The Sky and Fog Palette - part 2

USING THE SKY & FOG PALETTE

In part 1 we saw how to use the Bryce sky presets. Now we will use the Sky & Fog palette to customize our sky.

1. Click on Sky & Fog - This will call up the sky & fog palette which has a series of landscape type image sqaures with colour bars beneath them which you can click on to change the colour of the particular sky feature setting. You can also adjust intensity/height of atmospheric settings by clicking on the image of the landscape instead of the colour bar and dragging your mouse. So each little square has two settings you can play with. It may be alot to digest so I won't go into detail about them, you can play with them later. For now I suggest you try out the first setting listed below, Sky Mode and maybe just the colour settings of the others. Also try the  Randomize feature (point 8 below) for a fun and easy way to see how different colours and atmospheric setitings affect a scene.

1. Sky mode - If you click the little triangle located at the bottom of the image a drop-down list of options appears. The default setting is Soft Sky, as you see it in the Nano Preview when you first open Bryce.

If you choose 'Custom Sky' you will see a colour bar appear below the square which is split into 3  - from left to right divisions are for changing the colour of::

Sun Glow Colour
Sky Colour
Horizon Colour

Place your cursor on any of the divisions and click and a colour chooser window will come up. Keep holding your mouse button down and  drag your mouse over to pick the colour you want. Let go to apply the colour:

Try picking different colours for each and see how the sky appears in the Nano preview (or render the scene to screen)
2. SHADOW COLOUR & SHADOW INTENSITY- The ambient shadow colour of shadows in your scene.
3. FOG COLOUR & FOG HEIGHT
4. HAZE COLOUR & HAZE INTENSITY
5. SKY DOME COLOUR & CLOUD HEIGHT
6. CUMULUS CLOUD COVER & CLOUD COVERAGE
7. FREQUENCY & AMPLITUDE OF CLOUDS - just click and drag your mouse over the square.
8. Sky lab - click the little cloud to enter the sky lab where you can make all the same setting changes listed in this tutorial plus other features with more advanced control and customization (see More advanced Bryce controls and features ). From there you can also access the sky presets.
Randomize - clicking on these little dots selects random colours and settings for the sky and atmospherics. Click on the dots, drag your mouse then let go - try it:)
Day/Night - clicking on this  little sun icon switches between day and night settings.
9. SUN CONTROL - Click on this ball, hold your mouse button down and drag on this ball to move the sun's position.
10. MEMORY DOTS-  see the Camera and Render control overview for an introduction to these.

I hope you have fun exploring some of these controls.

TUTORIAL LIST

THE SKY AND FOG PALETTE - part 1

USING BRYCE 'S READY MADE SKIES

Hopefully you've become comfortable with using Bryce objects and giving them materials via the Create and Edit palettes. So you may have an object in your scene, and ground with a material of your choice from the materials library. But what about the sky? Maybe you want a moody, brooding atmosphere, night scene or just a different coloured sky. In Bryce you can not only change the sky colour and sun colour/size but there are settings for clouds, haze, stars and more.

It's not too difficult to change some of the basic sky settings but Bryce also comes with a good range of Sky & Fog presets, i.e ready made sky settings. So as using presets is the simplest way to get started lets take a look at those in this part of the tutorial.


1. Click the little arrow/triangle next to the words Sky & Fog. Note: it doesn't matter if the Create or Edit palette is highlighted, and you don't have to click on the actual words Sky & Fog.

The sky and fog library will appear as shown in the image below.As with the object material library we have various categories at the bottom right which can be accessed by the small triangle next to the work 'Installed'. The default choice is 'Installed'.

Within this category we can see above that there are various sub-categories e.g Daytime, Nightime, Fantasy-SciFi.

3. Select a preset sky - just click on one of the images, it will be bounded in red when you do.The preview will show your selection and the name of the preset will appear.

I've chosen 'Simple Perfection' from the Daytime sub-category (3rd row down, 2nd one along):

You may notice that the Nano preview does not show the sky we've selected yet - it will when we complete the next step:

4. Click the tick at the bottom left of sky preset window - (circled in step 3 above). This activates your preset and exits the library.

5. Render your scene - click on  the big green round Render button on the left of the interface:

If you don't like the preset press Ctrl+Z on your keyboard or just go back into the library and choose a different preset.

Now my image isn't very interesting as I've just used a basic cube and default ground for illustration purposes, but I'm sure you can be more creative introducing various objects from the object library, terrains, trees etc. If you have Daz Studio, which is free from DAZ 3D, you can import ready textured models directly from Daz Studio into Bryce...very useful!! Take a look at my tutorial Using Daz Studio with Bryce.

There are other ways to have more control over how the sky looks, even the preset skies: if you are ready to be more adventurous  see part two: The Sky and Fog palette - part 2

TUTORIAL LIST