I'm doing some modelling at the moment using terrains using photoshop to come up with greyscale maps for it (some of Lown's stuff got me thinking) .  What I'm trying to work out is how to create a dome or hemisphere, I can do cones very easily using the gradient tool but I'm hoping someone knows an easy way to create something that will convert to something more spherical.

create a sphere set halfway into the ground plane.  set your camera directly over it pointed straight down.  do a "distance render."

Thanks.  Not only does that make my life a lot easier here it sparks off loads of other ideas too :)

Caly! How nice to see you here ;-) and an excellent suggestion.

thanks, Dan - I still lurk around, though I don't read anywhere close to all the threads.  this one caught my eye, though, as I could tell from the subject header that 'distance render' would be the answer.

I've been working on a huge project for years and years (dunno if you follow the Copyright forum here, but I posted there a week or so ago about some details of filing actual copyright registration paperwork, which is now done, yay!) - one of the images I've used in this project is a Bryce image - well, several are, but this one in particular uses a distance render of a poser figure.

here's the raw image out of Bryce - for the final project, it's desaturated and contrast-tweaked, and set into a 'context' that I'm not quite ready to explain yet, but within the next couple weeks...

I for one will watch this space with interest.

Nice to see Calyxa making an appearance here! I've learned a lot of my Brycing skills reading her tuts; all highly recommended. I thought I would add my 2 cents here as this is an area of particular interest and exploration for me. In the first pic you can see the results of importing a celtic knot .obj from KnotPlot and doing an ALTITUDE render of it from top view. I set up a square document (512x512) and scale up the knot so it fills most of the screen. This makes it dead-simple to use the same render in the picture section of the terrain/lattice editor and then I apply it to a terrain of the same resolution.

I took the same render into PS and picked out a custom shape (ornamental category) and put it into a layer above the frame and used the color picker and filled the custom shape with a sampled gray color from the original render. Then I flattened the image, exported as a .bmp and imported the picture back into Bryce's terrain editor. Here's the result out of PS.

I applied it to a terrain and this is the result. I have also exported some of these terrain meshes to use as architectural details to my building models in Carrara. Since Carrara can use instances I can put as many of these on a building as I want with very little memory hit. I got some other ideas for modeling techniques using greyscales if you'd like. Cheers, Dan

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I hit "smooth" a couple of times, or apply a very slight amount of gaussian blur in PS. It also helps to adjust the thickness of the object on the Y axis.

Quote - create a sphere set halfway into the ground plane.  set your camera directly over it pointed straight down.  do a "distance render."

 

Ok, this might be a stupid question from someone thats used bryce foir a while.

How do you do a Distance render.
i am only using bryce 5, if you need that information..

CD
(Hiding head in shame)

It's the bottom upside-down triangle icon button.

ok just call me stupiddawg now..i looked at distance mask but thought caly ment something else..

CD
(Back to learning VUE)

Danamo I've got a really good celtic knotwork font (it's a freebie - DS Celtic Border) which you can use in photoshop to create height maps for Bryce.  If you check out my picture "The Entrance" all the gold stuff was created this way.

You can also use latices made like this to carve into other objects using the boolean function which looks great.

That's a nice use of the technique Uncle. It's a pity however, that the detail is really too far from the "camera" to be distinguishable from a bumpmap. I'd really like to see another shot of the fascade from a much closer viewpoint.

Quote - I for one will watch this space with interest.

I posted a thread about my project in the community center forum here: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2686038