Don't think twice - use Bryce (Corel Bryce 4 in general)

Member Name: Highwayman

Product:	Corel Bryce 4 in general
Date:	12/05/02 (254 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing realism

Disadvantages: It has to be learnt

As I sit around waiting for one of my other computers to finish rendering an animation, I figure I should share a secret.

Bryce is quite easily the most realistic of the consumer 3D rendering programs - and if it's proof you're after, try looking at this and finding the seams. http://www.nps.gov/carto/silvretta/bryce_dem/ (It's not one of mine by the way). There are dedicated systems which cost a hell of a lot of money, but the NEW Bryce 5 is available for £179.00+VAT. Believe me - it's a bargain

What makes Bryce so good?

Two things really - the textures and surfaces, and the way it handles light.

Textures can be rendered with all the softness of fabric, or the steely glint of......well, steel.......... With unlimited control over diffused and ambient colour depth, speculaity (including specularity colour), transparancy and refraction, you will run out of ideas before the software runs of of ways to render them. Add to this the ability to apply any custom texture or pattern from a program like photoshop, and you're cooking.

Want a Saxon house?? Draw it in Photoshop and apply it to a cube in Bryce.

Need a forest background?? Find a photo and apply it to a vertical plane.

It applies alpha channels faithfully ( although you might find that non-antialiased artwork works best).

The light options adds even more to the reality of your finished scene. You can actually add the dust in the atmosphere by selecting volume visible light. This makes your scene ultra realistic - eerily so at times. My first experimentation with volume lighting was a Sam Spade type alleyway - all atmosphere and grit. The way you could SEE the air in the finished photo was quite breathtaking.......and that was my first trial. Once you learn what you are doing, the realism of your finished picture is only limited by the time you take on your objects ( I now have a wide range of litter stored on my har
d drive - no London pic is finished without that, unfortunately). Another great trick is shining a visible light into the camera for that "startled rabbit" look.

Amongst he other things Bryce does well is animated reveals -"growing" buidings is always impressive. Apply a negative object to part of a positive object - and that bit disappears. Its that easy. Move the negative object over time and the revealed object grows.

At the moment I'm doing historical recreations - what a place looked like in times past. With Bryce I can fly someone down a Mediaeval marketplace with a startling degree of realism. If you've seen Time team you'll know what I mean.


Drawbacks?? Yes - tehre are a few. Bryce doesnt do object modelling terribly well - although the new edition promises to solve that. Solution?? do your objects in another 3D program and render in Bryce. I use Infini-D and export models in DXF format.

2nd problem?? Dont expect to be an expert overnight - Ive been using Bryce for 4 years, and have only just got to grips with Quicktime VR rendering - 360 degree user controllable pictures.

Bryce doesnt do what all the other 3D programs do , in the same way that other 3D programs do it - and for some this may be a problem. For anyone willing to take their time and experiment, Bryce repays your efforts with stunning original artwork.


Rendering scenes accurately takes a lot of computing power. Im running a DP 450MHZ G4 with just over half a gig of ram allocated to Bryce. For those wondering - my 32 second animation has another 14 hours to render. Its those clouds I designed...........and the mist on the marsh. Or it could be the animated viking raider that's chewing up the time. Whatever. I do know the result will something that is all mine. And THAT is the beauty of Bryce.

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