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BryceTalk Interactive Tutorial with DTE
June 17, 1999
Part 4 of 6
1 2 3 4 5 6

BryceTalk DTE Interactive Tutorial II
June 17, 1999, part 4

Yojimbo: !

AuntiAlias: Yoji!

Charleso: k

gdmsynth: ?

Yojimbo: Ok first thing Is component two white on top and black on bottom?

AuntiAlias: yes.. far more white than black

Yojimbo: no for Charleso

Clay: time for a small stretch break?

AuntiAlias: you may stretch if you want.. oh, I see we've been at this for nearly two hours, so yes...

but first

actually, 2 minutes froma stretch break

Clay: k

AuntiAlias: with this texture, go to materials Lab

ccasady: I like that; "Dawn has finally arrived" were we here that long?! lol

AuntiAlias: ; )

Clay: LOL

Yojimbo: lol

AuntiAlias: so in Materials Lab, I now gotta select "Brownstone 2"

Clay: in the mat lab§

Yojimbo: that was a question for you Charleso

Morpheus: *PING*

Clay: shhhhh

Yojimbo: oh thought I still had the floor

Charleso: uhm no

AuntiAlias: we're in the materials lab....

and i think we'll work on charleso's scene separately...

Yojimbo: ahh

never mind then

Charleso: k

AuntiAlias: notice that the middle box of the three boxes of texture source is different now than last time you were here?

it's got the value from component 2

which we set to alpha, so it's here, as value

ready to drive the diffusion map

Clay: §

Heather: ?

AuntiAlias: (for those of you here last week who kept asking and asking and asking why we weren't setting component 1 to A, THIS IS WHY!)

I asked you to trust me... and did I fail you or did I come through or what? ; )

LadyDove: :)

AuntiAlias: heather?

Heather: should it be almost no white with grey in the middle and black at bottom?

desdanova: Yours tops AA

AuntiAlias: yeah, it moved up again, this time... .we'll fix that..

Heather: k

AuntiAlias: this is one of thsoe things that ya gotta tweak and tweak

but

before we go strretch... how about leaving the materials lab and then render? ; )

Charleso: k

AuntiAlias: see you in a coupla minutes! :D

Clay: k

AuntiAlias: gettin' a glass o water

Morpheus: happy streach break

3d~?~elf: <man, i fell asleep with the elfettes watching bugs life...wanted to be gere for "part 2">

jimbeaux: i'm getting brycetalk "out of memory" errors.. anybody seen that before?

Yojimbo: yes

3d~?~elf: got it set to 10 mbs, jimbo?

jimbeaux: should I save, close, reopen?

Morpheus: so tell me is the plan to pull an all-nighter ;-)

Yojimbo: yes

JeffP: I did a while ago...had to bail reconnect.

Morpheus: oh man in an hour I really must go to sleap parents gunna kill me

jimbeaux: will do, thanks..

3d~?~elf: BT needs about 10 mbs

desdanova: BT just booted me.... on warning..... grrrrr

no

desdanova: no warning that is

ChaMelEon: Time killed my parents.

3d~?~elf: got an idle boot?

AuntiAlias: okay....

ccasady: !

jimbeaux: okay, i'm back..

Morpheus: umm that was random chameleon

AuntiAlias: ready to go for it again?

LadyDove: yes

Heather: here

boru: §

AuntiAlias: Chris, your comment?

ccasady: sure

JeffP: .

desdanova: School back in session..... lets go

Clay: §

ChaMelEon: §

Morpheus: ready willing and as allway constantly talking

ccasady: yes, I wanted to clarify somewthing...

jimbeaux: i'm getting worried.. everything seems to be working okay for me..

ccasady: MATERIALS can have up two 4 different textures driving them, TEXTURES can have up to three COMPONENTS driving THEM! We had a simple MATERIAL made with two textures; Greystone and Basic Altitude.

AuntiAlias: go for it.. chris has the floor!

ccasady: They were simple, single componant textures. We built a more complex version of "Greystone" by adding a new component in the DTE.

We replicated "Basic Altitude" and made it a second component of Greystone.

Now "greystoneII" has got altitude sensitivity to it. And we don't need more than one texture source in the materilas lab now, just out new, slightly more complicated texture.

ccasady: This was for that peson who was confused about mixing up the two components

Does that sound right?

AuntiAlias: right.. and when we go baack, we'll have probably lost Basic Altitude if there was nohting in Column B when we left

ccasady: cool.

AuntiAlias: it's comppletely right on, Chris! :D

Clay: right

AuntiAlias: So.. result of the render...

lotsa dark, not much light

Morpheus: indeed

AuntiAlias: Any ideas how we can cahnge things to get more light in here?

er change

Heather: I have dark terrain but light on the mountain and rock

Clay: DIFFUSION?

Morpheus: er ummmmmm turn the black down on the texture

AuntiAlias: meaning that the ground is dark, but the terrain and rock are lighter?

Heather: yes

MetaJohn: Susan checking out see you soon

AuntiAlias: so.. but it seems, at least on mine, that the "bend" or "blend" from black to white is what I see on the rock. Nothing where the rock is affected by the WHITE of the altitude... i.e., not quite light enough at the top

so.. we;ve had a couple of ideas for how to get things lighter....

Heather: maybe my rock is too high can move it down

Yojimbo: Ambience

AuntiAlias: keep those ideas coming...

Clay: DIFFUSION

AuntiAlias: Clay, what do you mean by Diffusion?

(aznd, for that matter, Yojimbo, what do you mean by ambience)?

Morpheus: as much as i'd love to see how this delightfull mystery turns out i must leave and sleep I know sacralage but any way see you guys llok forward to the log yadda yadda yadda

Clay: I set my diffusion setting back to it's off state and adjusted

Yojimbo: Switch ambience setting to Material A

Clay: back andd\ forth

Clay: to get lighter and darker

from top to bottom

Yojimbo: though that just amplifies the values

lighter for light darker for dark

AuntiAlias: okay...

I'll give you my ideas for how to adjust this

Clay: k

AuntiAlias: the idea, of course, being, to get more of that LIGHT area on the rock

There are three:

1 is something that heather sorta had an idea about

she said to move someting up or down...

AuntiAlias: I might increase the size of the terrain and rock

Clay: yep

AuntiAlias: which would, of course, cause more of the terran/rock to be located at higher alitutdes, which would, then make more lighter

gdmsynth: Change Ambience to A?

AuntiAlias: if this were a scene construction that I was workign on, I'd've had my objecst at the size I wanted them and then would adjust materials/textures accordingly

for this, since it's more about the DTE than about making a scene, the stone and terrain are just the size they were when created

Definitely a viable option, but it skirts the issue of understanding what's going on in the DTE or Materials Lab

so I'll dismiss it for now.

gdmsynth: Drats...(but it worked)

AuntiAlias: There were a coupel of options to play with ambience and diffusion, either to set ambience to A or to switch diffusion off of A and back to global settings

AuntiAlias: but then why'd we spend the last hour in DTE figuring out how to do alittude if we're gonna come back to Materials Lab and throw our results away (diffusion setting to default/slider only method)?

re: ambience...

that means that top of rock glows,is self-illuminating, will resist shadows, and, ultimately, not fit in with the rest of the scene

I've got 2 more strategies to employ

one is something we did last week with the Basic Altitude texture

to "push" the light part down

gdmsynth: (I thought it was based on the basic altitude gradient we created?)

AuntiAlias: Last week we explored the frequency control for basic alttitude

the so-called "golden tools"

where you can adjust frequency for texture...

from the Materials Lab

that worked great last week, when we were dealing with a texture that had no noise whatsoever (Basic Altitude)

but here we've gone and made something more complex..... there are two textures, so if we increase frequency to push the darkness down, we'll also be changing the appearance of our rocky brown component 1

which is a crapshoot. It may work, it may not.

but you now know the repercussions

The other thing is to go back and tweak the filter setting some

which, of course, is the I-am-really-working-in-the-DTE method....

and, therefore, the one that I favor the most! ; )

Did I mention that owrking in bryce is a matter of going into the dte and doing somethjing, rendering, and then tweaking, back n forth from scene to DTE?

it IS! :D

and I"m here to prove it to you! :D

Clay: LOLl

AuntiAlias: back to the DTE!

desdanova: I think I in Love :)

boru: ?

Yojimbo: lol

JeffP: .

AuntiAlias: boru.. your question?

boru: Sorry, do we have the stone the terrain AND the ground selected?

Heather: from texture A

?

AuntiAlias: as it happens, I did.. but it doesn't matter....

boru: ok

AuntiAlias: stone and terrain definitely....

AuntiAlias: okay.. I just conducted a quick test!

you in the DTE?

desdanova: •

AuntiAlias: go the filter set to component 2 with that altitude?

Clay: from a or b susan?

Charleso: For which texture?

boru: §

AuntiAlias: I now have only 1 texture. B (Basic Altitude) dropped out

Charleso: hmmm

AuntiAlias: because I set Diffusion's marker from the B column to the A column

Heather: ?

AuntiAlias: Chalreso, based on what you're describing, you'd be getting the exact opposite of this...

AuntiAlias: heather?

Heather: I still have the Texture B Basic Altitude windows in MatLab

Charleso: yep

AuntiAlias: Okay... dang. I thought I mentioned that earlier

Place the blue marker for Diffusion (not diffuse color, but diffusion) FROM column B into column A

(and do a quick render, a coupla passes, in your scene)

Heather: done

AuntiAlias: when you come back into Mat Lab, you should only have Texture Source A

casue there's nothing in the B column to keep texture source B hanging around....

Heather: right

Clay: ?

AuntiAlias: Clay?

Charleso: ah yes

Clay: my settings there are:

diff on in a and ambience

gdmsynth: ?

AuntiAlias: Diffuse (Color) Ambient (Color)

A

Clay: diff in a on from b

AuntiAlias: Diffusion A (value)

Bump (Value) A

Clay: yes

AuntiAlias: all others are in default "home" positions

Clay: right

okee doke

AuntiAlias: so...

Clay: to the DTE!

AuntiAlias: texture source A

to the DTE!

now.. we want MORE white in component 2

to correspond to lighter rock

gdmsynth: ?

AuntiAlias: gdmsynth?

gdmsynth: When I chage from B to A the texture becomes completely dark.

AuntiAlias: yes

Clay: ?

AuntiAlias: that's what this earlier discussion was about... what ideas for making the darker turn lighter

(of course, you want to see it actually rendered in your scene, and not just the preview)

we're gonna solve that RIGHT NOW, after clay's question

Clay: in the DTE my component 2 is black is that corerct?

AuntiAlias: no

Heather: mine too

should 2 be turned on?

AuntiAlias: yes

desdanova: GreyStone II?

AuntiAlias: that's the Altitude filter in Brownstone 2 or graystone 2 that we been assiduously cultivating for the last 2 hours.....

Heather: now in Comp.2 it's grey,yellow,red; also combination

AuntiAlias: wow...

there are a few directions I gave before the break that were skipped

first:

in the Materials Lab

for texture source A

Clay: yeah I'm on the same texture

Heather: I'll pick them up from log later

AuntiAlias: change from Brownstone

to Brownstone 2

Clay: k

AuntiAlias: in other words...

make sure that you GOT all that stuff we did in component 2 included

and, for the purposes of learning here, I've been telling you: in DTE, make a change. Save texture to library (whew! safe!)

now, go to Materials Lab, and then SELECT that texture from the list

AuntiAlias: (I did mention it, but did so quickly. see where this gets me/gets us?)

JeffP: Same think happened to me. I had only the mountain selected for earlier work and selected the stone and that "killed" component 2.

Clay: DOH had the wrong one selected, sorry Susan:-)

AuntiAlias: but...

Clay: got it now

AuntiAlias: this is WHY I say to save it...

casue you can get it back later

Clay: yep I just prooved that:-)

AuntiAlias: yes, if you have a scene and you create item 1 first, and then item 2, and they end up having different materials

Heather: well I have the right name in Texture A, but coming back to DTE I get those colors when 2 is turned on

AuntiAlias: if you select them both and then go to materials lab, which one will bryce assign 'em both?

it assigns the material of the "elder" object, whichever one was created first

that's because you have component 2 with C set to lighter (on) position

You should have: component 1: C and B; Component 2: A set to on

Heather: ok, now I have white grey black in 2

AuntiAlias: man oh man, I wanna do two more things after getting this filter for alititude tweaked!

pay close attention!!

AuntiAlias: so...

the idea is to get more white, right?

can do by increasing contrast between dark and light

AuntiAlias: I did so by dragging the number for A to the right until it read 15.5 or so

do that

in the filter setting

boru: you mean a, not A

AuntiAlias: yes..

imn filter, the number for a.. it was, what, a little over 10?

Heather: almost all white now?

AuntiAlias: I increased it to around 15 and a half or so

Heather: 15.3

AuntiAlias: it makes a little more white area, and decreases the amount of blend/bend

so... let's leave here and see how that renders

everyoen with me?

Hoffr: $

AuntiAlias: § §

sound off!

ChaMelEon: §§§

Charleso: save 1st?

boru: §

Betty: §

JeffP: Terain is now lighter...

Heather: y

desdanova: •

zman52: ok

AuntiAlias: I'll show you another way to save from the materials lab, charleso

Charleso: k

AuntiAlias: now,just for a cheat.

increase the size of the objecst

Heather: altogether or separately?

AuntiAlias: just a little bit.. together...

Heather: k

AuntiAlias: and when you've done that, meet me back in the mateirals lab

are you here? sound off! : D

boru: §

Heather: here

Clay: §

JeffP: .

Charleso: y

desdanova: •

Betty: §

gdmsynth: §

zman52: §

Yojimbo: §

Clay: that's what I'm after Susan:-)

ccasady: H

>>>> Next up: More Filter Tweaks for Combination

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