The problem is that I seem to have ended up with a scene which looks like a small model rather than a grand building (which was what I was after).  The water looks great but for some reason the building looks about 8" tall :(

Anybody got any advice on what might be causing it/how to get round it?  I'm not sure if it's something to do with my camera placement, the materials I've used (scaling of them maybe), depth of field settings or something completely different.

Originally the model was really pretty small, I made it massively bigger (the minarets are now nearly 700 high) which helped till I solved the perspective when suddenly it looked small again.

Any help would be really appreciated.

I may not be able to answer specific problems,.........but I can give you a general way of looking at things, copmosition wise. The thing about 3D (not just Bryce but all 3D), is to look at it as if you are working with a stage set (like live theater), it's like Trompe-l'œil, which means "fool the eye" , you want to build your scene so everything "looks right" for the camera, but may not be accurate "to scale". This will save alot of time and trouble. This goes for lighting as well as objects,.......download madmax's Zenith Sunlight Systems from freestuff, (if it's not available anymore, lemme know and I'll send the zip along to you.), then you can, turn off the sun in your scenes and use the Zenith system for a more natural softness and bleed to the shadows. I use this method in most of my outdoor scenes. Anyway,..........wish I could be of more help. And BTW, the only stupid questions are the ones not asked.

Well My immediate impression was that those pebbles must be boulders...  otherwise, the building is a miniature...  you see what I mean...?  You might be better getting a more fine material..    like a medium rough white cement material that will look like sand...

my two cents...

Quote - Well My immediate impression was that those pebbles must be boulders...  otherwise, the building is a miniature...  you see what I mean...? 

Doh.  Good point, I'll have a play with that and Sackrat I'll definitely go and search for the lighting resources.  Thanks.

I find that this problem is usually one of the viewer seeing an object of 'known' size.
That is,  if you build a car and place it in a neutral scene you can guess what size the car is supposed to be. BUT, add a human character that is only 2inches tall next to the car and suddenly you have a giant car.

To solve your problem, Uncle, you should maybe zoom in until your building fills the frame and add something we would recognise as being of a particular size....perhaps a tree, a person, or even a car!

Pakled and I discussed this sometime ago, when we were having problems emphisising just how big certain spaceships were when we had nothing to compare them to.  The problem was solved in various ways, one of which was to add very small windows and lights and another, by adding a spaceship of which the size was obvious.

I have noticed however, that you do in fact have trees in your scene. The trick here might be to change the pov until we can see that the trees are between us and the building..........

Point being made is:  the viewers angle and field of view can change thing dramatically.  Experiment to find what you want and like the best.**

Something can be made to look big by looking upwards at it from a low camera angle or by adding objects that put its size into perspective. (like a palmtree, a cat, a car, a human, a flower, or whatever else u can come up with that's significantly smaller then ur large object.

oh, and the ground texture is giving away the wrong size-vibes too at the moment i think :-)

See how the long lines sugest distance and the lower point of view make the building look bigger. Also the size of the trees really help put the sense of space more into perspective.

yup. You can get around the size aspects of materials by changing the (help me out folks..;) mapping choices. For example, 'parametric' does patterns of 1 size, 'world cubic' makes them much smaller. Past a certain distance, patterns don't make much sense; instead, a smooth texture adds to the charm.

Another thing I haven't played much with is depth of field. If the distant objects are slightly (very slightly) fuzzy, compared to the near ones, that's another visual cue. Can't remember if Bryce can do this or not, but maybe in (heresy!) Postwork?

Guys, I've only had a few mins to check the thread I'll dig into this in detail later, but huge amounts of thanks.  It's really great to find people who will put time into helping people especially skiwillgee going to the trouble of mocking up the scene for me.

Thanks again guys.

I think Ray shows us what I've been talking  about. We know what size the trees are, and of course the Taj looks huge when viewed from this angle (unfortunately, we know how big the Taj is, so to a certain extent the excerise falls on its ass) 
For something like Uncle's pic where the size is uncertain, we could indeed change the angle so that Uncle's water-features/pools/ponds/lakes are seen in the same manner as those of the Taj. Then, as if we were standing at the far end of the water, add something a simple as a leaf floating in the water. The perspective then speaks for itself.

I believe we saw a pic of Diana (Princess of Wales) sitting on the stone in front of the Taj (imagine this in Ray's pic) A perfect example of a 'known' object giving creedence to the 'unknown' object in the distance........I'll shut up now - I'm beginning to sound like Donald Rumsfeld.

Screw the copyright - I'm not making any money out of this and I live on Mars - sue me!

Another thing that might be throwing out the sense of scale is the height of the walls around the pools and their thickness.

I notice that you have openings in the wall around the structure (presumably arches to allow human access). Arches like that tend to be about 10 feet wide and somewhat higher than that (say 12-15 feet). At least, that's what my "sense of scale" tells me.
If the above is true, then the walls around the pools are extremely tall and wide. Nobody would be able to see into/over them. And, since they are (in your original pic) one of the 1st or 2nd things that get looked at, the mind sees them, adjusts itself to their size (and assumes the height of the pool walls to be, say, 1 foot) and then looks at the bulding again - which now appears to be 8-12 feet tall...

Just my 2-pennyworth..

Cheers,
Diolma

Yeah, it's the walls around the pool that really throw it off for me.  They're wider than your minarets, making everything else look itty bitty.

What I think really works with scale is deciding that one bryce unit is one inch, one foot, meter, yard, etc., then building everything to scale so you don't have one thing too big throwing everything else off.

Adding more detail to the buildings themselves wouldn't hurt either--windows or something decorative.  You might be able to get away with just using a texture for the details.

Haloedrain, thanks.  You're definitely right about the walls around the pools, I'll try to do something about that next.  I guess it didn't help that I've knocked this idea around over several months slowly evolving it so things have ended up changing their roles.

I know what you mean about the decoration but I'm deliberately trying to keep it plain on the outside if I can (I'm thinking in the direction of Hiagh Sofia in Istanbul for the main building).

Rendering that much gold really crunches the processor.

Thanks a huge amount for all the help and encouragement (especially diolma who I forgot to thank above).  Changing the pool surrounds really made a huge difference and I had a really good play with positioning the camera.  I think I've managed to produce the only real piece of "art" I've made as a result (As The Suns Set) which is up on my gallery.

It's really nice to find a bunch of people so willing to help.

*It's really nice to find a bunch of people so willing to help.

*Ah Thankyou!  Isn't it great how people thank us BEFORE they get the bill..?

OK so, 
Original thread initiation fee:                           $27
Uploading subject render:                               $19
Non-graphic replies generated = 9 @  £5 =$45
Graphic replies generated = 5 @ $10 =       $50
Uploading concluding render:                        $13
Satisfactory query conclusion fee:                 $42

                                                                  Total: $196

The look on Uncle_Riotous face:     Priceless !!!

The Bryster
Financial co-ordinator.
:lol:

Will you take a virtual credit card for that :)

*Will you take a virtual credit card for that :)

*That'll be a NO!  :lol:

Visa of Mars?

Bryster wants to be paid in mars bars no doubt :-P

groan...........