Brycetech: Rain in Bryce Tutorial Part 1

Download the PDF of this tutorial.

Lots of people want it to rain in Bryce, so in this tutorial you will learn how to simulate that effect.  You can download the material used and learn how to apply it.

Here we will:

 

 

Create and Apply the Material

  • Create a new scene in Bryce (Leave the camera in its default position.)
  • Create a cube at world center and set its attributes as indicated to the right.

You could just as easily make a different primitive.  In fact, the sphere and cylinder give an entirely different effect when using this material. Remember that you can select a locked object by using the selection palette.  Locking an object keeps you from deleting or moving an object accidentally.
Grab the picture image used as the basis of the material.  View the rain material and copy it by clicking the thumbnail.

To learn how to get the image into Bryce (for Windows) you may need to read the "Spaceship textures" tutorial.  Use the method discussed there to grab the material from this tutorial and get it into Bryce quickly without losing resolution. 


Apply the rain material map to the cube in the Bryce file using the settings indicated as a start.
  • Diffuse dot in channel A
  • Transparent dot in channel A
  • Base density dot in channel A
  • Set diffusion to 35.5
  • Set Ambience to 55.9
  • Set Specularity to 0
  • Set Base Density to 37.2
  • Set Edge Softness to 10.1
  • Set Fuzzy Factor to 183
  • Set Quality/Speed to 25
  • Apply the material from "World Top"

Be sure you have it set to a "Volumetric" material.

Just for the heck of it sometime, hold down the Ctrl key and click the B channel too in the Base Density, this will allow for some interesting rain effects if you apply the second Base Density Parametrically.
Turn off Receive and Cast Shadows!

 

 

You will find that if you allow the rain cube to accept shadows that the rain will disappear in shadow which looks unnatural.
Turn off antialiasing for the cube! Reminder how to do that:
  1. Select the cube
  2. Select the "A" for attributes
  3. Then hold down Shift + Ctrl and click the checkmark.

Select a dark sky that looks like rain and do a quick render...tada..it's raining in Bryce!

 

Then add the base setting to your preset materials so that you can use it later in another image or you can return to the default setting if experimentation with the material's effect makes a bad image.
  • With the Rain cube selected
  • Open the material editor
  • Choose a place to save your new material.

 

I chose "user."

Adjust the material for different effects

What if you think the material is too blue?  or maybe not blue enough?  Drag the diffuse color a slight bit to either increase or decrease the color.

More Diffusion
Less Diffusion
What if you've created a scene that is dark and you are finding it difficult to see the rain? or maybe it's too light and you can't see it. By increasing or decreasing the ambience you can make the rain more or less apparent.

More Ambience
Less Ambience
Not enough rain in the picture?  or maybe too much?   By changing the base density, you can make it look like the 1st day of the 40 days and 40 nights...or like a soft spring shower.

More Base Density
Less Base Density

Go to Part 2 of the Rain Tutorial

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