The Apple Project... a glimpse into the creative process. 
By Steve Lareau, 
Hilltop Design
Clinton, Tennessee

Yet another variation- since the final print was going to be rather close to this height to width ratio, it dawned on me to start trying to fill the sides of the image more. If at first you don't succeed, add more stuff!
Another version- this time I blew out two spheres and now it's just one surrounding the apple model. But the problems with the model having a nasty shape is still there.
Ok- let's play with the same idea, but dump the apple model and replace it with a sphere, which I figured I'd eventually make  an official Apple Imac color. This whole thing is sitting inside of a volumetric slab with a material I cooked up. I was pretty mesmerized by this material, and you'll see it crop up time and again as you go further into these images.
Ok, I admit it- I got sidetracked, which happened quite a bit as I was exploring, but that usually is what leads me to eventually hit on the right combination of cool stuff. It's the same volumetric slab, the ground plane was removed, and there's a chrome torus sitting in the middle of all of this mess. 
Ok, we've gone back to an earlier scene to try to see if changing the colors would make it work. It didn't. "Next!"
Our friend the slab again, this time with the camera set to a really wide setting, which made the "smoke" come to life. But, as you can see, we've got a problem with scale here. My machine is so slow that all of these volumetric scenes were put together totally blind. I'd set up a series of scenes, then set Bryce into Batch Mode to render overnight. I had a lot of these types of images when I was done- useless. But at least I did explore the possibility, and that's what counts, right?
Oops- I just realized that these images below are out of sequence. Let me straighten it out with words than to try to do these pages again! A buddy, Clay Hagebusch, scanned an Apple logo and sent it to me as a Symmetrical Terrain. I played with it, but eventually realized the edges were too rough. I realized that I needed to have an actual mesh in order to get the best results possible for this project. Thank God for the Internet!  I sent out a few feelers to some Bryce Buddies, and George Faerber was able to model the logo as a "round wire mesh" model for me in a matter of a few minutes. After I got it, I just stared at it for quite a while, trying to figure out how to use this model in a creative way.  I realized that the "bite" out of the apple was almost a perfect half round shape, so I hit on the idea of replicating the model and sticking a sphere into the middle of it, as seen below.
 After seeing this render, I realized that the wire was too fat.  I played with it for a while,  and it just needed to be thinner.
I fired up another email to George, asking him if it could be made with "thinner wire" and he said "Not a problem- what size you want it?".  I asked for it about a third to a half thinner, and he shot back this model in about ten minutes. Now we're in business! Thanks George- I owe you a big one buddy!
Ok- now you're seeing another one out of sequence- this one was done with the symmetrical lattice model, and you can see that the sides of the logo are "flat". It just didn't look right. I'm glad I was able to score a mesh for this as easily as I was. The clear glass sphere in the middle didn't show up at all, so changes needed to be made.

Next Page

 I changed the sphere in the middle to a colored material, and that helped it to stand out a little better.