Started out just trying out a HDRI of The Screen Savers old studio with just a wine glass. Then I had to add wine to the glass, then a wine bottle, etc. Before I knew it I had a still life render which I normally don't do. :)

Very Good! Is there an orange that is reflected in the wine glass but not seen?

HDRI... this has been in several posts. What is it?

I'm not positive what the letters stand for but basically it's taking a real photo and using that to light your scene. AgentSmith did a thread some time ago on how to do this. You apply the photo to a sphere which surrounds your scene (putting a marble in both diffusion and ambience) and crank ambience up to 100%. The object in your scene with reflection will pick up the photo and this is what lights your scene. In this one I made the sphere about 5% transparent so sunlight could get through to give a bit of shadow to the bowl and bottle. This was rendered with soft shadows and blurry reflections.

Oh bikemouse, the only oranges are the ones in the scene. I forgot to say TIR is also on.

Why is there no shadow on the base of the friut bowl? just curious...

Bryce Forum Coordinator....

Vision is the Art of seeing things invisible...

Cool. Try using the backlighting method (search for "backlight" in the forum) This will make it so that you don't have to have all that chunky stuff where the pic is low-res in the foreground. HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Image. A real HDRI contains special data that effects how the photo behaves in low light and bright light situations, as well as blur, etc. Many high end programs can use these images, but bryce can't, so for our puroposes, we refer to HDRI as a big shell with an image that gets plopped over the scene.

good attempt, but smooth the background (with mask render and Photoshop) tho have a perfect result. cheers

Let me get this right , you put the photograph onto the sphere and put the objects for the scene inside the sphere?

Yes, it has to be a photograph prepared to fit a sphere. Like this one.

Not neccessarily. A regular panorama looks good enough to use, and there are way more of those around than the spherical projections.

Thank you.. not sure I understand all of this but will check it out.:) It does look like there is an orange in the bottom of the wine glass.

I have been playing around with this all day and getting nowhere, but since the image I used was not prepared to fit a sphere I now understand why. How do you alter a picture to fit on a sphere, or are there pictures out there you can download for this purpose?

I think what you are seeing is the reflection of the table. Madmax_br5, true...as the pic above that I posted is truly a panoramic projection and not spherical. It works just as well.

Caitlin, for now you have to download the pictures you want to use, but there is a program called HDRshop that will convert cubic images into spherical ones. A cubic projection is similar to spherical. You have an unfolded cube picture that gets folded up and you look around inside of it. Bryce can't use this format, so you would have to use HDRshop to convert the cube faces into a spherical projecion. Unfortunately, the software is not online right now.

One other little thing to ask: I created a sphere and made it huge to cover the work area, I then loaded a panoramic 2D picture that I'd made in Bryce. So far so good. But when I applied it to the sphere there was zilch definition. Q : how do you apply the texture to the sphere and maintain some detail ? Thanks in advance Catlin

Here's the picture I used to cover the sphere.

Well if the sphere is really huge you would need a very high resolution image to apply to it to keep any definition. One is this technique (fake HDRI) is motly used with reflective surfaces (i.e. the water in this case) and is usally a real world photo not a render.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=917716

Try the backlighting method.

Strange... I remember back when we first got TIR, and everyone was stoked because BR5 could complete all of it's internal reflections. This technique is definitely a step backwards, but I have seen some awesome images as a result. Still, to complete internal reflection, space as well as diffusion needs to be represented... Look at anything glass around you, and you'll see what I mean. Two glasses side-by-side would have to have TOTALLY DIFFERENT reflection maps to work with this method, and be true to internal reflection, due to parallactic displacement...