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Auric Dragon

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Auric Dragon
- December 27, 2004

And suddenly the Auric Dragon emerged from the night sky, lashing out at the meteorite and enveloping the city in its protective wings...


After having recently made "Max Omega" and not really liking the outcome, I decided I'd try to actually make a piece I was pleased with. And lo and behold, out came this sucker. I feel ashamed for saying this, but really the hardest part of making this piece was waiting for the rendering to finish. The image more or less created itself out of an interesting combination of "Max Omega" and "Perpetual Dream" and the drop-dead amazing optics engine that Bryce sports. This is a straight Bryce render, no brushing or other Photoshopping done save for the title, watermark, and enhancing the dragon's color in the middle a smidgeon (to increase the contrast and make it slightly more red). I would normally have added some brushing and 2D lineart, but the image straight out of Bryce looked fine as it was and didn't really warrant any special treatment. Works quite nicely as a desktop wallpaper on my VAIO TR3AP. ^__^

Because of some oversights on my part, I had to re-render this thing about five times, and each time took many, many hours; this final render took over 11 to complete. Bryce on a laptop = whoo boy. *has to laugh* But I finally finished it, and I'm quite happy with it. I am thinking of making a "standard" wallpaper (for 4:3 users, aka most of the computing population) that is kind of a "showcase" of my better abstract renders, this one being the focal point. That one will have a more techy feel to it... at least, it will if I can pull it off right. *hopes so*

My only gripe is the pixelation on the right-hand side: that actually was the reason I re-rendered it so many times. Because of the method I used to make the image, there wasn't much I could do to fix the problem, since it was not in the geometry of the scene but in the optics. Which just goes to show me: this method is risky as all heck. Use SPARINGLY.

Any feedback would be appreciated, especially regarding what could be added in the way of brushing. I want to get some brushing/2D practice in, but after scrutinizing this piece for days during the rendering process I concluded that anything I added would just make it worse. If anyone has a good idea I may try to implement it in the "special wallpaper edition." Maybe. ;)

Bryce 5 and a pinch of Photoshop Elements 1.0.
Image size
1280x768px 459.77 KB
© 2004 - 2024 Gerf
Comments12
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RedDragonfly's avatar
gorgeous- sorry no complicated commentary,
I'm just enjoying it like I seldom do yellow.