Creek Evening

-- I think these two renders are fantastic, makes me feel as though I want to immediately load up Bryce and try something similar myself - not that that's going to happen at the moment, still, one of these days![list] [/list]

This is awesome! Besides the fact that it's a marvelous image I'll only one bit of critique. The bark looks a tad stange. I don't think I could do bettr, mind you. ;-)

Un grand merci ? toi, AngeGabriel. There is a lot of inteligent exchange between Rashad and Alexandr. There is indeed an issue with the twigs and leaves. I'm currently investigating the problem of the brown patches. I'll let you know. Rashad, I think I will have to send you an email later on, when I know more. This is a topic you've already investigated a lot of time.

Trop fort G?niale cette image ! Et c'est un v?ritable exploit ! 4 arbres seulement ! Bravo Horo !

Strange things going here! I just noticed that i repeated Rashad's words, (I just noticed it, earlyer, I didn't understood the whole post, You know it is deep night here, and I have been preparing for my exam for the whole day...), so now I'll go to bed, bucause only God knows what things I would read later... Sorry, Rashad for stealing your thaughts!

Agree with You, totally, Rashad, Horo did a great job!And problem apeared only because of youre rules used for the first time to create ecosistem on foreground. I just wanted to make an advice to improve this picture. To fix this I think there should be two images: one in color for difusive channel, and, may be for transtparent colour channel, and another one, in which braches should be totally white, andd leaves - some kind of gray, and background - totally black. It should fix a problem.

No apologies Alexandr, because you are 100% correct. The more I think of it I now realize exactly what happened. in order to sell these branches as full trees, the leaves must be very small. this is impopssible using the installed presets, Horo had no choice but to use blend trans leaves. This meant that he could no longer rely on Black nothing in the optics transparency channel,instead he used a leaf image there. Turns out there is a way to control this transparency also. Since white is opaque and black is transparency, Horo would need to make sure the stems remain at full white while the leaves were slightly grey, allowing transparency for the leaves only. What Horo has done here is to translare the original leaf transparency trick of old in a new way that allows for small leves on ecosystems. I think he is in new territory and he is very much on the right track!

Rashad, I like it in this state, but, You see, branches to which leaves are clutch at are transparent too, and to avoid this You could use picture with dark colours, but leaves are to be transparent (this what I wanded to say, but used wrong words:)And I think it would be chalenge to keep leaves transparetnt and branches not transparent Have a good luck in this task!. I'm just limited by my vocabulary and grammatical constructions, so, sometimes (very often) it is hard to express my thoughts properly.

question Horo, is this a leaf from the presets or is it aleaf created with blend transparency? This can make a huge difference in the final look of the foliage. The stems seems to be brighter than the branches, which makes me think the stems might be part of the leaf image. If you used bland transparency leaf shapes that would also explain the long render time. I think one of the limitations of the transparency i rigged is that it requires that the leaf shape be derived from a mesh, not from an image. I do not yet know how to effectively create the transparency I intend with blend trans leaves. Please let me know.

I think this looks amazing! Hard to improve from my thoughts. I think Alexandr has a point however I am not sure how to address it. Alex, as far as I can tell Horo has done it right. I do not suggest adding a color tint to either the transparency nor the volume color channels, I always suggest keeping these channels as greyscale as possible. In a recent render by JoAJ, I observed that some of her leaves were casting yellowish shadows onto the sand, and it was caused by the yellow color added to the transparency channel. The problem is that caustics do not soften with distance as they should. When you render an insect sitting on a tree leaf you expect the transparent leaves around it to cast some visible greeness. However, if you are walking on the sidewalk on a bright summer day you will notice that the shadows these leaves cast onto the ground do not have a color tint, the shadows are grey by the time they reach the ground. For this reason I suggest keeping those channels free of color info, at least high saturation colors. See this link: http://www.bryce5.com/details.php?image_id=3832&mode=search I think a backlit scene requires transparency. The issue can be how much transparency, which can be controlled with the volume and transparent color channels by altering the brightness of those channels. The darker the setting, the less the transparency. I really like the outcome here, i might suggest adding more veggies at ground level, but after a 44 hour render, maybe not. That is the caveat, the render time especially when using IBL even at a modest quality. Very nice Horo, 5/5

Trully, I like previous one more, because of unnatural feeling of artificial transarency of leaves here (Sorry for so many "of" - my English insn't perfect). As I understood it is necessary to put the same colours into transparency colour channel (5th from above) or at least a little brighter if You have big ammount of transparency. It is just friendly advice. Anyway thank You and Rashad for sharing of your mastery!