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Other
ClydeSight Productions Bryce 5 Tutorials:
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There is nothing like the power of dramatic lighting.
There is nothing that takes longer to render than dramatic lighting!
The scenes above use (LEFT) Shadow Magic and (Right) Normal Shadows (shadows applied by lights).
Both scenes were rendered on a Macintosh G3 computer running at 400 MHZ with 192 MB of memory. Image size was 540 x 405 (the full size image if you click on the thumbnail).
The Shadow Magic scene rendered (including Antialiasing) in 00:16 or 16 seconds.
The normally shadowed scene rendered (including Antialiasing) in 15:07, or 15 minutes and 7 seconds! Quite a difference!
The problem is lurking in the shadows-- because a ray tracing engine deals with shadows by applying complex mathematical formulae that seem to take forever to compute, even on a super computer. BUT...
What if we could "trick" our ray tracing engine into DISPLAYING a type of shadow, where no shadow exists? HOW would we do such a thing?
The answer is a trick that BRYCE 5 can do. It's called NEGATIVE LIGHTING. The lighting controls in Bryce 5 have positive AND negative values, and sometimes, a negative light will give us a shadow effect, but without the cost of massive render times. It may not work for all types of scenes, but it can be useful to understand the process.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to make a candle scene in Bryce 5 and apply three lights; one spherical light for the candle flame, one spot light for bringing up the candle (so we can actually see it!) and one NEGATIVE spot light to give the impression of a shadow. Because we are not using the shadow function of the light lab for any lights, our render times will be dramatically reduced!
As an added bonus, I will show you how to make a mirror effect and dramatically improve the image interest, with multiple repetitions of the candle that appear in the render, even though only ONE candle actually exists in the workspace. It will increase the render time because of the reflectivity of the mirrors. On the MAC mentioned above the render time for the full size image was: 55 seconds.
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This tutorial has three main parts: Making the Candle Scene, Lighting and Shadowing the Candle Scene, and Using Magic Mirrors in Bryce 5. (It might also work in Bryce 4, I haven't used that one in so long, I forget what it can do.)
All pages are printable and use images to illustrate everything! I hope you enjoy the tutorial as much as I did discovering these techniques.
It's time for Shadow Magic!
About the Author:
Tim Thompson, author of this (and our other Bryce 5 tutorials) has been working with digital media for 14 years. He started with Bryce when it first appeared and has followed the program through its upgrades to the current version 5. Tim uses Bryce 5 for a multitude of projects, including some of the interesting games on our ClydeSight2.0!, the fun and games cat site. Tim has also been a teacher, having instructed continuing education classes for five years at Boston's Emerson College in desktop publishing and design and Web design classes in the Boston Urban Scholars program. Tim is a man of many talents. He not only creates digital art, but also composes music! ClydeSight Productions is pleased to publish his two albums, Symphonia Felina and Other Musical Masterworks and Forestdale-Tone Poems Inspired by Nature. Of course, Tim designed the covers for both albums! Tim's tutorials and digital art have won him high praise from the prestigious Renderosity.com digital artist's Web site. His tutorials for Bryce 5 have been enjoyed the world over and are used in local schools to augment their curriculum.
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Tutorial copyright - © ClydeSight Productions - 2003
