Now before the comments start, don't i get enough from the girlfriend cause of this WIP. She started this Saturday and yes its her first bit of work using bryce, she reads the forum regularly so i guess this is where she picked up some of the ideas for it. Now being the shy type that she is she wont ask for help with it so i thought i would for her. If you look at the left arm the terrain she used isn't quite sitting on/close to it. she has triend many things to rectiy this problem but to no avial. Can somone please help her because i sure can't, in more ways than one at times ;) PS: ignore the terrain or ground she has in the image they are there just to give her some balance to work with.

Can you explain the problem again? Is it the left arm as you look at the picture, or the left arm of the model? Does the model have two right arms, or are my eyes doing 'that thing' again? It would help, too, to know what effect she's trying to achieve with the terrain. Is it going to be clothes, or will the figure be growing out of the ground? edit to add - that's a nice texture on the ground, is it one of the presets, or tweaked?

Message edited on: 10/03/2004 01:18

Its like something out of The terminator either shes going through liquefaction or shes reassembling herself. Whichever way shes going, it seems to me that there is too much metallic liquid, shes halfway liquefied or assembled and theres so much stuff still left on the ground and to me, its out of proportion. Such minor details as you point out are often better corrected in post work and its faster. Alternately you can use smaller terrains which are elongated along the y (height) axis, brought to a cone shape to start the illusion that its forming into a limb burying the terrain well inside the limb letting it flare out as it gets to the floor and then build on that using other terrains (change the terrains types in the terrain editor perhaps using Parlin Hills as a type and use clipping to make it seem like spilt liquid dropplets) and use the smooth tool to ease out the rough ridges. Here, as a quickie, I used the cone primitive scaled down then elongated along the y applied the polished silver material and a bump map. You can also use metaballs If youre using Bryce 5, perhaps with better success and with better control over their sizes. This looks interesting, would like to see where this goes.

The problem she is having is the terrain she used isn't sitting against the left arm like its ment to be, giving the same affect that the terrain does on the right arm. If you have seen the movie Terminator II she is trying to get the affect of someone building up out of a soft metal/mecury look like in that. No it doesn't have two right arms LOL thats just the way she placed the terrain before doing the rendor for me to post the wip on here. The texture on the ground is one she downloaded in a terrain mat, the texture is called Red Planet.

LunarTick, if you hit the number "3" on the keyboard, it will show you the rightside view allowing you to jockey the terrain foreward and back along the "z" axis to get it to fit right.

Quest my girlfriend read your post and messed around with her WIP for sometime, she deleted the whole thing and started from scratch with it. This is what she ended up with after ajusting things for sometime. not quite in her words cause they would be against the TOS, she mutter something about you guys being good.

You sure she didn't say these guys are good for nothing? ;) You just have to be persistant with this stuff and the more you play with it, the better you understand it, is all there is to it. There's no right way or wrong way to get the same things accomplished.

Message edited on: 10/03/2004 05:24

That is pretty good for a first start I'd say! it's a nice goal to start with too, creating some sort of melting/morphing effect. Lots more original and educational (in the sense that she'll learn more about bryce with this project) then the average floating reflective sphere over water :)

well, some of us talk a good game..;) she might consider metaballs..close together and textured right, might give a more 'liquid' feel to it..give it a shot (just flatten 'em a bit..;)

I love the pose in post#6! She's looking at her hands and almost willing them into shape. This really needs a higher rez render but it's an excellent start!

I agree! good pose indeed :)