Oh and I just played with "DeepBlue" for the red wine and the glass texture is just "Glass Bubble1".

Fran-Just checked my settings again. The renders in the Wings forum were done on Premium setting with True Ambient on. This makes some difference.

I wonder if enabling blurry reflections might help too. @Shinyary2- I use the birds eye orthographic render a lot. I use a variation of the method you show here for making sand dunes, or waves. Works great!

shinyary2, what are where is 4RPP? Anything that cuts down on the time it takes for soft shadows! And shinyary2? Your render still looks too clear on that image projected onto the ground surface/wood/whatever.

I vote for using soft shadows. It's the only way to make glass shadows like that look anywhere more realistsic. (in my experience), although the solution shinyary2 has given is the greatest thing you can do if you don't want to use the soft shadows. Very unfortunately, you are looking at a long render. AS

AS how did you get such smooth letters?

Yeah, that is thanks to the 16-bit import trick. The letters are a terrain. That terrain is made in Photoshop as a 16-bit Grayscale image. It is saved out of Photoshop as a .tif, that .tif is turned into a .pgm with bikermouses utility he made for us, and in Bryce I go to File>Import, and it imports it as a 3d model, but in Bryce it works just like a terrain. ---------- Any ol' image in the terrain editor will equal 8-bit, which equals 255 levels of gray. 16-bit, Grayscale image have 65,535 levels of gray. (WAY smoother terrains/lattices) ---------- Normally, I might not go through so much for just text, but if its anything that will be rendered smooth, highly reflective, or as glass, I'll make the terrain as smooth as possible. AS

Thanks. Do you have a link to that pgm utility?

Lemme look here......... AS

Attached Link: Download

Wish I could understand this whole tiffer thing, lol.

Thanks AS! I really intended to learn to use this before, but somehow got sidetracked.

It's just a converter, tif to pgm. It's pretty "command line", but works well. AS

in reply to AS back in message #8 - yes, but using soft shadows and changing nothing else I was threatened with a render at over 2 hours yet shinyary2's method threatened over 7 hours for a render...

Message#9,

Oh it's in "Render Options", right, thanks.

Message#16,

Thanks AS, dunno if I could figure out how to use that, but you never know (me not being too up on "command Line" stuff)

Message edited on: 10/21/2005 06:13

I do have another question on this - could you go back to the top and look at the two smaller liquer glasses? There's something odd going on - on the inside of the glasses from the liquid level and up about a quarter of an inch - if you look closely you can see a silvery area. It looks as if it goes in a band following the line of the liquid, around the glass but only as seen through two layers of the glass. What is that silvery thing? And how can I get rid of it?

I saw those. Almost like their is a clear plastic 'lid' floating atop the wine itself. I don't know what it is. It could be the lighting hitting them weird, but it looks like its part of the mesh... Where are the glasses from? AS

Um, I made them in Wings3D. I hasten to add that I was following instructions at the time - as closely as I could - so I don;t think I did anything there that I shouldn't have. The only point where things might differ is on making the object for the wine, if you make it as originally I was told to then the wine object's material interferes with the glass material, so you have to move the wine object upwards infinetesimally. I can't show you that first render where the two interfere - cos my power supply has melted and I can't access my laptop until I get a replacement power supply - as I didn't realise what had happened and the battery ran down. Can't find a new power supply here in Oman so it may have to wait until I get back to UK. Mid-Nov. In the meantime I'm using my husband's machine (the power supplies don't match) but I have redownloaded Wings and I did bring B5 out here with me, so I can reinstall that. Um... can I reinstall B5.5c directly from Daz without first installing B5? Or do I need B5 then B5.5 then B5.5c? Lot of questions, sorry.

You do not need B5.0 installed on your computer before you install B5.5 Isn't the B5.5c just an patch update for B5.5? ------------ "I was told to then the wine object's material interferes with the glass material, so you have to move the wine object upwards infinetesimally". -Yup. It sometimes seems when 2 'glass' objects are just touching one another, you can get some strange light effects on the materials. Usually by going ahead and having the two objects 'collide', you can help correct this. AS

But only one is glass - the other is liquid. I don't understand what you mean by "Collide" is that something you do in Bryce?

Glass, liquid, its all the same in the DTE, they both have the same properties. I just used the word collide, to try and describe two pieces that are overlapping one another. AS

"It looks as if it goes in a band following the line of the liquid, around the glass but only as seen through two layers of the glass. What is that silvery thing?" Fran, I suspect that that "silvery thing" is just a coincidence between the reflections, refractions and the angle the glasses are being viewed at. If you look carefully at the glass with the red liquid, you'll notice the same thing (although to a lesser degree). Suggested experiment: Try moving the camera upwards a bit and point it down further; see if you still get the same effect....:-)) If you don't then it's a Point-Of-View issue (combined with torturous reflection/refraction issues). If you do then it's something else altogether... (and my theory was wrong). Another experiment might be to change the colour of the rear wall and see if that makes a difference to the "silvery" bits... BTW - neither of the above suggestions are intended to be for anything other than experiments to try to isolate the cause of the problem. OTOH, if either of them work sufficiently to get a better pic.....:-))) Cheers, Diolma

Oooops: X-Post with AS. Yup, "collision" (or whatever the real term is) might also be the cause. With apologies to AS, (I'm just trying to help), what I think he is saying is that if the mesh of the "liquid" intersects (ie, crosses into) the mesh of the glass, then that can cause problems for the renderer.... (Did I get that right, AS??) Cheers, Diolma

But/also, diolma is correct, your problem is "just a coincidence between the reflections, refractions and the angle the glasses are being viewed at". A couple of things I would try if I didn't want to change the camera angle; *Tweak the TIR (total internal reflection) numbers in the Render Options window. *Take the object that is the "wine" liquid, and enlarge it slightly on its X & Z axis (width and depth). You may have to only make it larger by 0.01 units to see a difference. *Try both those things together. AS

I'll go remake the glasses in Wings. Otherwise I could be forever trying to sort this out... hang on...

The above image demonstrates this... regular antialiasing took 2 minutes, 31 seconds, whereas Premium at 4RPP took all of 21 seconds. This is why I recommend using Premium at 4RPP for test renders, because then you can see what it will look like with all of the Premium effects as you compose the scene (which to me makes a big difference in what I end up doing, especially so far as radiosity is concerned). Of course, it looks terrible at 4RPP, so for the final render you might want to think about using regular antialasing. Unfortunately, then you can't use the cool effects like radiosity and distance blur. Either way, though, you're looking at a really long render.

Message edited on: 10/24/2005 14:55

Fran-- It makes no sense to me why soft shadows should take less time than a terrain. I've always had soft shadows increase the render times dramatically, while terrains don't increase much at all. I wonder if it has to do with a shortage of RAM? Of course, the ideal solution is a combination of both. =)

I have... sorry 'had' lots of ram. So it can't be that, well, unless Bryce5.5 + soft shadows is meant for people with computers bigger than cray2... Oh I've done the new glasses and their wines, still getting that odd silver ring though - could it maybe be something to do with the material on the wine? What settings would YOU lot use for say... red wine and green Creme de Menthe? (Just to stay consistant)

shinyary2 - Yup, soft shadows are faster when using the Premium render, with soft shadows enabled, at 4rpp. I didn't catch that part you said about using it for "test renders" earlier, sorry. ;o) AS