Ship hull texture parameters......

Can anyone lend me a few tips here......

Im using bryce to render some ship models, complete with texture maps etc. Yet i cant seem to get the material parameters right (specularity/Metalicity/diffusion...etc) to create a good REALISTIC hull. Can anyone be of assistance?

thanks.

l e g i o n

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Don't have much experience in Bryce with ships, but I'd recomend just playing with it a bit. That is of cource if it doesn't take too long to render your ship...

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I'd recommend rendering something simple, like a cube, and play around with both the texture and the light. Different textures will look different under different levels and types of light.

It's really up to you to judge what looks good/realistic or not, because if you look at different graphics from different games and movies, metal has a very wide range of appearance. Personally I think it requires a mild shine, and shouldn't be too dark under light, but keep in mind space is dark.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Quote

Originally posted by Firebird:
**I'd recommend rendering something simple, like a cube, and play around with both the texture and the light. Different textures will look different under different levels and types of light.

It's really up to you to judge what looks good/realistic or not, because if you look at different graphics from different games and movies, metal has a very wide range of appearance. Personally I think it requires a mild shine, and shouldn't be too dark under light, but keep in mind space is dark.

**

Because of the way Bryce sets things up, you likely want to use a specularity MAP. If you just set specularity (especially if you set it too high) your ship will look like plastic. But it you have a hull plating graphic (basically, a bunch of overlapping rectangles in various shades of gray) it will be a much more realistic effect.

I personally shy away from Ambience except for glow effects -- instead I create extra lights and place them to lighten the shadows a little. For really nice glow effects, duplicate the whole object, make it bigger, set it to Fuzzy and Additive and dial the transparency up to about 95%.

Try the Bryce forum (Delphi forums); the people there are friendly and eager to help. Here's a couple of quick images I did while working on a plug... (url="http://"http://home.earthlink.net/~nomuse/p2.JPG")http://home.earthlin.../~nomuse/p2.JPG(/url) (url="http://"http://home.earthlink.net/~nomuse/ivoyager.JPG")http://home.earthlin...se/ivoyager.JPG(/url) (and yes, that is a flying mouse. If I ever finish the plug, it will all be explained.)

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Ambience = bad. It reduces the number of values that you can achieve across an object. The result? Your ship looks flat. Just use lights to get rid of unwanted shadows. Besides, there isn't much ambient light in space, so having it would be unrealistic, and it would look weird.

Matrix

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