Bryce 5 and EVN Development

Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

I am considering purchasing Bryce 5 in lieu of obtaining a landscape graphics artist with free time (a true rarity today). But before I spend around US$70 ($50 for academic version) on a graphics program, I would like to know the merits and disadvantages of Bryce from people who have used the program before. Especially because I am considering also Poser 5 and the Freespace 2 re-release (both of which are expensive), I would like opinions on the subject before making a decision.

If it helps anyone, I would like to:

- Create natural scenes (for example, uninhabited worlds).
- Create scenes within a metropolis (cityscapes, etc).
- Create scenes with human constructs.
- Create scenes with alien-looking architecture/'imperial' (more formal, Romanesque, less of a metal-and-glass city look) structures.

I would like to learn about:

- Extent of Bryce's capabilities.
- Learning curve (I can't spend 3 hours a day learning Bryce for two months, etc).
- Will I need another obscenely expensive graphics program (read- Photoshop) in order to use Bryce?

Thanks in advance.

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zhouj

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**I am considering purchasing Bryce 5 in lieu of obtaining a landscape graphics artist with free time (a true rarity today). But before I spend around US$70 ($50 for academic version) on a graphics program, I would like to know the merits and disadvantages of Bryce from people who have used the program before. Especially because I am considering also Poser 5 and the Freespace 2 re-release (both of which are expensive), I would like opinions on the subject before making a decision.

If it helps anyone, I would like to:

- Create natural scenes (for example, uninhabited worlds).
- Create scenes within a metropolis (cityscapes, etc).
- Create scenes with human constructs.
- Create scenes with alien-looking architecture/'imperial' (more formal, Romanesque, less of a metal-and-glass city look) structures.

I would like to learn about:

- Extent of Bryce's capabilities.
- Learning curve (I can't spend 3 hours a day learning Bryce for two months, etc).
- Will I need another obscenely expensive graphics program (read- Photoshop) in order to use Bryce?

Thanks in advance.

**

To the extent of what I know from my usage of Bryce, it is limited in it's modeling capabilities. It doesn't allow the use of splines, NURB's, etc. and you can only use primitives and boolean objects. But it is capable of great work (see some of Weepul 884's old ships, before he move to Lightwave.) For landscapes, it is one of the best programs availabe, but I wouldn't know how it does buildings, I'm certain that it's capable of it but I personally never modeled buildings in it. The learning curve is much easier than other 3D applications. I've been messing around in Lightwave and it's rather evident that Bryce has much a more intuitive interface. One click gets you to texturing, atmospheric controls, or terrain editting. Yes, I would say that you would need another graphics program to do textures in. I don't particularly like Bryce's in-house texture creation and I usually import something I made in another program. Photoshop, unfortunately, is the best tool out there for textures. Feel me to ask me if you want to know more about my experiences.

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(url="http://"http://www.zhouj.net/days/")Days of Glory(/url), Upcoming TC for EV: Nova

pipeline

I agree fully with zhouj.

I must also add that Bryce, while really bad, is also the best thing out there for doing landscapes quickly in a fashion that you have any control over. Terragen, while awesome, has no modelling control at all... it's all fractals and pot luck. Mojoworld is even worse; you have to actually hunt for the scene you want to take a shot of.

Nowadays, I use LightWave or Maya to model up some terrain, add trees with Maya's PaintFX tools and then add atmospherics with LightWave's hypervoxels and SkyGen.

Dave @ ATMOS

Lindley

^While that's a valid point regarding Terragen, I'd still recommend starting out with that, at least for the uninhabited worlds. Being free is a big plus, and you can get enough variety to keep things interesting.

Plus there's the fact that you really can learn it in 15 minutes. 10, if you're a quick study.

My Bryce experience is limited to a demo of it that I saw several years back, so I'm not much help on that.

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zhouj

Quote

Originally posted by Lindley:
**^While that's a valid point regarding Terragen, I'd still recommend starting out with that, at least for the uninhabited worlds. Being free is a big plus, and you can get enough variety to keep things interesting.

Plus there's the fact that you really can learn it in 15 minutes. 10, if you're a quick study.

My Bryce experience is limited to a demo of it that I saw several years back, so I'm not much help on that.

**

Terragen is not free. There's a registration fee the last time I checked.

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(url="http://"http://www.zhouj.net/days/")Days of Glory(/url), Upcoming TC for EV: Nova

Prime

I have to add my peice here, since I've recently aquired Bryce5. I have to say, I've not found anything that matches it out there for landscapes. And if you've got some extra time and photoshop(or graphics converter, personal fav) its quite good for making ships as well.I dont think you'd have much luck with human constructs, but alein landscapes would certainly be a sinch. I've done quite a few myself, and it dosn't take that long to learn how to use. You just have to get over five minutes initial confusion. And I also have to say it kicks @$$ for rendering spirites.

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Prime...Awacins

Mazer Rackham

I only have Bryce3, but this may still be useful. While Bryce is a far sight better than Mechanisto (the previous graphics program I used) and is much easier to learn than Strata, I find that it can be very difficult (read: impossible for me) to do anything especially complicated with only primitives and Boolean objects. Landscapes are done pretty well, but I at least can't get anything resembling cityscapes or ship sprites out of the program.

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To quote a pillar of American society: D'OH!

Lindley

Quote

Terragen is not free. There's a registration fee the last time I checked.

When I downloaded it, the site said it was free for "noncommercial" use. It depends on whether one considered a freeware mod to an existing game "commercial".

EDIT: Here it is:

Quote

Terragen is a work-in-progress scenery generator for Windows and the Mac OS. At this stage of its development, Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use.

(This message has been edited by Lindley (edited 02-09-2004).)

TheRedeemer

I've tried a Bryce demo( I can't remember what version) And I coulden't get the hang of it. True, I did only mess with it for 10 minutes, I'll go back to it sometime and see if I can work it out.

As for cityscapes, you can make quite nice (in my opinion) cityscapes in Strata. Not cityscapes where you can see the natural terrain around it, but just pictures of the city itself.

I made this in Strata 3.0.2 (Jule's one)

Posted Image

As you can see, it's not top-notch proffesional quality, but I think it's quite nice.

As for terragen, you might not have total control over what you make, but considering you can come up with fairly good looking scenes in no time at all, I think it's a good program. And you can't be expected to make modelled original landing scenes (spaceports, cities etc) for every landing pic, considering there would be Hundreds in a TC.

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mrxak

There is a trial version of Bryce, so you can always try that before deciding if you like it, and see how the learning curve is.

Kame

Quote

Originally posted by Lindley:
When I downloaded it, the site said it was free for "noncommercial" use. It depends on whether one considered a freeware mod to an existing game "commercial".

I think that version expires after so many days though. I haven't been able to figure out a workaround either. But I have Bryce for landscapes now so I don't particularly care.

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Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

Quote

It doesn't allow the use of splines, NURB's, etc. and you can only use primitives and boolean objects.

Could someone explain what splines, NURBs, and boolean objects are to me? Is that a really bad thing, or are there ways to make reasonably complex shapes without going completely crazy? I'd get Lightwave, but I have neither the money to purchase it nor the time to learn the program.

And is there any place I could see examples of Bryce work (besides the Image Gallery)? Thanks.

Hmm....if worst comes to worst, I suppose I could always get Azdara to model buildings and such, and to provide textures.

While we're on the topic of 3D programs, has anyone used Poser? Can they comment as to the effacicy of the program?

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(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 02-12-2004).)

Lindley

I haven't used any splines or NURBS myself, but the first (and so far, only) ship I've modeled did make some use of HyperNURBS:
(url="http://"http://img11.photobucket.com/albums/v34/Lindley/Rendered_Ship2.jpg")http://img11.photobu...dered_Ship2.jpg(/url)

What they are, is a way to stretch objects into usual shapes. In the above case, the main body of the ship (and the bit above it) are both cubes, stretched out to that shape using HyperNURBS.

Also, I used a cylinder inside a HyperNURB to make my engine glows. Give the cylinder almost no height and stick it just inside the engine, then stretch out the center of one end to be a plume of fire.

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Azdara

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**Hmm....if worst comes to worst, I suppose I could always get Azdara to model buildings and such, and to provide textures.
**

Azdara screams at the top of his lungs then runs to the corner of the thread, sitting in the corner and sobbing... After a while he begins to blabber about "the damn NSE fighter" or something like that

~A~

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"How can I make it go faster?" -Me-

Modesty Blaise

Quote

Originally posted by UE_Research & Development:
**Could someone explain what splines, NURBs, and boolean objects are to me? Is that a really bad thing, or are there ways to make reasonably complex shapes without going completely crazy? I'd get Lightwave, but I have neither the money to purchase it nor the time to learn the program.

And is there any place I could see examples of Bryce work (besides the Image Gallery)? Thanks.

Hmm....if worst comes to worst, I suppose I could always get Azdara to model buildings and such, and to provide textures.

While we're on the topic of 3D programs, has anyone used Poser? Can they comment as to the effacicy of the program?

**

Booleans: an example would be two objects put into each other....then you can subtract one of them from the other...or subtract just the surface of the object etc....
good for modeling simple stuff..

I don´t know what the rest is :frown:...i just use them....

I have used a 3.0 version of poser...hated it...but i never put much time and effort into learning.

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And then there were silence.................

PH03N1X

The demo for Bryce 5 (Mac version) is now non existent. I can't find it on the site anywhere. I'm assuming you use a Mac =P I was going to purchase it recently, but found out that it's been canned.

More info here: (url="http://"http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/05/30.9.shtml")http://www.macobserv...3/05/30.9.shtml(/url)

Corel says you can still order licenses... but I don't know what good they are if you can't download the demo to enter the license into

I can send you some of my Bryce work if you want examples (or rather, upload them and give you the links). It's all done in Bryce 2 though, so it's different from Bryce 5. Slightly. I don't get to use metaballs, and booleans sometimes don't work right.
(url="http://"http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/gallery.mv?Bryce+mar")http://www.3dcommune...ry.mv?Bryce+mar(/url)

That's the Bryce gallery at 3dcommune.com

You have to sign up (free) to view the full gallery though.

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(This message has been edited by PH03N1X (edited 02-13-2004).)

Guest_UE_Research & Development_*

Nope, unfortunately, the computer best suited to running Bryce (or any program more demanding than Simpletext/Wordpad :p) in my possession is a PC.

PH03N1X, I've seen some of your Image Gallery work. Very impressive. I wonder if I could translate those methods to create reasonably good-looking buildings, skyscrapers, and other surface constructs. I'd like to see more of your work, if possible.

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PH03N1X

(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/phoenixyards/Sub")http://www.evula.org/phoenixyards/Sub(/url)

/These are mainly works in progresses. I haven't touched them in a while because of school. I intend to finish them someday though

(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/phoenixyards/dfsfnpne.jpg")http://www.evula.org...ds/dfsfnpne.jpg(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.evula.org/phoenixyards/CapShip4.jpg")http://www.evula.org...ds/CapShip4.jpg(/url)

Bryce can do scenes well, but texturing is equally important as the world scape model. I personally have found texturing to be a pain, but I work with Bryce on and off, so anything I learn is usually partially forgotten =P.

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(This message has been edited by PH03N1X (edited 02-14-2004).)

Azdara

Well Bryce, like strata, has no UV unwrapping and mapping capabilities, which essentially limits you to using projection mapping for most things. Basically, texturing is a real bugger of a thing to get used to in any program. Basically it's learning how to tell the computer to make something look the way you want it to look.

Which is hard.

~A~

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"How can I make it go faster?" -Me-

Eegras Studios

Terragen is free. If you register it you can get more stuff, but unreg its still good. And it doesnt expire. Ive had my copy for about 3 months and it hasnt expired yet.

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