I was wondering if anyone from the Bryce community would like to take part in a "large scale" Bryce community experiment?!?

Any takers? Have a science itch you would like to scratch?!? How about a deep learning experience that, in the end would make you a better artist, and give you a better understanding of Bryce lighting and the new IBL room feature?!?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

I am curious.

I uploaded the file if anyone is interested... Should be good, and like so many other things we find, the more, the merrier...

Project: IBL

Have fun, and enjoy :)

(but more importantly, share what you learn :P)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

So what's the experiment?

Reallllllllllllll simple actually..... Render the scene... Add mats and atmosphere and lighting, and show and tell what you did. Im hoping Brycers will compare results, maybe we can all work together to lock down on an awesome, surefire method of lighting... Sounds impossible, but I dont think so... A strategy for lights would seriously improve my work... How about you guys?!? Is everyone 100% comfortable w/ lighting? Well, as we share what we do and learn, well learn more, and improve our skills...

The "experiment" end of it is just giving something standard to work w/ to keep consistency for testing. Lighting is hard enough, and w/ each and every scene lighting changes, but not "how the lights work"... I think, working together, we can figure it out... We can ALL benefit, i dont think theres anything to lose...

Dont be a party pooper :P Join in :) What do you know about lights? Im sure theres something everyone can share. That 1 little piece of info, that "secret", that "trick they do"...............

I hope people dont overlook or underestimate their techniques and methods either... Its too easy to say "well, my art isnt that good, no reason for me to participate".... PHOOEY!!! Thats even MORE reason... Practice what you see, imitate, and incorporate. In no time, youll be "adding" your own spice in the mix, and all these spices together will make 1 helluva batch of fried chicken...

MMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm.................. fried chicken...............

Now Ive gone and done it :P Time to cook :)

peace and cheese grease folks!!!

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

Over the years there have been lots of this type of experiment in this forum, we even had a pass-around file for a bit. Just in the last year or so things have calmed down here....some people will certainly remember how busy it was here. One example is the amount of entries in the Bryce challenge......I think I remember one month having over 60 entries...not to shabby.

Great Idea MatCreator!!

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

'Fraid I know nothing about lighting, as my gallery will tell you in volumes.

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

I won't allow myself to participate till I stop balking at my christmas challenge entry.  What the heck is wrong with me?!?  But yeah, it could be very interesting to see what comes out.

mdb

ps... why do I think of the "Sand Kings" when I see this image?... brrrr THAT'S creepy.

can't seem to download the file....tells me it's undergoing maintianace.. have to wait for two hours...

Ditto...

Message: RogePost's downloads are undergoing maintenance and will not be accessible in the next 2 hours. Please come back later.

Yep, 70 hits so far...

soon as it's available I'm game  :)

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci

Cool, I am downloading the file now :-)

I added a synthetic hdri of my own making (I'll get that available for download). It simulates a "bank" light used by studio photographers.

For a little while now I have liked trying to make lighting in my renders to be subtly extreme in terms of value, meaning having a small area which is nearly white with light and having a small area which is nearly black with shadow. So;

In the Sky lab, I changed the "Sun & Moon>Ambient" color to pure black, and took the Shadow Intensity up to 100. This will easily give areas of very dark shadows.

Which is no good unless you have the light....the hdri gives me most of that, and then to fill in medium areas with some faked ambience, I used some weak radial lights that do not cast shadows.

I then threw on a image texture, which you can see the image repeating itself on the walls & floor, but in this case, I kinda liked it for some reason, so I didn't fix it.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

The end result.

Thanks MatCreator!

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

That looks pretty awesome smith... I cant wait to post mines, but my mobo fizzed out on me, will be a while before Im up and running again :(

Interesting that you set the lights close to the ground... Any particular reason?!? Im just curious, why not closer to the top to have shadows fall down, rather than up? Is this your normal style of lighting?

I think that that hdr map is very interesting, not what Im used to seeing. Do simple black/white images make good hdr maps? Id like to test some "designs" out as well... This, all assuming that the white ares give the most light, and dark areas giving the least...

I also thought that for Bryce, hdr maps had to look like spheres in order for Bryce to use them. I followed that tutorial you linked to in the back room and converted some I got off the net, but is the the distortion necessary? What does that do for the image? AND, how comes yours isnt warped like in a spherical motion?!? Its "flat"?!? Howd you do that?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

I've only got B5 :( is the file compatable? If yes, can I play with it too? If not compatable can someone leve B6 on my doorstep, by the catflap, behind the potted plant :) (Yeah, I believe in Santa too!!) LOL

If it ain't free, I can't afford it.

The file can only be used with Bryce 6.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Interesting that you set the lights close to the ground... Any particular reason?!?
-With no shadows being cast, it almost doesn't matter at what height they are at, but I normally just as habit, put the radials at the same height as the objects in front of the camera.
-In this case, grouping all the objects together, they are collectivelly at a Y value of 56, so that's the height I put the radials at.
-I suppose the habit of doing that is just time saving, in case I want to turn the shadows back on, and/or want to turn the radials into spots, and pan them for a specific look.
-All this taking into account the lights are a cheap fake to fill in some light to simulate bounced light from the walls and such. (If i turned the shadow casting back on, and the radials were higher, the light would not hit the walls as the ceiling would cast a shadow)

Do simple black/white images make good hdr maps?
-Yeah, they are used when you want a lighting scheme but not wash your scene out with the HDRI's color. (some of them are quite color saturated and can change the color of your textures to sometimes an undesirable amount)) Most commercial/retail HDRI's you buy these days come with a greyscale version of each .hdr

I also thought that for Bryce, hdr maps had to look like spheres in order for Bryce to use them
-Nope, apparently as long as its a sqaure image that has been saved (through HDRShop) as a "angular" or "mirrorball" .hdr, Bryce will be able open and use it. So basically, you can turn most images into a useable .hdr (they will not have the dynamic range of a real .hdr, but still, it can be done)
-The only reason this .hdr of mine doesn't look circular, is because the "sphere" part of the image is black.

is the the distortion necessary?
-No, but the resulting .hdr will not be seamless, but if that attribute doesn't happen to show up in your render, then technically, it doesn't truly matter. ;o)

AND, how comes yours isnt warped like in a spherical motion?!? Its "flat"?!? Howd you do that?
-Because yes, I just created it a a flat image in Photoshop, using that tutorial at the bottom of our "HDRI's for Bryce 6" page. See the tutorial HERE.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

I made up a zip of the 3 HDRI's that I had made up so far for use in Bryce. The first one in the pack (01_final.hdr) is the one I used for the above render with a setting of 0,25,25.

See HERE for the download link and previews.

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"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

AS,  are your radials set linear of squared fall off to keep the dark shadowed area dark or is HDRI accomplishing that some how?    I find myself using squared a lot not to overwhelm the subject and I use negative for the same reason some but I haven't even begun to understand the nuts and bolts of HDRI

Just a normal radial, (that doesn't cast shadows). So, that would be just a Linear falloff.

The HDRI will give you the main part of the lighting, and then the sky lab settings (ambient color to black and shadow intensity deepens the dark areas.

The radials are just basically used for a different kind of "brightness" control for the objects and the darkest part in the scene. It's very subtle.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

I used another 3D app to save .hdr files for Bryce IBL, using Bryce made images. It worked great. You just have to save the image as a square(i.e. 1000x1000), load it into other 3D app and save as .hdr. I did use spherical order in other app but it still was flat, fyi. Then use it as you want in Bryce. You may have to tweak it for a true HDR image in something like HDRShop,  but  if you already have another 3D app, check it to see if it has .hdr file saving and try.

 I am watching this lighting thread for info. Good stuff so far...

I placed a GI light dome in front of the Original scene, turned the Quality up to 100% in the HDRI, finally changed the color of the shperes to a soft fuzzy mat. I wanted to see what render time looked like with a major light source added. The Radials are set at 25, with shadow(gray) (not soft)

Next I wanted to try a Zenith light Rig.

Then something with more reflection.

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Ockham's razor- It's that simple

I took this seriously, but had fun with it too.  The walking-Christmas-tree-light guys are arguing over the best place to hang the picture of the last time they argued over the best place to hang the picture, ad infinitum.

I swapped the IBL image for another, but left the sky alone otherwise.  Each of the metal balls has a point source inside, set to not cast shadows, with low intensity and ranged falloff.  The glass ball has a spot, squished along Y, shining straight down.  That light uses the rainbow volume mat as a gel, and the lights in the metal balls use gels made from their respective mats.

Since we could change mats I cheated and applied the steel cage mat to the ceiling.  This actually made the most dramatic difference in ligting.  In the end, I only added a bump and some specularity to the walls, which were default gray.  The floor mat is an adaptation of one of my engine-turned mats in the free stuff.  The octopus-looking thing wears a neat volume mat I downloaded years ago.  The cosmic coatrack has one of Tony Lynch's wood mats, the grain going the wrong way as is the alien custom (They get very little service out of a baseball bat).

The lights inside the spheres is a way to fake radiosity.  It is not done to the best effect here, but test renders were taking a lot of time.  I think you get the idea.

Fun challage, MatCreator.  Thanks!

John

Attached Link: Zenith Light Rig

All the images here show the recipe I used. I was curious to see how much light external light would compete with the HDRI source.

The blue and white show the ambient strength of each and their shadow effects. (Scene Shadow was set to full shadow intensity and full soft shadow)

p.s.
External light is a Zenith Light Rig by Madmax_br5

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

ok i put 3 radial lights in three spheres. set at default.
tried setting fog and mist no go.
skylab other then ibl  and fog mist at default
ok the doom fluff forum said my 448k picture was too big.
i,m well peeved now.
as thats under the limet.
so enjoy the invisible one rendo alowed.

 

Limit in the forum is 200

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

ok that explains why gallery excepted it and forum did not thx!!

 

In all practicality, it makes more sense to drop any of your UL's to approx 200KB. You typically don't lose too much in quality, and will get a lot more hits from people with dial-up connections.

If I had dial-up, anything over 300 would'n't be worth the time to open especially while cruising the galleries.

My.02

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

On this test run of the experiment, I combined what I call "Betons method" (Beton explained to me to set the lights in a "random", dome like fashion), and full IBL, the settings in the IBL room are 10,36,36 (quality, intensity, HDRI effect, respectively). The radial lights have no shadow, and an intensity of 7, a bit high, a bit washed out... The cone is set to an intensity of 25, edge softness at 20, and shadows are ON at 50, 35 ambiance and softness respectively...

I dont think I ever tried this method to light an interior scene, its too noticeable the concentration of lighting sources...

All in all, I DONT like the result... the light seems too concentrated, and I just dont "agree" w/ the proceeds i selected to mat the scene :P I would go back, set the lights farther from the object and sphere in the corner, and maybe add some more atmosphere... I used 16 lights for the "random dome", and a few more for the "back" of the room. I think I can get better results w/ fewer next time around...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

And here is a screencap of how I set up/position the lights...

I really do appreciate all the participation, and would also like to apologize for my "absence" as of late. My motherboard blew, and took over a month to get a working replacement...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

I dont understand what a zenith light rig is, but am VERY curious... Is that something you made up yourself ICM?!?

Smith, Im gonna try those hdr's you made... Sounds perfect for what I want. I cant stand going thru so many just to get one that DOESNT affect the color of my scene...

And I really do appreciate all the help, thanks :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

Just to check, by default, does the sky lab disable the sun when you guys load in an hdr file?!? Just that if thats the default, does it make it a better option, to NOT use the sun for light?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

This is my favorite so far. It uses Smiths hdr file, no lights!!! It lacks good shadow, but I like the quality of the image, and that the hdr didnt colorize the render. I only had the shadow set at 30% in the sky lab, my error but nonetheless, getting good shadow seems to be difficult w/ ibl images anyway...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

Even better w/ the attachment :P

(I thought we could edit posts, no?!?)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

that mat you used on the big creature in the corner is it avalible any where?

 

Attached Link: IBLtesting-Thelby-01C

Please Use the Above Link to View Image Concerning this Thread: Used the Debevec Beach-Probe, with Sunlight enable through the "Link Sun to View" That way it counts as a directional IBL source. I made the ceiling 10% transparent so that some, but not all of the IBL would come through it, you can also do that to walls for interiors, see my "The Study" in my gallery. A Small Cube was placed on top to create the shadow that traps the one eyed "Beast" One small soft radial light on the floor just for flavor.

IBL Settings:

Quality: 2

Intensity: 55

HDRI Effect: 100

I would rather be Politically Incorrect,
Then have Politically Correct-Incorrectness!!!

Dave, that mat is something new in my freesection, but the real credit of the texture is the actual reference photo that I snagged from [www.grsites.com](http://www.grsites.com)...

1st thing I noticed was the shadow... I said "wonder how he got that there"... I thought you used a spot from high above casting the shadow :P Alot of shadow and alot of reflection in there too, any lightsources Thelby, or is it entirely IBL?!?

I have some renders pretty much tying my system down now, cant do much, but I think as a "rule of thumb" for me, Ill be combining IBL and the "random" light dome method... On my last image, NOT part of the experiment, I combined the method, but usually Ill have my light shadows turned OFF. This time, I set them ON w/ an intensity of 0%, yes ZERO (set to black, w/ the shadow set to 20/15) and I was very pleased w/ the end result. There was a HUGE difference (not only in how the image looked, but render time as well) from turning the light shadows from off to on w/ 0% intensity, visible in the preview window, but I did not do a full render to "actually" compare results........... Ill do a full render w/ lights off asap, and some more "tests" to show you guys.

Again, I greatly appreciate the participation :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

Only the IBL and the Radial on the floor. Alot of the shadow produced from making the ceiling 10% transparent. I tweaked exactly for the effect of the Hard Shadow in the Corner, to Trap the BEAST!!!!

I would rather be Politically Incorrect,
Then have Politically Correct-Incorrectness!!!

where exactly are you turning the shadows off in and setting to 0?

 

In the actual light editor settings...

However, in the skylab, Ill have the shadow cranked all the way up. Ive been variating w/ different colors of the sun for diff effects but pretty much I have that set to 100% intensity w/ soft shadows on...

This project, although it "seems" simple, is very intense in the amount of settings that can be adjusted and variated, making INFINITE possibilities. That means we really have to focus on 1 aspect at a time, which, seems impossible if we are to make any headway, but, I think were doing ok :)

Between the lights and skylab alone, one can get lost in the number of choices to make, that, only complicated by the fact that there is never a right or wrong answer, and always more than 1 way to do it :P

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

infinite possibilities with infinite ideas will take time.

 

Lighting has NEVER been an easy topic for 3d graphics. Id rather experiment than read a book. Could you imagine a Bryce book for lighting? Prolly no pictures :)

Admittedly, Ive never read or even seen Real world Bryce. Ive been using the "manual" that came w/ version 4 from Metacreations for eons... And since then, we have trees, meatballs (typo?), and finally IBL...

(That cant be right, I must be missing alot of stuff somewhere inbetween there :P)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

think you covered all!!! cannot remember any other grate brake thoughs other then those.

 

TA...

(_/)
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I would love to have a go at this, but I have tried to download the file at regular intervals since this post started, and I always get the following: Message: RogePost's downloads are undergoing maintenance and will not be accessible in the next 2 hours. Please come back later. Today, I have tried at regular intervals over 8 hours - no go! Can someone please (temporarily) mirror/host the file? Garry

try this link.
http://www.downloadtaxi.com/d/1166457159
allso look in free at top of page then in bryce

 

Excellent! Got it!!! Thanks wawadave! Garry

NP!!

 

For this pic I used one mat mixed from two. I put two square spots along the floor - with square fall offs, and one radial light higher up with ranged fall off. Oh, I dont remember what I did in the sky lab, but it was something dark. Did I turn the sun off?

The ranged settings.

The spot settings.

The mat.

Same lights, other mat.

Wow mat, gotta check the atmosphere on that one to see whats going on. Also, I think that maybe the IBL settings are too low to yield sufficient lighting. Alot of times that happens to me, and Ill just crank up those settings and thatll help. Thats not to say, that the hdr file youre using maybe not the right one for this scene...

Or is it that the scene is not right for the hdr :P

Ive heard of people "rotating the scene", but I havent done that as yet.

As far as my server garry, I do alpologize. It gets hit pretty hard at times, I know :(

Thanks to you to dave, help is much appreciated :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

Well, actually I didnt bother about the IBL. I looked at the experiment as an overall lighting experiment and wanted first of all to use a couple of low lights and one higher to "sculpt" the models, keeping the room rather dark.

Allright here's my entry for ur lighting challenge! I made use of the window hole u made in the wall, hope u dont mind

I used 3 diff exposure levels rendered in seperate passes. The whole thing relies heavily on TA. No IBL was used çuz it rendered hella slow and still left ugly shadows plus the lighting wasnt satisfactory.
Compositing, window glow and curves done in photoshop.

Lemme know what u think

oh btw, total rendertime was around about 6 or 7 hours for all passes and masks in total on a system with 2 dualcore opteron 270's and 4gb's of ram.

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I follow mat, didnt realize... I too have done some of them that do not use the ibl feature, wouldnt really be an experiment w/o the "control" specimen (hope I called it right, thats going back to my high school lab days, most of which is just a big, smokey cloud :P)...

Ray, I would hate so see how long that would take to render on my 2400 sempron :P I actually put the window there on purpose just to give people another "window" of creativity :) The contrast of shadow and light is pretty deep.

How did you close off the rest of the environment from the lighting?!? Id think that some of that light would peek thru the side of the room.

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

I aimed one square spotlight at the window. Gave it a little gradient to tweak the light's color. No fill lights have been used, no sun either. I've turned the scene ambience to full black (very important to TA) I didnt have any problems with light peeking through the open sides of the room, the walls that were there obstructed any of the spots light that did not go through the window (If needed it's simply a question of controlling the angle of the spot by adjusting the x,y and z sizes of the spot object).

I did notice the dark area's turn out rather very dark on monitors that arent all that bright... It looked great on my sony tv screen though... I'll try 'n keep things more in check next time

Oh, btw I really really hope bryce7 will come with some exposure controls (lineair, and logarithmic exposure control at the very least.) and 16bit per channel render output! If we could have those it'd be possible to create such truely wonderful TA images. Currently you either lose brightness of indirect light or darkness of shadows.
16bits per channel would be purely for postwork purposes. 8bit leaves so very little room for tweaking levels, curves, brightness, contrast and that kind of things.

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ok, ya got me...

TA?!?!?!?!?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

TA = True Ambience. It's under the premium settings :-) It's bryce's solution to indirect light.

Basically the most controllable way to use it is by turning scene ambience to black, and using the ambient channel on your materials to control the amount of bouncing light. Also, less saturated ambient channel will reduce colorbleeding.

The raydepth is the controller that controlls the amount of bounces of indirect light.
1 bounce (raydepth1) gives darker shadows, and more general contrast but less color bleeding.
6 bounces (raydepth 6) gives a smoother less contrasted solution, more overall indirect light, brighter scene, and more color bleeding, but at increased rendertime.

Unfortunately the raydepth not only affects the amount of bounces of indirect light but also the amount of reflection and refractions made which kind of limits it's use.

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All new to me hearing this. I have not as yet explored the "other" render settings/features of Bryce. I remember when I 1st got Bryce 5 I tried doing something -in there- for some kind of distance blur effect, and after 4 plus days I had a render that looked like I stopped it after the 1st pass of an "on screen" render...

I suppose I am over-paranoid of increasing render times, Ive been using Bryce all this time (ever since 4, early 1999-ish?!?) and am just now venturing into renders that even use lights :P

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

I know what ya mean, the rendertimes are a pain! But there's still an art to it. It's a case of trying to find the fastest rendering solution to fit your needs. In this case TA worked faster for me then IBL and with better looking results!

Generaly I preview premium effects at 4rpp. Then I render only little parts of the scene to tweak specific things. Then finally pick out the noisiest parts of your 4rpp render, and check out how much rpp they need to look smooth enough to satisfy your needs and use the resulting settings for your final render.

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ok left ibl settings as they were set set the main two walls to 6.7% transparency to allow ibl effect through. did this on a closed cube and it worked some so its don,t affect mat quality and should let light through. small square set ti 4% transparency.

all mats use same bumpmap and material settings

useing 1 default radial light inside large sphere.

 

On this IBL render, I purposely did NOT use any outside lightsource. ALL lightings is generated between the hdri map and the atmospheric settings. The hdri map is again, Agent smiths. Admittedly, it has become one of my favorites, in that the lightings is VERY powerful, is not directional, and casts NO color. I used a setting of 20, 20, 32, and as you can see, yielded bold, bright light. My error totally for the washout, I "neglected" the sun/moon portion of the skylab, and had my shadows at 30% intensity, soft shadows on, but used white for the sun color instead of black (as you know, you can use something of an abstracted sky setting to have shadows cast from/by the sun"light", this method is commonly used in GI set-ups).

Having waited the 5 days, 5 hours and 7 plus minutes for the render to complete (at a mere 1200x900 at 72 dpi mind you!!!), in seeing the results and comparing/combining others experiences and results, for a better render I would definitely change the sun color, and decrease the intensity in the ibl room.

I think it was VERY close, but the lack of convincing shadow and the wash out pretty much kills it :(

Still, its what you learn from the experience, and how you carry that into the "lab"...

Peace :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

long render. like that cement wall mat!!

 

The cement mats really need a fitting bumpmap to make them come out best. Also, dpi has no influence on rendertimes, it's a setting for printing, its got nothing to do with the actual pixels calculated.
Apart from that it looks rather nice! but ouch 5 days rendertime! I admire your patience.. haha I've not had such patience for a long time anymore

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DPI has no influence on render times?!? You mean a 72 dpi image and a 300 dpi image would render at the same time? All this time, I was under the "assumption" that my 30x40 stuff took so long because of the dpi, in combination w/ them being so large. Im somewhat upset to find that a 72 dpi image would render just as fast as a 300 dpi image, I feel like Im being jipped, LOL!!!

I like the cement texture as is, never had any problems against it :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

dpi=dot per inch
so that would be saying 300mm is as long as 70mm

300 dpi will give a finer picture more suitble for printing. 
 thread in commons at daz on dpi some good indo was given. i,m sure there is lots more in google.

and i like your cement mat the way it is.

 

Well it's basically like this:

• Screen resolution is defined in pixels. Images are rendered in pixels also.
• Print resolution is defined in DPI, printers print out at certain DPI's.

So.. basically what the DPI does is tell your printer how smal your rendered pixels will be printed on paper. Which is why a higher dpi gives u a smaller print at the same pixel resolution then a lower dpi would do. For instance a magazine will require about 2500pixels wide or high for a print on one full page, but if you put the magazine page next to say, a 19 inch monitor the 1024 or more px on the monitors give roughly the same size image as the print in the magazine even though its less pixels.

DPI on computerscreens is a stupid invention once made by someone, i believe it was introduced somewhere in adobe photoshop once... and it's been confusing people ever since! I dunno who came up with the nosense really, a pixel is a pixel.

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All I've done here is add one light, everything else (apart from the mats of course) is as the original file.

I'd have tried another Light Probe, but I don't have any - or didn't when I did this render.

Measure your mind's height
by the shade it casts.
Robert Browning (Paracelsus)

Fran's Freestuff

http://franontheedge.blogspot.com/

http://www.FranOnTheEdge.com

nice one fran!

here is ibltest2 br6
i used 4 radial lights at default except for color.
one mat is by matcreator the rest are hobbled together by me with help from matcreator.

 

Nice one Fran, Is the light embedded inside the large sphere? If you used the "default" settings of the scene/ibl, thats the same thats included w/ the "robot in ibl room 9" scene, part of the Bryce 6 content. At 1st i didnt understand why the atmosphere was set as so, but its making more and more sense now...

On yours Dave, I cant tell where you placed the lights... And at 25% intensity, thats a bit high, so Im wondering what hdri map and settings you used, just from having 4 default lights, Id think that would cause wash out, but yours ISNT, and thats very interesting...

I dont think through all of these tests, no one has mentioned "negative lights"... I suppose no point adding salt on the open wound, LOL!!! One step at a time :)

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

what the heck is negative light.
all the lights are inside spheres and the cylinder.
how ever you had hdri set i used it. adding color to lights brings out colors and conteracts wash out. or haveing lights inside colored obj,s in this case both but not nesasarly the same color light in the same color obj.
the first radial light i ever used inside something is in daz bryce  gallery. think 3-4th light i ever used.

 

Interesting Dave... Did you "puposely" add color to the lights and embed them w/i objects to avoid wash out?

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

no just seeing how colored light inside colored obj compare to real world color palette blending.

 if it had of looked like wash out i would have changed ibl.

no just messing with lighting to try it out. i can count the number of times i have used lights on two hands or less.

had noticed before in reg render useing colored lights enhanced certain colors more then others. and going by this useing diferrent colors has more effects yet.

also the mats have real bumpmaps now as well!!!

 

i have a feeling ibl enhances things because of colors in the photo used. useing colored lights enhances that again.

 

Trying negative lights now, 52% antialiasing....

Measure your mind's height
by the shade it casts.
Robert Browning (Paracelsus)

Fran's Freestuff

http://franontheedge.blogspot.com/

http://www.FranOnTheEdge.com

I pretty much always avoided using lights. I should have been doing this experiment when I 1st got my hands on Bryce 4 in 1998, but I was too busy arranging spheres over reflective water, LOL!!!

Seriously, its because of render times. Thats it in a nutshell, and its really sad that my imagery and work suffers due to my impatience. To defend myself however, Im sure you guys understand how much longer a render w/ lights will take (dare I say lights AND shadows :P), and when trying to get large format output (my largest size is 40x30 now, but what if I wanted to produce larger prints?!?) it just takes too damned long. Imagine a GI set up, and trying to get a 40x30 image using GI or IBL... I consider myself patient enough, Ive let a few renders take 3+ weeks to render... Ive done benchmarks, and while I may not have a super powerhouse, my PC is "ok"...

I took a serious dive into lighting as its such a crucial component to art, because for far too long Ive neglected it. My gallery now is full of lighting experiments, when it should be full of pipes coming out of peoples asses :P

Now, Im finding that I like to use them, but cannot wait the required time for large output renders. That last experiment took 5 plus days to render... Only 1200x900. I tried some of the newer stuff Ive done, and after days, the render not even the double digits... Theres no way in hell my pc can run that long. PC's need to power down every now and then, and refresh themselves... Utility bill up the wazoo, lol, I think not :P

I even considered linking several pc's together to make use of the Bryce Lightning feature, but I dont think you can render to disk (and increase size and resolution) in order to make printable renders. I used to think the amount of memory in your system would help boost render times, nope... A better video card, not gonna happen. The PC itself will make a dramatic difference (cpu being used rather), but this (an AMD Sempron 2400 :P) is what I got, so thats that, LOL!!!

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

This render, took over 3 weeks, and uses NO lights... I liked the image so much, I didnt care, but I dont understand why so long.

Nothing to do w/ nuffin w/ regards to the experiemnt, lol, just  to show how Bryce can be "inconsistent"...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

That probably took a long time because of the haze, haze does increase render times too.

3 weeks!  i've never been able to let a render run more than overnight, and in fact I haven't been able to do that as the light and sound of the laptop keeps me awake.  I managed it once at home - cos then it could run downstairs, but I had to set the screen to power down or my brother would have seen it and raised a riot.

He pays the electric you see.

At college it doesn't matter so much except I only have the one tiny room there and as I said the noise and light keep me awake...

Oh and I didn't like the one 'render to disk' I did as I couldn't do anything else while it was running, I couldn't minimise the bryce screen and go back to say... wings.  I was stuck.

Not nice.

Measure your mind's height
by the shade it casts.
Robert Browning (Paracelsus)

Fran's Freestuff

http://franontheedge.blogspot.com/

http://www.FranOnTheEdge.com

The haze was my 1st choice for the culprit, as it has no lights, but Ive used that very same atmosphere on DOZENS of images, and they never took as long...

There are 3 kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't..

i found if computers been on a long time and you start a render it takes longer. if more ray traceing was set that snails it to a stand still. longest render for me was 7-8 days and did not work out how i wanted.
but that picture you did was worth a wait!!!

or if bryce had been open for days and starting a new render slows down for me. now i exit bryce before starting a new one.

 

Sometimes I used to find that if I'd stopped a render and saved the file - when I pressed 'resume render' it would work okay and finish rendering and sometimes it would go all odd and look as if it's rendering - the render line moves - but nothing in the image changes...

Do you have a lot of bump in those materials?  Sometimes that can increase render times...

Oh by the way, I managed to get some of those things you had on your Geocities site, but some come up as - 'Sorry, this file is no longer available. It may have been deleted by the uploader, or has expired.'. that was the Gazebo textures.

Measure your mind's height
by the shade it casts.
Robert Browning (Paracelsus)

Fran's Freestuff

http://franontheedge.blogspot.com/

http://www.FranOnTheEdge.com

matcreator are you still with us???  not seen or heard of you in weeks?