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| One of the most sought after effects in Bryce is that of
streaming light. Be it the effect of light rays shining through storm clouds to meet
the ground or rays bursting from the interior of an object as it explodes... streaming
light can be achieved several ways. In this tutorial, I will explore some of the various options as well as discuss ways to reduce the render times that are inherent with the standard methods. The picture to the right is from the Flash movie "Sleepy Hollow". |
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| Perhaps one of the easiest ways
to achieve the effect of streaming light is to fake it. Instead of having a light
produce the effect, apply a texture to a primitive that will make a very similar effect.
The advantage to this method is that the render time is greatly reduced because no
(or limited) volumetric effects need be calculated by Bryce. The downside to this method is that shadow is not accurately produced. However, for distant renders you could use this kind of effect quite convincingly. |
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| Bryce comes with a preset material called "Green Lit" that is very good for the material method of creating streaming light. |  |
Once back into the material editor, change a
few things.
You may opt to not make the value changes, however it helps to make the light ray material more apparent. |
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To prevent unnecessary shadows on the light ray
object, turn of all shadow casting for these objects.
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| Once rendered, the material will look pretty convincingly like streaming light rays. |  |
| The sky lab has a property that
will add volume to the entire Bryce world. The problem with this is that volumetric
renders of an entire world can take days to render on a single machine. With Bryce
5's ability for network renders...this kind of render may be performed more often.
With past versions of Bryce, it was very impractical to use.
The activation of a volumetric world allows the light sources (other than the sun) to create the streams of light. |
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| To activate a volumetric world, enter the sky
lab and select the option within. The actual method will depend on what version of Bryce
you are using.
The more lights you have in a scene, the longer it will take to render. |
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| An additional consideration when seeking the streaming light effect is to realize that it is not the presence of light that is capturing your eye...it is the absence of it. If you place too many lights in a scene, the 'absence' will be removed by all of the combined light sources. This is one of the main reasons for not seeing the effect or it not being as strong as you would like it to be. |  |
| Another often overlooked yet more realistic than the material
method and much faster than the volumetric world approach is the use of volumetric lights.
A volumetric spot light alone can often supply the
exact effect you wish, while allowing you to control the way it behaves within your
scene.. The picture to the right is from the Flash movie "Sleepy Hollow".
Time to render can be significantly reduced by using a volumetric light instead of a volumetric world. Remember that multiple lights will increase render times as well as risk canceling the effect. |
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| The effect created with a light is created by the shadow.
Notice in this image that, though there is a volumetric light shining toward the camera,
there is only one object to cast shadows..so the light stream is not as apparent.
This scene has both the sun (behind camera) and a volumetric light (in front of camera) so you do not have to disable the sunlight unless it achieves the specific effect you are after. The picture to the right is from the Flash movie "Sleepy Hollow". |
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| Some people prefer to add lighting effects with a paint program. This technique is beyond the scope of this tutorial. |
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Another tutorial on streaming lights in Bryce can be found at:
Things to remember..for a "stream" of light to appear, it's not the
"stream' of light that you are seeing, it is the places in the scene where the
absence of the "stream" are present..i.e. shadows. So, for a streaming light,
you must have something to cast a shadow. If you create a light that cancels your shadow,
then of course the 'stream' is gone because the light didn't make the effect, it was the
shadow of the light.
You can render scenes with very convincing streams of light with relatively low times if
you remember that you are after the shadow..not the light...
So put something out there to make it show. For instance, limbs from trees or
holes in a model (put your light inside the model)
Use spotlights because radial lights most likely won't provide the effect you want.
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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