I discovered this technique quite by accident. What I was trying to do was to create a rock formation that hung over at more than 90 degrees. Creating a terrain in Bryce, stretching it vertically and just rotating it on the X or Z access just didn’t work. There were scaling artifacts and hiding the back edge that was now poking out was not acceptable.
Then I started to fiddle with the Scaling options in the Edit Palette and discovered that if you use your Rotate and Scale functions with the Options set to "World Space" they scale and rotate according to the world coordinates and not the object itself.
1. Create a terrain – preferably one that has a rocky outcrop in the middle of the terrain object – like an island in the middle of the sea.
2. Go to your Edit Palette and click on the small white arrow just below the Rotate tool. Ensure that "World Space" is selected from the Rotate options. (If you change this option in the Rotate tool it will also change the option in the Scale and Move tool as well)
3. Now change your view to a look at your terrain from the side. It will help to give you a better idea how much you should rotate. Now rotate the terrain about 30 degrees. Whether you rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise is up to you. Keep in mind that the overhang will occur on the side that is opposite to the direction in which you are rotating.
4. Now go to the Scale tool and click on the White arrow to get the options popup menu. Check to see if the option is still set to "World Space".
5. Now scale the terrain on the Y axis and because the scale tool is set to "World Space" the world’s Y axis and not the terrains Y axis will be used.
6. Now rotate the terrain back on the X axis so that the base is parallel with the ground plane. You will now see that the top of your rocky outcrops are leaning over more than 90 degrees and you keep the detail on the rock surface.
7. Finally you can use the "Land Object" tool – the small arrow at the bottom of the object controls to the right of your terrain. Render and see your results – a rather nice-looking overhanging rock!
I found that the more you rotate the object originally, the more extreme to overhang will be. I also experimented and discovered that terrains with peaks concentrated in the middle of the terrain often work better if you are looking for an isolated rock. If you have created a terrain in the Terrain Editor that has some details or "high spots" on the edges of your map, use the Gaussian Edges or the Round Edges function in the Terrain Editor to lower and remove those edge details.
Here is the result of my experimentation. Many thanks to my friend Roy Hindes for reminding me about this "World Space" option!
Rosemary Regan recently provided BryceBlog with an excellent mini-tutorial about creating HDRI (for IBL) in Bryce, a brief but good document that I will definitely refer back to time and time again.
If you get to the point of doing the conversion into the “probe” format HDRI – which is the only format Bryce 6 can understand – and you don’t know what to do in HDRIshop then take a look at this tutorial that I have bookmarked. It helped me a lot, and scouring through the tutorials that are available at Bryce-Tutorials.info, it clinched the whole conversion process for me.
It would be nice to see some renders albeit experimental renders to see Rosemary’s discoveries and the Bryce 6 tutorials in action. I will do the honors over the weekend to get the ball rolling!
By now, most Bryce users have played with the HDRI/IBL sttings in the Sky Lab. And we've become accustomed to the need for the "Spherical Probe" type of HDRI image in order for Bryce to play nice. While there are some of these available on the web, as well as tutorials on how to make them, they remain a curiosity….we seem stuck in the "Shiny Reflective Sphere" stage, just as we first opened Bryce and put that shiny sphere over a plane of water.
But it is time to move on, my friends.
Continuing investigations in HDRI lighting studies, leads me to a startling conclusion: ANY square-aspect image can be used in Bryce's IBL/HDRI input, as long as it is converted to an .hdr file. For purposes of these experiments, I began in Photoshop, made some color gradient images, took those into HDRIshop, converted them *directly* into .hdr, then used them –unaltered in appearance– in Bryce's Sky Lab.
After some investigation, here's what is happening behind the Bryce Sky Lab functions.The square aspect image is 'read' only in a circle that fits into the square…this readable area is then shrink-wrapped over the IBL lighting 'sphere' (an imaginary super-sphere which will surround your scene…essentially it is the 'sky'). The image information from the arced corners is discarded. The outer circumference of the image's circle is pulled down to a point on the opposite side of where the image's center will show. There is considerable stretching of the image, particularly noticeable where the 'backside' of the IBL lighting sphere can be seen.
But if you create an evenly colored square image, no distortions will be noticable. I created a circular red-white gradient …and made it into a .hdr file, and used it to be the only light in a scene. In the scene were a cylinder and a sphere, both colored flat white. I rotated the view to show how the gradient appears in the scene (if used as background) and how the lighting affects the objects. You can see where the white outer edge of the circular gradient has been pulled together into a small area on the 'backside' of the IBL image sphere. In these red-white images, NO added lights were used, the sun was turned off, and the HDRI settings in the Sky Lab were:
Quality 256 Intensity 10 HDRI Effect 100
Now, what this does NOT do is cast true shadows. In the next set of images, for the first, I added a ground plane (colored white) and rendered with only HDRI/IBL; no sun or other lights in the scene. In the second image, I added a white-colored sun positioned roughly where the light was coming from in the HDRI/IBL image.Take a good look at the cast shadows now…. With normal 'sunlight' in Bryce, those shadows would be shades of black. But here they take on a red cast.
Nest came adding multiple colors in a box-like formation…trying to imitate the ambient light found in an enclosed room with different colored walls. I still need to experiment with how to lay out the blocks of colors, but this gives the idea well enough.You can see where the hdri image is very jaggy where the colors meet, due to the shrink-wrapping and distortion effects,….but just look at the amazing color blends that occur on the objects!!
In conclusion: What we have with the HDRI/IBL function is a way to create image-based *AMBIENT* lighting. We no longer have to be confined to the single-color ambient choice in the atmospheric settings. Other lights *will* often be needed to create cast shadows (if they are truly desired for the render), but you can come much closer to 'real-life' lighting with your IBL functions. [In addition, though, you can *add* the single-color ambient light setting in the atmosphere settings to give yet another tint to the overall scene.]
I hope this experiment will give you the push to make experiments of your own in the Bryce Sky Lab! HappyBrycing all!
An addition to this blog entry, care of Mark (aka Lakotariver), via Rosemaryr.
A few clarifications on the instructions given within Bryce itself: ———————————— 1. Locate the file “Bryce6 Links” in your Bryce folder*. *(Usually located under the main Bryce6 folder on your computer. Example: “C:\Program Files\DAZ\Bryce6.1\Bryce6 Links.txt” , or wherever you put your own folders and files for Bryce).
2. Open this folder** with a text editor. **[should read “file”, ie. “Bryce6 Links.txt”]
3. Type in a (new) link name as you want to see it in the menu, followed by a comma (,) and two spaces, then on the same line type the URL in quotation marks such as “http://www.daz3d.com”
4. To place a separator between links, type a dash between quotation marks (”-”)
5. Save the file to replace the existing one.
You can replace the links that are there, or add new ones. ————————————
Now, *why* go to all this trouble?
There are a number of tutorial sites or packages which you may likely wish to access while you are using Bryce. This opens such in a new window which can be constantly referred to as you work. The links you create do not necessarily *have* to be to the Internet…you can also access tutorials which you have saved to your own computer. Just use the file location path as the link URL. Simple. For those who do not have high-speed connections, this is a way to view those tutorials that you have saved to your computer. Some of these tutorials come as a package along with full Bryce scenes, for you to work with and explore: DAZ sells the “Bryce Masters’ Series” which includes “Smoke and Mirrors”, “Cloud City”, “the Block” and “Great Hall”. Other tutorials are also available on the web.
Thanks to Mark (aka Lakotariver) for high-lighting this little used function of Bryce 6 in the discussion forums at DAZ.
————————————–
And here are some informational and tutorial links to try out:
Today is a sad day for the world of the Bryce artist. An icon in the field, Jerry (Gennaro) Composano, also known as prizm or Prizm Break, passed away in his sleep last night.
To echo Frogdot of 3dCommune’s words "…our artwork is a part of our legacy" We invite you to visit Gennaro’s website to enjoy the legacy that he has left behind. Jerry’s "Cumberland Creek" was nominated in the Golden Tori Awards for the Best Use of Textures category and was a close runner-up to the winning entries!
RIP Jerry! Your memory will live on in your images that you left us!
My father had a saying (typical Cockney English saying): "It is all over bar the shoutin’" This applies to the 10th Annual Golden Tori Awards. They are a thing of the past for this year!
Each and every year, the members of the Delphi Bryce Forum have nominated and voted for the year’s best artwork done using Bryce, in a vast amount of categories (27 this year) It is regarded as the "peoples award" for Bryce artists throughout the world and in my opinion is perhaps the most special and prestigious award of its kind.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the past decade: The Bryce software has passed through several versions, been sold, bought, sold again and finally bought by DAZ. The Forum is still there, although it too has changed a lot and we have seen faces come and go. We have lost members to death Don Tatro (aka The Creepy Clown), Debbi Bishop (aka BryceTech), Cyn (aka Skywalker) and some folk have just moved on to other things, and we miss them all. That as we all know is the nature of the Internet and this global village that we call home!
The awards party is held each year on or around the 20th of January after the nominations and voting round that are held prior to this for about 2 months. It take the form of a "virtual" party in the Delphi Forum chatroom. Members don all manner of virtual apparel and virtual drinks and refreshments are served (although some I am sure are in reality imbibing their own preferred beverages – alcoholic and non-alcoholic – in front of their computer monitors)
Every 10 minutes or so the Master of Ceremonies announces the award category and by means of a chat room command opens up a pop up window on the attendees monitors to take them to the announcement of the winner of the category, then everyone chats about the winning entry, contributes all manner of congratulatory phrases and a wonderful "party" atmosphere is created.
Of course you have to remember that this event takes place at the same time all over the world. We have people from different hemispheres, and different time zones. This year Australia was represented, myself from South Africa and then virtually all the time zones of the USA/Canada. For some it was late afternoon the following day and for others late on Saturday night, so imagine the fun that was had when wether, time of day and season were exchanged between the attendees! I had to get up at 4am on Sunday morning to attend the party!
From beginning to the end (well the end of the awards part) a full 5 hours passed! For me it felt truly like 2 hours at the most. However when I started hearing the birds start twittering in the garden and saw the world wake up around me (in South Africa) I realized that a long time had passed and I had enjoyed every minute of it…
Here are a few of the events that occurred during this year’s awards:
The "popup" bugs of the Delphi chat room that cause some of our browsers to block the opening of windows and to disconnect us from the chat room every few minutes caused a lot of frustration but some merriment. Martin (GenericHuman) and I (Hamfast) had a contest who could welcome Cyndi (gonedigital) back first when her new Vista computer running Internet Explorer 7 bugged out after every award pop up! It was a frantic game to see who could get the wb Cyndi (Welcome Back Cyndi) first in the chat room once she reappeared.
Then there was (Sandy) SndCastie falling on the floor all the time (she says it was from laughter – ROTFL, but I think she was stealing virtual popcorn dropped on the floor by the exuberant award attendees!)
Then of course there was our resident southerner RebelYell who seems to have suffered from a bad case of alcohol-induced dyslexia and couldn’t type a single word correctly! Some of his spellings – deliberate or genuine mistakes were quite hilarious! Of course he frightened some of the visiting guest with his own "rebel yells" typed in capital letters in the chat room!
RebelYell wasn’t the only person with "fumble fingers". Our hostess and Master of Ceremonies, Rosemary Regan (rosemaryr) had to have several attempts to spell the word "small" before the hobbit assisted her and pointed out the "M" on the bottom row of the keyboard! She said it was that she was tired and stressed. I think she had been sipping virtual cocktails behind the curtains on the stage!
At times Martin (GenericHuman) reminding us in grandfatherly tones to …….sip……. the drinks slowly, but then frightening everyone with his "slam" and he slammed the glass down after downing it! Poor Cyndi (GoneDigital) had to have the loud "….sip….slam!" explained to her.
Plenty of *duck* tape was handed out to help attendees with the Delphi popup bug, and all the time Hamfast was like a little Jack Russel terrier, in and out, with silly jokes and jibes dished out to all including some inane joke about ducks flying upside down that drew a few polite "LOLs" and giggles from the crowd! It was early morning for me and I had way too much coffee and was definitely on a caffeine buzz!
We had some special guests with us. The winners of each category had been secretly contacted and invited to attend with promises that "it would be a special evening". Some had responded with enthusiastic "I will most certainly attend" others had prior commitments and had to decline the invitation. GoneDigital and Meski (Cyndi and Bob) were both visiting the forum for the first time, and received a hearty welcome and congratulations on their awards.There was a lot of e-mails going back and forth in the background to help them set up their browsers and to assit in logging in to the chat room.
Rosemary, who doffed two hats for the whole 5 hours, running the award ceremony and acting as MC, and then as a ordinary guest won a well-deserved Tori award for the "Most Helpful Person" even though she hinted that the voting was rigged, I can assure all that she won hands down and was by far the "popular choice". I think few people actually appreciate the amount of work that goes into organizing and running such an event!
Darlisa Riggs (Dar) paid us a visit from Utah. She works for DAZ and hinted at the upcoming Hexagon and improved Bryce documentation (which is the best I have seen since AuntiAlias’s Real World Bryce 4)
This year there were some closely-contested categories with, in some case, only a single vote separating the winner from the runner-up. In other categories there were some clear winners. This year’s WOW image was won by Ron Harrison for his "Violets & Brook Trout" image which drew gasps of astonishment and "wows" from all quarters. It is amazing to see what some artists can do with Bryce! His image was no exception. The Best New Brycer and Most Improved Artist awards drew equal reaction, keeping in mind that these are new artists who haven’t been working with Bryce for a long time!
"When did you start with Bryce?", I have been asked a few time – often by people who are curious about my images. When I actually come to think about it, I can't remember many of the details, but here are a few.
My best friend, and ex-business partner (we are still best friends but no longer business partners) brought a CD home one day with a whole collection of programs on it. It was from some or other computer magazine and had an evaluation version of Bryce3d on that had just been released that year. (1997 – I think) I recall having seen Bryce on the Apple Macintosh and marvelled at the images that were created.
I borrowed the CD and took it home and installed it on my computer. The evaluation version was fully functional and wouldn't expire but it put a nice watermark all over the rendered images. I played with it for a few weeks and loved every moment as I recall.
Of course I was a total klutz with the program. There was no manual to speak of and the help file was – dare I say? – not very helpful. I didn't know all the shortcuts and "hidden" features of the program. You see, Bryce was, and still is, a quirky program whose creators seemed to like the idea of hiding vital functions in rather obscure ways, often using the Ctrl key or buried under tiny little arrows.
Nevertheless I became attached to it and soon realised that I had found a program that suited me and that I could easily get to do what I wanted it to do without a manual or a degree in computer science. So I went to my employer and asked for a budget to be able to purchase this program, I certainly couldn't afford it. He of course asked me what I needed it for – and I lied (well didn't tell him the complete truth) and said that it was a 3d graphics program that could render things in 3D. He seemed happy with the explanation and asked if it did human figures as it would be useful for the medical environment. (where I was currently working)
I had seen some images where human figures had featured so in ignorance I said "yes", and my boss approved the purchase.
When the package was ordered I realised that it could not do human figures, but I had to show something to my boss. A visit to the Bryce website (owned by Metacreations) revealed that Metacreations had just acquired a new program called Poser that did…guess what… human figures… so I added Poser to the order and got the programs delivered after about 3 weeks.
Now I had a manual, and a program that didn't watermark everything and another program that could do human figures…
A good start to my life with Bryce.
Now you know as well why the human figure features so much in my Bryce artwork too!
Bryce 6 has the ability to use Real-World Lighting via HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) for renders via the new IBL menu inside the Sky Lab. However Bryce 6 comes with only a few HDRI files that you can open in the Sky Lab. (10 when I last counted) so searching for HDR files on the web to get a few more options is a natural tendency of any Bryce-geek like myself!
I soon found out that some .HDR files didn't work and Bryce told me that they had to be in "probe" format. This page confirmed my findings, and I proceeded to get HDRShop and start the process… The image on the left is a Latitude/Longitude Format HDR and will not work in Bryce 6. The 2nd image is the Spherical/Probe/Mirror Ball Format HDR and is the only format that Bryce 6 accepts.
[Note: The link to the HDRShop v1.0 page at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies is no longer working, but I did find that the direct link to the executable to still work. The following link also works but you have to fill in your details before the download will start.]
The tutorial at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies is pretty simple to follow and can be used to convert those HDR. files to a Bryce 6-compatible format.
One of the biggest problem I found was getting a program to view the HDR files. Photoshop apparently can do it, but I don't own Adobe Photoshop, but I did find a freeware viewer called HDRView that does the trick. It is pretty old and primitive but it works!.
At least I can convert existing HDR files into something that Bryce 6.0 can understand…
Nothing original here, but useful to know if you are in the habit of using the Internet to browse for Bryce content:
To change the links in the Bryce 6 Links menu.
1. Locate the file entitled "Bryce6 Links.txt" in your Bryce folder. 2. Open this folder with a text editor. 3. Type in a link name as you want to see it in the menu, followed by a comma (,) and two spaces, then on the same line type the URL in quotation marks such as "http://www.daz3d.com" 4. To place a separator between links, type a dash between quotation marks ("-") 5. Save the file to replace the existing one.
You can replace the links that are there, or add new ones.
Getting the camera angle just right is often the making or the breaking of a picture. A good scene can be ruined by shoddy cropping or distracting details or a "normal" camera lens setting. Try this method I picked up in the Real World Bryce 4 manual.
Every image has to have a primary focus point an object or point in the scene that the eye is drawn to towards automatically. I often ask myself what am I trying to say with an image and in most cases this is intrinsically linked to the focus point.
First of all create primitive object that will act as the camera tracking focus. I usually find a simple sphere will do. Name it "focus" and assign it a colour by clicking on the tiny Edit Family gadget next the sphere. (It is coloured grey by default)
Now comes the trick. Switch to the Director's view (the tilde key ~ is the shortcut) or even better switch to one of the orthogonal views. (left, right, top, bottom etc.) Believe me it makes the following step much easier! Now select the camera.
Point the mouse to the camera tracking icon (the icon just above the little black arrow – the Land Object icon) now click and drag the mouse down until the focus sphere is highlighted. (a line will be attached from the camera to your mouse pointer and will remain there once you release the mouse button.)
Now select the focus sphere and click the Object Attributes icon [A] and check the Hidden option. This will make the object disappear when you render.
Now go to the camera view (Keyboard shortcut is 1 – on the top alpha-numeric row on your keyboard) and the focus sphere will be in the middle of your scene window. Now drag the sphere around and the camera will track this object always keeping in the centre of the filed of view!
Neat little trick that has often saved me hours of frustration. Of course don't forget to use the Memory Dots in the upper left corner of the Bryce interface to save potential camera angles. You have 7 slots to play with. …….
2. Go to your Edit Palette and click on the small white arrow just below the Rotate tool. Ensure that "World Space" is selected from the Rotate options. (If you change this option in the Rotate tool it will also change the option in the Scale and Move tool as well)
3. Now change your view to a look at your terrain from the side. It will help to give you a better idea how much you should rotate. Now rotate the terrain about 30 degrees. Whether you rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise is up to you. Keep in mind that the overhang will occur on the side that is opposite to the direction in which you are rotating.
4. Now go to the Scale tool and click on the White arrow to get the options popup menu. Check to see if the option is still set to "World Space".
5. Now scale the terrain on the Y axis and because the scale tool is set to "World Space" the world’s Y axis and not the terrains Y axis will be used.
6. Now rotate the terrain back on the X axis so that the base is parallel with the ground plane. You will now see that the top of your rocky outcrops are leaning over more than 90 degrees and you keep the detail on the rock surface.
7. Finally you can use the "Land Object" tool – the small arrow at the bottom of the object controls to the right of your terrain. Render and see your results – a rather nice-looking overhanging rock!
Here is the result of my experimentation. Many thanks to my friend Roy Hindes for reminding me about this "World Space" option!
…and made it into a .hdr file, and used it to be the only light in a scene. In the scene were a cylinder and a sphere, both colored flat white. I rotated the view to show how the gradient appears in the scene (if used as background) and how the lighting affects the objects. You can see where the white outer edge of the circular gradient has been pulled together into a small area on the 'backside' of the IBL image sphere. In these red-white images, NO added lights were used, the sun was turned off, and the HDRI settings in the Sky Lab were:
now click and drag the mouse down until the focus sphere is highlighted. (a line will be attached from the camera to your mouse pointer and will remain there once you release the mouse button.)
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