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Alright, I had a copy of lightwave one of my father's employee's gave to me. But I've been told its pirated software, and what I see here in the material world backs it up. So, I must ask you all. How can I make good ships in Bryce 5? I've tryed making ships before of course, and some of them turn out ok. But none of them are going to be Nova standard at the rate I'm going. Help, advice, or comments on my insanity are welcome. I disagree with all those that say Bryce is no god for shipbuilding, for two reasons! I don't have everything else, and i've seen some INCREDABLE ships done on bryce.
------------------ Prime...Awacins
Ultimately, the way to get good at creating anything in any program comes down to simply using the program a lot, experimenting, and learning from practice what to do in the program to create what you see in your mind. (How to imagine good designs is even less clear-cut. :p)
Lighting and design are fairly program-independent. You'd do well to learn more about those, and to study images that you've seen that you like, regardless of what program you use.
What's unique (not in a good way :p) to Bryce is that you're restricted to primitive shapes, plus a few other odd shapes that come with the program (click the triangle next to "create" and go to the Imported Objects section), terrains, symmetrical lattices (terrains mirrored about their base), and metaballs (explained later). These are your building blocks, and they're quite limited; in other programs that allow real modeling, you can create whatever shape objects you want.
Of course, what you have to learn to do is create the shapes you want out of these basic shapes - and to do that, you have to use boolean operations of these shapes. It's not as complicated as it may appear at first; it's based on groupings of objects whose modes can be set to neutral, positive, negative, and intersect. Neutral objects will not interact with other boolean objects. Positive objects appear as normal (solid), but will interact with other boolean objects. Negative objects are invisible, except that they carve away any overlap between them and another (positive) object. Intersect objects will only allow the overlap between them and another (positive) object to render.
Thankfully, you're not even limited to that. You can create a strange shape using booleans, then group them all and set the GROUP to another boolean type; for example, you could intersect two spheres to make a magnifying-glass-lens shape, then take the sharp edge of that group and use it to cut into a positive cube.
It can get complex quickly, but as you gain familiarity with how it works, you'll be able to start making groups where you can barely tell how they were constructed, if you want to. This familiarity and ability to construct boolean groups is the key to making interesting shapes in Bryce.
I forgot to mention; of course, you can move, rotate, and scale primitives and groups and anything else, arranging them to make interesting shapes, too.
Terrains can be made to make interesting shapes, and you can sculpt objects in Photoshop by making custom greyscale height maps, once you understand how those work. Symmetrical lattices also work, and are mirrored around the base. Various tutorials you can find on the internet would explain terrain object creation better than I can.
Metaballs are spheres that act somewhat like drops of water; when they get close to one another, they start glomming together, and when they overlap, they get bigger. Undocumented feature: shift-clicking on the "create metaball" icon will create a negative metaball, which repels the surface instead of attracting it. The ship in my pic (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/weepul/crashlanding.jpg")here(/url) is almost completely made of metaballs.
Other tips: learn how the texturing system works. It's complicated; I learned it through experimentation and reading tutorials online. It cannot be explained very easily without diagrams and showing examples of what does what - luckily, other people have created tutorials on it which do, and of course, you can experiment to learn how things work.
Volumetrics are good for special effects. They render slowly. Best way to learn is through experimentation.
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/weepul/brycefighterviews.jpg")Here(/url)'s a ships I made in Bryce...it's not particularly detailed, but you can see how booleans (the front) and metaballs (the smooth rear) can be used to create more complex forms. (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/weepul/brycefighter.jpg")Here(/url)'s a scene using the previous ship, plus one made from two symmetrical lattices, and lots of volumetrics for special effects. (Ignore the blurring, that was Photoshop, and ended up actually not looking that great. :p)
Mind you, those were more recent creations of mine, after some years of using the program. However, for most of my shipmaking I preferred to use other programs, so I wasn't working as hard at learning Bryce as I was other programs (and my ships that I've made with it have not been my best). The more effort you put in, the better your work will be for the skill level at which you are, and the faster your skill will improve, but it will take a lot of time and dedication.
I hope that basic introduction helps...again, for more specific help, search for tutorials online. There are a huge number of Bryce-using people on the web, and a few large communities. Resources are out there, but I also can't stress enough how important it is to fiddle with the program yourself, and learn through experience. Good luck!
------------------ (url="http://"http://evula.org/aftermath/")Aftermath(/url). You know you want it.
(This message has been edited by Weepul 884 (edited 07-13-2004).)
You did those ships on Bryce??? In that case, I'm suddenly more respectful towards the program. Where do I find the boolens thing?
Object properties. Select an object, click the "A" in the little menu thingy that appears. There's a keyboard shortcut, too, but I bet it's different from Mac to PC and I don't know which you're using.
Search on the web. There's litterally tons of info out there, from very basic (ie. "how to use booleans") to in-depth studies of the DTE (deep texture editor...worry about that a bit later ;)) and it's all much more complete and easy to follow than any explanation people could give here. The answers to many of the questions you'd probably ask here are out there, ready to find.
Hey, it's cool that you'd give up Lightwave because it's pirated.
Just keep working with bryce, some people have produced amazing work with it.
------------------ (url="http://"http://www.adventuredog.net")Adventure Dog(/url): Everyone's favorite little black and white dog. (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/005135.html#")Walkthroughs for 3D space scenes and objects(/url) - please feel free to add your own methods to the thread.
In this case, being honorable is a right pain in the @$$!!! But I will work with Bryce, just knowing what metaballs do has helped wonders.
Ok, I've managed to creat a pretty cool start with the pretty metaballs. Could soneone tell me if its possible to take chunks out of something? Like, I wanna make engines that go right into the ships hull at the back, but I don't know if I can. I've also been thining about making torpedo tupes and the like, but, same problem. Help?
You unfortunately can't use regular booleans with metaballs (I've often wished it was possible!), but if you'd read my previous post a little more closely, you'd have noticed I said that you can create negative metaballs by shift-clicking on the "creat metaball" button, which repel the surface. Get a bunch of them layered one atop another and you can carve some good holes in your metaball object, like on my Crash Landing image's ship.
Also, metaballs can be a useful tool, but they can only go so far. Learning to use the primitives and their full boolean operations well is essential.
I can't keep stressing enough that much of the information you're looking for is already answered and available on the web. Go looking for it, and you'll likely find it faster and with a more clear answer than just repeatedly asking all your questions here.
(This message has been edited by Weepul 884 (edited 07-14-2004).)
True, very true. But it is nice to have a straightforward answer instead of a load of technical cr**. Oh, Shift clicking on the create metaball icon does NOT create **** -balls that repel others.
off topic
well whattya' know. the word m_e_t_a is filtered out. Strange
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(This message has been edited by TheRedeemer (edited 07-14-2004).)
Quote
Originally posted by Prime: **Oh, Shift clicking on the create metaball icon does NOT create **** -balls that repel others. **
Sure it does...try again. Note, they either have to be in the same group, or in no groups.
Quick tip...you can increase the apparent strength of a metaball (positive or negative) without increase its size (well, its effective size goes up a little) by duplicating them but leaving them stacked up in the same position. You'd probably need to do that to the negative metaball to get a strong cutout effect.
You know, that is strange... Anyways, please ignore my last post. I've just figured out that if I grroup them togeather they will repel stuff. But a single object does not. I apologise for my outburst.
Sorry for the off-topicness again.
m_e_t_a and e_m_b_e_d are both filtered out because they could be used in dangerous, annoying, or malicious HTML code, I believe. Not that HTML is enabled here...
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Alright, I've rendered my ship with a sorta organic texture, but the things is. These great ugly yellow spots keep poping up. Help me out here please?
It'd be very hard to answer that question without seeing a picture of what you're talking about.
(url="http://"http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v335/FlamingSorrow/Class_VII_Rouge_Starfighter.jpg")http://img78.photobu...Starfighter.jpg(/url)
There you go.
Here's the ship, as you can see there are a few problems with the fin, and the joints on the wings.