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The Bryce4 Sky Lab is a very powerful area, however one of its shortcomings is the lack of ability to have multiple suns. In this tutorial, I will discuss a technique to create multiple suns within Bryce. This tutorial will work in Bryce 3 and Bryce 4...it will not work in Bryce 2 because it lacks volumetric materials.
 The image above is 100% Bryce. No touchup or compilation. It is a straight Bryce render. The methods used to create this effect follow. |
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| Before you get started, I suggest you take a look at the Sun Control tutorial. This is necessary to help you understand what you are about to do. Please take a moment to read it to introduce the principles behind the control or to refresh your memory on it. The actual Bryce sun will be used only for ambient lighting within the scene. The actual suns visible in the image above are lights created within Bryce, set for specific settings, and textured with actual material settings within the material lab (not just gels). | |||
| In my limited imagination, I see a planet with multiple suns as a
very hot area. So to start the image, choose a sky that would reflect this. I
simply chose "Middle Of The Sun" from the sky presets to start.
You will want to decide on a point of view for your scene. If you choose anything other than the default view, it's a good idea to set a camera memory dot now. |
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| This sky put the sun in over top of the camera, however I do not
want to use this setting...I want it to light the mountains so that they are not so bland
in appearance.
I wanted to add some shadowing so that the mountains look a bit more interesting. |
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| I have moved the sun control so that the sun is lighting my scene
as I want it lit. Now comes the actual creation of the suns.
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| Now its time to give birth to a sun. Create a radial light
and enter the light editor by clicking the "E". Once in the light editor
set the light to the same attributes as indicated to the right.
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After this is achieved, its time to
apply a material and material lab settings to the light. Enter the Material Lab and
set the attributes for the light as indicated below. |
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| The next step is to drag the light way back in the distance. For instance the location attributes of one of the lights is shown to the right. This ensures the light is behind everything in the scene. Be sure to resize the light to a suitable size. |  |
| Now we have one sun created. |  |
| To make multiple suns, just duplicate, resize, and reposition as desired. |  |
| Look closely at the image above. There is a very obvious problem with the image. | |
| Ok, if you didn't see it...look at the image above and an image that has the actual Bryce sun in it side by side. Do you see the oddity now? | |
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| Did you notice that in the one we created that the clouds of our world are actually behind the sun? We obviously need to fix that. | |
| Create an infinite plane and raise it until is just beneath the
lowest sun in your scene. Enter the Material Lab and apply one of the cloud
materials from the planar cloud material presets.
I started with 'Wispy Afternoon'. |
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Once back into the Material Lab.
Change the frequency settings and other settings as indicated. |
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| This will provide the appearance of clouds in front of the suns
you created.
If you have problems getting the clouds to show properly. Reduce the transparency or create additional duplicates of the cloud planes and raise them very slightly until you achieve the desired thickness to your clouds.
Have fun creating your "other" worlds! |
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This is not meant to be an all inclusive instruction on every possible way to have made the final image or produce the desired results. Bryce offers zillions of wonderful ways to replicate, multireplicate, reposition, etc. in its powerful interface. Experiment!
Post your images on the web and get advice and/or win awards
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