When doing clouds – think big!

When doing clouds – think big!

ArtifactsFree-standing clouds in Bryce have never worked to me – until recently. I discovered a glaring fact when watching the shadows cast by the clouds on a wheat field in the Caledon district. The cloud didn’t look particularly big but the shadow must have been at least a kilometre across. I realised that a cloud is a big thing.

My clouds in Bryce were simply too small so the cloud material (set to Fuzzy Shade mode) just lacked the minute detail and scale that a normal fluffy cloud would have. I normally create clouds with squashed spheres and apply a simple cloud material to it – volumetric clouds just kill the rendering time, and the dreaded intersection artefacts when two volumetric objects intersect (the image thumbnail enlarges to show what I mean), make the exercise more frustrating than rewarding. This time I cranked up the size and made the cloud colossal (in comparison to the terrain) and it actually started to work. My advice to you – think big! :idea:

When doing clouds – think big!

Nano Preview for tunnel vision fetishists…

Nano-previewOne of my biggest gripes with Bryce (since Bryce3D) the its inability of the program to resize or configure the all-important Nano-preview. It has remained at its default 80X60 pixel size (at a 4:3 ratio) making it somewhat useless. OK it does render quickly (if you don't have some CPU-killing texture or rendering setting going) but its inability to resize or at least change its aspect ratio for those portrait format images is the main reason for it being useless!

Create a portrait-format image and it will display it correctly in the main editing area, but the bottom third will be cut off in the nano-preview!

Now you can use the Space bar to drag the various palettes all over the screen, but the Nano-Preview remains firmly attached to the top of the left hand palette. Imagine if you could resize and detach the Nano Preview to another place on the screen? Ahh, but I can dream now can't I?

When doing clouds – think big!

BryceBlog is live!

Bryce BallI think the Bryce-loving community needs a blog. A place where we can share our thoughts and get (and make) comments. Not a private blog where the blogger shares trivialities ad nauseum, but a community where people can get help, advice, share opinions and contribute meaningfully to the blog.

 With that in mind I present to you BryceBlog. It is no relationship to this blog, this one (heaven forbid) or even this one. In fact Gooooogle'ing through 5 screens of the search results from BryceBlog, Bryce Blog, Bryce Software Blog, Bryce Blog DAZ came up empty. So I think I can presume that Bryce does not have its own blog.

More news from this side of the fence at a later stage.