31

Is this similar to the effect you are looking for as far as a rougher foreground? If it is let me know and I'll do a quick & dirty tut here. I know the texture is not the same but I didn't have time to cobble one up.

i was asked at 7pm if i could do a quick wallpaper for him. doncha hate when you're put on the spot like that, with not enough time....... I like danamo's texture - looks a like footprints (alien?) in sand, it'd look like they were heading back to the ship :o)

danamo, i like your texture but what i was looking for is more to the look of a gravely/sandy texture. One with a roughness to it more than just like you have. The scene is ment to be set in the Arizona desert to give you an idea in what affect i'm trying/hoping to get :) Pogmahone, i hate being put on the spot like that when i'm only learning a program myself. If it wasn't for this womans son wanting the image i would have told her where to go in a polite way ;)

Lunartick, if you didn't try it already, bring your foreground terrain into the terrain editor and set the resolution as high as your machine will let you go without sputtering. The resolution is found in the terrain editor, the little grid box under your palette brush options maybe try gigantic (2048x2048). See if that works. Also, in the materials editor, you can crank up the bump way past 100% by double clicking the number window and manually typing in your higher setting for that material. Try any of these options and see what works, you could do both if need be.

To make foregrounds I go into another program other than bryce ... just kidding.

Actually, what I use is the fractal terrain generating stuff in the terrain editor.

Quick method - select the terrain that you've put in the foreground, hit the e button when you've got the terrain selected to get into the terrain editor, then up the resolution of the terrain to about 2000x2000 ish. Then I choose one of the fractal terrain generator things (often the ridges one I think) and use that to make my nice rough looking terrain, remembering that in my bryce scene, the terrain is large in area but not very tall - that way the ridges or whatever the fractal thing makes will be like flatter uneven and rough ground.

Sometimes you may have to use the terrain editor to "smooth" out any undesirable stuff in your terrain or add any gulleys or larger ridges that you want, but essentially thats it - i.e. high res terrain, with a fractally generated terrain.

Hope that helps in some way.

Message edited on: 09/28/2004 04:07

Also remember to up the scale of the foreground terrain. Another useful trick is to duplicate the foreground terrain, move it down in the y axis a little, change the texture to a contrasting one, edit the terrain and add a load of basic noise. The noise peaks will poke through the original terrain, looking like a load of pebbles or gravel. In this image, the pebbles are using this technique and have a matching texture to the stones that have been added as rocks....

thanks everyone for your advice. i'll try them all. In this image i used the same terrain, same texture but i raised the bump to 999 to give it that rough ground affect in it.

It looks like too much bump, to me, increase the complexity of the TERRAIN, add lumps, low spots, etc.

Sorry, it was late and I had to get up early so I didn't have time to give you a good example. This is a detail of a render I'm working on called "Storm Surge". There is no bump in my material! The terrain carries the weight as far as close-up detail. This is a much better and more realistic way to go for terrains that are close to the camera. If you'll notice, the grass shadows follow the contour of the dune ripples, something no bump map can do.

oooohhh - nice tips. one for the Bookmarks! love your sand, danamo