Yes me, I need help with the dang sky....here's what I want, haze at the horizon with a little glow, some clouds and black space with stars about one third above it, does that make sense? I've tried every dang sky I could and turned everything off and I can't get this effect, it's driving me batty, will I have to break down and do it in post? Or does someone know a way? I'll do a sketch...

the sketch

Tricky, tricky. You may have to resort to using a sky, volume spheres, and maybe even spheres for the stars (as Bryce starfields can sometimes suck.... AS

I've taken to using infinite planes for stars (set to track the camera, otherwise they can look really weird), making 2 renders, with and without the stars, and erasing out the bits with stars on top of the clouds and near the horizon with photoshop.

Here's a quick shot at it. Bryce just needs better stars. ;o AS

Hmmmm, that's almost it, I'll give it a try, what's your base sky preset or is it custom?

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/~bryce/zs1.zip

Custom. Here ya go. AS

Why that's most kind of you AS, thanks!...=)

no prob. ;o)

Make your Sky the way you want it & set your POV. Use Universe Image creator to make a starfield, which gives you complete control of the density & other variations it offers. Place a 2d plane or even use a booleaned sphere. Load the starfield image. Cool advantage here...it's already set for tranparency setting. Tweak your starfield till your hearts desired in any 2d editor. You can also load the ambience button and increase or decrease brightness.
This will also allow you create ANY sky backdrop you want.
So many options.
Hope this helps.

Message edited on: 10/25/2004 06:19

An addition: There is a panoramic starry sky photo somewhere on the Web. I downloaded it as tiff under the name of ... tycho8.tif, I believe.... funny thing, I found it in-country, at the web site of Visnjan observatory. :-) http://www.astro.hr/ucionica/tom/maps/ Anyway, create a gradient map for the glow as well as the greyscale map of the same for the blending. Apply the photo to a semi-sphere in Channel A, the gradient in Channel B and the greyscale in Channel C. I now forget which is which, is black -> show texture A or texture B. But you'll see very quickly. Go to the Sky Editor and play with Cloud Altitude. I'm sorry, no pictures because I'm at work. If you want, I'll do them when I get back home tonight. PS That TIFF constantly crashed my Bryce, so if it does the same with you, just resave it as JPG. Also, increasing the ambience will probably help stars to stick out more.

This is custom sky I made. I changed the FOV and camera scale, by clicking the zoom out on the 2d projection tool a couple of times. This made the stars look more realistic for some reason. I found that the colour of the clouds and haze worked pretty well what ever colour I chose. The only thing I don't like is the blotchy effect you get higher up the screen, but that was sorted out easily enough in post. If it's any use to you let me know, or any one else for that matter by IM.

Message edited on: 10/25/2004 12:56

IMO the stars in the custom star setting looks better than the random one.

Orbital you and AS are real close, leaning more towards yours though, thanks guys, this is a great help, getting skies to look right, especially with special effects isn't as easy as it looks, thanks for all your work.....=)