inkpanther

There is a setting called bucket which you put in just before system image block in .sc file. SunFlow wiki/documentation says that "A larger bucket size means more RAM usage and less time rendering." That's all I can find. There's a decent chance that Msx40 can tell you a bit more about RAM usage. ;)

I'm not sure if it falls into "good" category, but there's 300 pages long pdf of sunflow wiki linked by Msx in the first post. Pdf is really helpful but arm yourself with patience and be ready for some trial and error. Edit: I forgot that the link is dead. Here's another one and it seems to belong to the same website: https://geneomic.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/sfwiki.pdf

Neat details despite really small scale. Exactly. I also used different camera with depth of field effect. The minifig is hardly distinguishable from dark parts of a background, so this aspect may need some improvements... ;)

You'll have to zoom out in LDD and save new view. Low zoom in LDD should compensate high zoom in modded BR. It's a weird quirk of the mod, but it's manageable. (LDD doesn't register changing zoom level or camera view as a build changing actions, so you'll have to move a brick and put it back or hide it and unhide to be able to save.) And as for partly black render, I don't know how to help you. You probably have to report it to Bublible. I have actually written about something very similar on his webpage a couple of days ago, but so far my comment haven't even been approved... It's a nice looking little caravan, BTW. :)

Judging from your previous post, you're using Bublible's mod. I've noticed that setting fov at 20-ish or higher tends to end with black render. Assuming that everything is all right with lighting and plane, maybe you could try setting fov to something below 20. Small edit: I kind of struggle for inspiration, but here's little something with non-modded BR.

I'd stay with a square grid. I think that any SNOT technique you use will make 6:5 grid even more difficult to deal with than 1:1.

Awesome. The watermark is too conspicuous and I'll probably credit Bublible using separate link next to images, nevertheless it's great that he's back with his mod.

You probably did something wrong. Things like too weak lighting, "camera" inside spherical light, the plane angled in such a way that you see it from below... These are my screenshots, I just neglected to write how to set mirror plane. Here's my scene file (I cut out everything below "materials" for the sake of brevity) for this build if you'd like to see it: http://pastebin.com/tU9Sj4Pv It's a bit messy, especially at lights part.

Sorry for not mentioning how to change to mirror plane! Here are all the light types I know: Sunsky -- default, I've tried to change the parameters, but I've never found any satisfactory results, I feel it makes rendering longer and it never gives a pure white light: light { type sunsky up 0 1 0 east 1 0 0 sundir 1 1 1 turbidity 7 samples 8 } Directional -- it gives light that propagates in only one direction, as a result it gives shadows with clearly visible edges, seems to make rendering faster: light { type directional source 100 100 100 target 0 0 0 radius 1000 emit 1 1 1 intensity 1.5 } Spherical -- creates a sphere radiating light in all directions, it gives smooth transitions from well light to shadows: light { type spherical color 1 1 1 radiance 10 center -100 100 0 radius 20 samples 4 #noball } The noball was available in bublible's mod, causing the sphere not to be visible in reflections. Point -- similar to spherical, but the light propagates from a single point, I find it useful mainly to light small areas: light { type point color 1 1 1 power 10000 p -20 4 0 } A bit about parameters: Let's start with a reference point in 3D space. It's always the center of your ldd file. When you create a new ldd file you are presented with an empty square grid, the middle of it is your 0 0 0 point. And no matter where you start placing bricks, it always remains the same (screenshot). The coordinates for any point look like X Z Y, where X and Y are for horizontal directions and Z for vertical. I usually mix X with Y so forgive me if I made a mistake here, but Z is always in the middle. Values are real numbers (can be decimal, positive and negative). I have no idea how does one unit of distance correspond to one stud of length. ;) -- I hope that meaning of things like center, source, p, target should be self explanatory in a context of a given light type. They're are points using x z y coordinates. -- Color and emit work exactly the same: they define colour of light. They require three real numbers between 0 and 1 which correspond to red, green and blue colours. Basically, it's an RGB with decimal values. -- Intensity, radiance, power define how strong the light/light source should be. -- Samples !important thing to know! Number of samples directly affect quality and time of rendering. The higher the number the less noise you will see on a picture but it will take significantly more time to render. Usually I find 16 to be satisfactory for spherical lights. I can't really suggest anything for sunsky light parameters, I don't like it and I never use it. As a general suggestion: you should temporarily crank things down if you're just setting things up (setting preferred view on a build, setting zoom, all the lights, etc). Decrease number of samples, decrease/disable antialiasing, lower render resolution. You'll probably render the same thing multiple times to see how it looks and what you want to improve, so lowering settings will save you lots of time.

Or you could simply remove the plane altogether. There's a scene.sc file in Bluerender directory which allows you to modify rendering options much more than the program itself. If you want to hide the plane, just change n 0 1 0 to n 0 0 0 in section commented # Here we define our plane. This way the ground plane won't be visible and the whole background will be uniform. Edit: as a side effect, there won't be any shadow under your build. Default plane: No plane: Mirror:

There's a parameter called fov in scene file, you can change zoom level by editing its value. Changing colours should also be possible by editing scene files, if digging through a wall of text and numbers is your kind of thing....

It's not a spaceship this time. ;)

Congrats to you. :P Images are saved automatically. You can name them and choose path, but by default in the same folder of your model, and the name is kept. So your-model.lxf is rendered and saved as your-model.lxf.png. Sadly there's no transparent background. As for focus... There's a way to use depth of field. Bad news, you'll have to edit .sc file. Well, I just copied some things from Sunflow wiki pdf from OP (reuploaded to Drive since link from OP doesn't work any more- I suppose nobody would mind) so I have no idea if it's the best way but it works for me: in camera section change its type and add fdist and lensr type thinlens fdist 178 #focus distance I assume, the value is just an example, use your own lensr 1.25 #lens aperture or something like that - controls how deep or shallow dof is; again, the value is your choice also, in image section set aa to non adaptive sampling and add samples for a sligtly better effect aa 2 2 samples 2 #can be higher But rendering with dof is so terribly time consuming task.... And msx80 or bublible probably know a better way of using dof. ;)

Cool, I like how they blend in essence these older space/arctic ice planet (*whistles innocently*) classic themes.

I don't have problems with playing with lights, but writing my own janino shader is probably to much for me. :P In the other news, I've found something about depth of field in an old sunflow wiki pdf that doesn't exist anymore under link from msx80's post. ;)

Yeah, a very dark background probably isn't the best but it's not that bad, especially if you look at higher res picture. Still, I was aiming to achieve strong shadows and have the model only partially lit. By the way, is there any easy way to tune down (or even disable) reflectiveness of bricks? Many flat surfaces are very glossy, often reflect their surroundings and background.

Finally I can show my attempt at building warlock destroyer from B5. It still needs some finishing touches, but it's basically done. http://bricksafe.com/pages/inkpanther/warlock

Before running java -cp "bin/*" bluerender.BlueRender, you have to use another command to change current directory to the location of Bluerender. Just write cd path/to/bluerender_directory (it's just a simplistic example, you'll have to write actual path from your system, obvoiusly ;)) and then you should be able to run it.

Thanks. http://bricksafe.com...er/vorchan1.gif It's a 10MB file, so I'm not embeddig it. It definitely took too much time to render all the frames to be worth it... ;) Thank you. :)

I actually like having seams, so I'm glad I can use your mods with the software. :)

Thanks for this great tool! Finally something I can use on Linux. I think I've spoted a small bug: acqua colored bricks are dark grey in renders. Edit: of course I had to mess something up with embedding images. :P