Brycetech: Rain in Bryce Part 3

There are, of course, alternatives to the volumetric material application. In this part of the tutorial, you will be introduced to another way to simulate rain within Bryce by using transparency maps in layers. You will need to download the 3 images from this tutorial before beginning. Download the images here. (14 kb)
Create an image that you wish to see it rain in.
Once you have done this, the illusion of rain can be achieved through the use of transparency mapping on an infinite plane.
Create an infinite water plane and rotate it to a vertical position.
After you have done this apply one of the downloaded images as indicated to the right...
...to the transparency, specularity and bump channel. Drag the slider for transparency a small bit to make the drops a bit more transparent.... Turn off "Cast Shadows", "Receive Shadows", "Self Shadows"; and turn on "Blend Transparency". You may also wish to turn off antialiasing for the object with the instructions discussed earlier in this tutorial.
Create another plane and do the same thing, this time applying a different transparency map. Move this duplicate further away from the camera. Do this until you have all three transparency maps applied. This will provide the illusion of depth of rain through the use of layers.
Since rain does not fall straight down, rotate the planes slightly.
You may also wish to duplicate the planes and move these duplicates further away from the camera (providing 6 layers of rain). There is no limit to the number of rain planes that you create (ok so RAM is a limit). Keep in mind that the more you create, the longer it will take to render your scene, but this can give a far superior rain image.

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Play around with the methods to make your own effects. This should have given you an idea on how to make your own scenes. To help get the materials right, you might want to do small plop renders of an area until the diffusion, ambience, and density fit your scene. Try using 2 channels for base density for the volumetric material. This is one way to overcome some unusual patterns occasionally generated by the material (such as a spherical sheets of rain or excessively long drops).

For the transparency image map method, you may wish to change the frequency of the material. This will reduce the size of the drops as well a increase the number of drops per layer.

In one of the images, a stone was created instead of a cube and placed it in the distance, enlarged it, then applied the rain material to it as well so there would be rain in different planes (on the cube that the camera is inside of and on the stone in the distance).

Remember adding things like water drops (such as the drops falling off of the leaves in this final image), splashes, etc. will make the picture more realistic. You might want to add a little haze, fog and shiny objects to your image. Also, make some clouds and put them in the distance. Check out the cloud tutorial to learn how to make clouds in Bryce. Remember, it's the little details that make the big scene.

Use the mask option in your 3rd party image editor (Photoshop, Photopaint, etc) and draw an area that would resemble drops running..then apply some contrast to this area. This will make some areas that you desire to appear wet. Notice in the image below that the sign has "wet" areas around its edges.

Try applying this effect to an image that you have already made just to see it in action quickly. (Be sure your camera is inside the rain cube and that the top, bottom, and sides of the cube are not visible to the camera!)

Using these same techniques, you can create snow.
Download the transparency image maps (17 kb) and try it for yourself.
Be sure to experiment with the frequency of the material.

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!

Brycetech: Rain in Bryce Part 3

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