Step one: Proper Attire

Baby, it's cold outside...boots, jacket, gloves and most importantly hat, all required

Everybody knows a good Bryce render begins with Primatives.
In this case, to satisfy the most rigorous of purists, we use the blue bucket in the previous image to create, by hand, individual primatives that we'll use to contruct our model. In all we'll need about 100 of these before we're finished.

A good snowy texture is essential on your ground plane for this scene.
Create a circle laying out the first row of primative neo-cubes.
Be sure to close in that last gap or you'll be in for trouble later on.
Notice that this initial layer of primatives is set on the snow plane and NOT on the ground plane beneath. That allows you to boolean out a bit of a door later on.

By then end of your first session you should have completed at least stacking four rows or primative neo-cubes and boolean cut a door somewhere low on the side away from the wind.
You'll find that it is important to boolean cut the top of each row so that they begin to angle in towards the center of your circle. The angle should be increased with each succesive row.
Believe me..I wish I had figured that out earlier.

Obviously this process took sometime and so I decided to change the background lighting from day to night. This isn't necessary however. You can work it out however you'd like.

Hrm, interesting camera view. :-)

If you look closely enough you'll see less snow in the background along the fence. Again this isn't a requirement. It just so happened that an indoor soccer tournament interrupted the project so we we unable to continue for a day or two.

Once we started back up though we were able to add another row of neo-cubes.

Then came the hard part. Because we had only a single form to use for the creation of primatives the stacking process was delayed until more primatives could be formed. This need not be a problem for you if: 1. You use more than one form or 2. you do that AND have more people helping you or 3. You create all 100 primatives before you start stacking.

Anyway...that slowed the render time down quite a bit....

I told you the render time was slowed quite a bit...day becomes night again while you wait...BUT...
Once the additional primatives are created you can continue stacking.
At this point you need to consider a LOT of boolean cutting and a fairly steep interior angle on your rows of primatives.
I wish I had known that earlier....
The kid with his head sticking out the top is about 5'2" and standing on his tip toes...I added him in to this render for a sense of scale.

IF you knew earlier how MUCH to angle each succesive row the top of your structure would come out more like a dome rather than this sort of wigwamish/hogan shape.
Still...even with that bit of trouble the top of the strucutre is enclosed and it can be boolean carved on the outside to round off the edges.
I chose not to because even at 6'2" I was stretched as tall as I could get to get the last few primatives to the top.

In all an interesting project though one that resulted in sore hamstrings and a sore back.
The resultant structure is big enough that my 11 year old can stand fully inside in the middle of it and the floor is big enough to sit all five of us comfortably.

If it makes it through the temps in the 50's the next two days and lasts until the snow comes back Friday we may even try to sleep in it this weekend.

The upside is we've told the kids that as long as this thing is standing, if they're disobedient, the punishment will be 20 minutes in the igloo in naught but their undies.

Here's wishing each of you a happy 2007 and a year that is better than your previous one. No matter how good (or bad) 2006 was.

:lol:, :thumbupboth: , :woot: ,
the most perfect real world render ever! cool!!

A true brycer  - creating his own primitives lol. Excellent stuff.

bah, this could have been done so much more easily with box modelling...

m

Happy 2007 wishes to you too brother. Cabin fever comes to mind, although we on the east coast have been spared up to this point.

Great project!

ROTFLMAO !!!!

Brilliantly Done !

Really beautiful, hogan shaped or not.  I won't even deduct points for the missing inverted U tunnel that is typically leading up to the door.  It's too pretty to deduct points.

Ah basking in temperatures of 11%C here in the South of England.Snow?what's snow?What's Winter?

In fact it does seem so far that we have passed straight to Spring...the primroses are in full bloom down in the town's Memorial Gardens on the seafront.

I like the ambient light! ;-)  That's some realistic snow mat's you're using. Like the bump height.

It doesn't snow down here in Texas except rarely. Well... at least the first two Christmas's I was here it snowed.

As far as I can tell the "inverted U" doorway is really all about protection from the weather. You get that short hallway that helps keep wind and blowing snow out. In my case it would just mean needing to crawl further on my belly.
No thanks.

Nicely done ! Got way too much time on your hands, huh ? Jeez,...........I just looked outside at the thermometer,........it's reading 64 degrees, bright sun, not a cloud to be seen,..............ta-ta  for now.

Well, I see your point ... although the whole idea of the igloo is protection from the weather, and it looks from here like you had a whole bunch of very nasty weather.

Hangon! If the whole point of an igloo is to protect you from the bad weather wouldn't it make sense to build the igloo BEFORE the weather gets bad? 

Well while that would make some sense bryster the bad weather supplies the needed materials to make your igloo. Without it you can only make the emperors new igloo which any child will tell you is. .........  Miss doing stuff like that.

PERFECT RENDERING.   Adds a whole new meaning to book titled "Real World Bryce"

@Drac.  okay heretic.  Let's see you create a handle on some sort of snow plane and stretch and pull an igloo from your hat!  Primatives my friend are the answer.

now me... I just extrude a demi-human shape by falling over backwards and flailing my arms and legs!

I LOVE IT !   And I'm so frigging glad that we are having a warm winter (so far) here in the northeast. I will add Colorado to my growing list of places to never move to. Along with Antartica, Alaska and Buffalo NY. oh almost forgot - All of Canada too.

Hangon, Ang! Canada's just a spit from where you live..................:huh:

But a WORLD away culturally.....
:)

Yup!
I was out in just a leather jacket today. this is freaky. Should be about -10C at this time of year.

Yeah well...we got our third storm in three weeks today. Yet another day of school closures...which is really VERY rare here. It has to be BAD for schools to close.
I AM READY TO MOVE BACK TO CALIFORNIA!!!!