United3dArtists Archive

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 04 Feb 2014, 20:15

Great idea Marcel! See, viewers using their own imaginations!

Bryce materials don't look the same when the terrain is scaled to large size. Rescaling everything to fit the default size terrain.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 06 Feb 2014, 07:35

Bryce. Working to position, scale, and texture the items. 6.4 million polygons. Much is the extensive terrain. I'll delete most of that after I know which parts will be seen. Textures are becoming a problem. Things like the trees blend into the terrain.

The scale of the building is a problem. I need the trees and later buildings to show its size but they just shrink to dots in the distance.

There will be more ocean and two super skyscrapers in the distance. It is hard to position the camera in Bryce plus all those polys create a strobe effect when moving the view.

An earlier much lower poly scene estimated 10 hours to render with GI at decent quality. Too slow so I'll use a light sphere for fill and the sun and sky for main lighting.

Edit: Changing the scene so there is more water and less land. That will have far fewer polys and easier to arrange land. It is not the scene I first imagined but it looks good. It is really hard to place the camera in Bryce. Without the high poly strobe effect it is still hard. It likes to move in increments that are too large. I think I have to scale differently. I'm using a scale of 1 Bryce unit = 100 feet (about 33 meters). The character is 5' 11' (about 180 cm) or 0.059 Bryce units. I'll try a scale of 1 Bryce unit = 10 feet.

Edit: The character's texture looks good, not like in Daz but good, when I send it to Bryce via the, ahem, bridge but not with export/import obj. For some reason I have an aversion to the word "bridge". The dress crashes Bryce through the bridge.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 08 Feb 2014, 21:19

She'll lean on a post that is part of a bench to the right. No time for an artist character so there will be an easel, paper, pencils or charcoal in the foreground with a drawing on it. The cylinder in the distance is a place holder for a skyscraper. Some more land, textures, instances for plants and buildings on the platforms, getting there.

I'll paint shop a simple render from the artist's view for the drawing.

I learned enough about Bryce material to customize the terrain. Antialiasing hid her teeth. The smile took work in Daz. I'll see how the finer antialiasing does and if needed maybe change the smile.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 10 Feb 2014, 21:05

Frustrating. I can't move objects or the camera except in large increments unless I use the numerical locations. My scale of 1 Bryce unit = 10ft is the problem and scaling everything up makes it easier to move things but at 1bu = 1ft strange things happen, objects reverse direction etc. At 1b = 5ft moving through the scene becomes tedious as the mouse must move a mile on my desk to move the scene a little. Ctrl, shift, alt, plus mouse don't seem to change the movement rate other than I think alt + mouse makes it finer ... and slower.

Well, I have to place the camera and postition smaller objects and 1bu=5ft does give enough accuracy so that will be it. Upscaling moves objects too so I'll have to redo some work.

I made a "lacework" bench, like the big q-tip supports, with ivy from Ivy Generator. The character will lean on that.

It is difficult to find a view that shows the pond on the first level and has everything else arranged nicely. I wanted a view looking down the platform for perspective but everything I want want work together.

The character needs a a big smile from Daz to have a subtle one in Bryce. Not enough pixels for teeth otherwise. The fancier anti alias methods help too. Her skin looks like a mannequin without Daz's sss etc. I'll give it a little sheen or spectacularity instead so it is not so matte.

I barely used TS on on this. Hexagon, Daz, Bryce. Learning too much about these for a guy whose going to Blender.

Edit 2-11-14: There is grass and a post-bench now. The zillions of grass instances make the file 86mb. Better lighting now. Estimated render time over an hour. Next to add trees and buildings on the platforms and a skyscraper in the background. Tinker with details and it should be done.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 12 Feb 2014, 19:01

Modeling almost done. Rendering is a problem. It takes too long and anti aliasing changes the character's expression. AA also takes a very long time. These small images took about a minute to render but then at least 4 minutes to AA. I think I'll render a little oversize, around 1400 x something, without AA and shrink to 1024 x something post process. That will smooth the jaggies a little but not take forever.

When I put trees and buildings on the platforms the render time will probably go up.

I was nearly impossible to get her eyes and teeth to show. I finally add enormous amounts of ambiance to them. I tried a light that only lit them but that feature apparently does not work.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 13 Feb 2014, 06:38

8.9 million polygons. Mostly in the trees and grass. This is about 15min of rendering. Need to add the artist's drawing.

The large structure (2400' high) has plants, ponds, parks, and buildings on the three platforms. She is on the level two platform in a park and leans on a bench while an artist draws her. A pond is visible on level one below. A giant building (14000') is visible in the distance.

Her dress doesn't fit right under the right arm. It is not apparent that she is on a platform of the building. Maybe I'll work on that sometime.

I found that anti aliasing takes about as long as the render. It should take about 2 hours to render including AA.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 13 Feb 2014, 23:18

Trouble with the art paper. I gave the edges of the sheet of paper a little shape. In Bryce the shadows are incredible. Changing lighting and material has no helped so far. Hexagon and TS do resonable renders.

Any Bryce users know how to fix this? I'll try it with a flat sheet but I wanted the shaped one.

MikomDude · Post by **MikomDude** » 13 Feb 2014, 23:24

Is it a flat surface or does it have some thickness to it? Maybe making the paper thicker and adding a subdivision layer on top of that will give you the results you are looking for.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 14 Feb 2014, 16:55

That fixed it Mikom. Thanks!

5 hours render time. 4 hours was the anti aliasing. I changed the AA to less aggressive settings and got a good effect for the smile but there are still some jaggies. Other than Paint Shop to fix a few artifacts and add my logo this is straight from Bryce.

Lighting is a spherical light array (sphere dome light) for fill and the sun. No IBL from the sky. I like to use GE (in TS) or IBL or a light sphere without shadows for fill but that lacked contrast in Bryce so there are some crisp shadows from the sphere lights. Soft shadows turned render time into eons.

I spent too much time on this but I'm happy with the result.

Modeling: Hexagon. Character made and posed with Daz. Terrain and trees in Bryce. Ivy Generator 2012. Dress modeled in Hexagon imported to Daz.
Texturing: Bryce
Rendering: Bryce
Drawing: Paint Shop filters of a render.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 14 Feb 2014, 17:19

Arrrg! The toes! The nuclear apocalypse brightness of the toes. Should have done something to put them in shadow too.

Wire frame and details.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 16 Feb 2014, 04:49

There. De-brightened toes. Rendered just the needed portion of the screen (plop render in Bryce). Turning the sun off took the brightness off but also changed the grass. So I made a mask to show just her and post processed with original, mask, and new part in Paint Shop.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 17 Feb 2014, 18:15

A view from in town. I rendered this at 1.5x desired size and shrunk in Paint Shop. That did as well as regular AA in Bryce and was much faster.

Draise · Post by **Draise** » 17 Feb 2014, 18:44

Hehe, I do that with the WS in truespace also. Works nicely. Clever little trick. I use Faststone Image resizer if I have image sequences to resize. Very handy.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 10 Mar 2014, 19:16

Tested my new computer with this. Rendered in 20-something minutes vs. 5 hours. All cores pegged at 100%. CPU reached 168 F. Is that too hot? The indicators were green. The mobo has an auto shutdown feature for overheating cpu. It cruises at about 95 F.

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