FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION

Afternoon By The Pool

Made with Bryce

Created by rashadcarter1

I often submit pictures that I feel would look very real if only I had rendered them with soft shadows. This time, I went for the soft shadows and more. As we all know our beloved Bryce has no Global Illumination. Bryce provides the ambient channel in the materials lab to lighten shadows, but in the real world, ambient is actually a lighting issue, not a texturing issue, so I've decided to treat ambient as the lighting issue that it trully is. I've stayed true to the laws of physics. In my world objects only radiate "ambient" light if they are hundreds or thousands of degrees in temperature, like a hot coal. I have devised a Global Illumination work around that I've been testing to correct my shadows and this is the first image I've posted that feature the technique. I feel it has subtle effects that are superior to what the ambient channel provides, but you can be the judge of that yourself. I have used secondary light sources to mimic the bouncing of secondary light that Global Illumination provides, creating a stable and consistent shadow tendancy that's more subtle and more realistic in my view. Also, the default sun does not provide the energy needed to mimic sunlight, so I disabled it and installed a distant light dome of 72 low energy lights to give me the high gamma and soft shadows needed for this scene. My foliage transparency "trick" was utilized for more life-like handling and interaction of light within the plant groups. I also used the same transpareny idea for the awnings. Pre-production PSP7. Some models produced in trueSpace4. Humans produced in DAZ Studio. Rendered in Bryce5.5. No post production of any kind. p.s. The lady in the hot tub is a dark skinned woman wearing a shiny light purple top. She is not at all naked as a couple of my lonely friends at first thought she was. Pervs.