Bryce 5 for Free!

I just got an e-mail from DAZ.

From now until Sept. 6, you can go to their site and download Bryce 5 for free.

This is well worth doing, just for the texture generation tools. (It's also just plain fun to play with.) In addition, if you have an older version of Bryce and think you might ever want to upgrade, you have to have this one to do it. Older versions won't be upgradable.

When you go there, there's a note saying that Bryce 5 won't run on a Mac in Tiger. I just wanted to note that I'm running Tiger, and Bryce 5.0.1 runs perfectly well. So I'm not sure what they are talking about.

Anyway, thought you guys would want to know.

It is a great deal, and that's good to hear about Tiger too, Thanks Robin.

Wow, cool! Thanks for the heads up. I have played around with various versions of Bryce and really love it. Nice interface and super-realistic results, if that's what you're looking for. If not then you can create many wonderful, surreal environments and textures.

too bad i cant get it to download on any of my 3 computers online...
lame

Thanks for posting about this, Robin.

At the risk of looking really, really stupid, however, what sorts of things for SL can I do with this? (Or, more precisely, can I do better with this than I could with a 2D graphics program.) "Generate textures" isn't really specific.

Wow! That is a sweet deal, thank you so much for posting this! That will teach me for not logging into Daz for a couple of weeks, see the good stuff I miss!

Thanks for the heads up, Robin. I've been meaning to give Bryce a whirl for some time now, just to see what it's all about. No reason not to do it now. Can't argue with the price.

Bryce is a simple modeler and renderer with procedural tools for creating landscape elements such as the ground, rocks, water & sky. I imagine you could generate textures for these things in SL though I'm not sure how useful that is.

Someone else may be able to suggest more uses, it's been a while since I last played with it.

Yes, thanks Robin, I'm downloading it. I'm also interested in specific examples of how it can be used to create content for SL.

Albion

ZOMG free bryce 5!

Eh I am a bryce 5'er from wayy back hehe. Already own bryce 5.5. Loved to pass the time making scenes with it.
Now where did I put those data dvd's of custom materials and objects....

Oh and about creating textures...YES! it is very helpful for creating some fast, trippy textures. just make a cube, apply a texture and play with the texture's color, ambience etc.
Then just use the forward pan to pan towards the cube so that all that is in view it the front of the cube. Then render, export it to .jpg

Btw, to find materials, just google for "bryce 5 materials" I could list some but my library is so extensive

This is so excellent! I downloaded and installed it and ran it. Only problem I had was: how do you exit the program? Felling dumb.

But WOW! Thanks so much Robin!!! I'd have missed this without your post.

Thanks so much Robin, you're a gem !!!

I almost pounced on this when I got my copy of the DAZ Newsletter. Then I realized it was Bryce 5.0, and I already own Bryce 5.5! So for me, it's no good. One thing to note, though. Bryce 6 will be out soon, and the upgrade path will require that you already have 5.0 or 5.5. Earler versions than 5.0 can't get upgraded to Bryce 6, when it is released.

Bryce is great for making 'natural textures', like leaves for trees and bushes. It can make fractal-like generated organic stuff that is amazing. You can create a tree or shrub in Bryce, export views of it from various sides as .png files, and make simple trees and shrubs for use iin SL. Or you can just make screen shots of foliage for textures. It's also good for making terrain textures.

Another possible use is that you can import Poser-type objects, like buildings and other stuff, and can set up lighting and other effects, then can take pictures of the 3D build with shadows and other effects. Those can be exported from Bryce to texture SL Builds.

Move your mouse to the edges of the screen, and your regular menubar or application dock should show up. Command Q or Control Q should also quit Bryce, as I recall.

Hi!

What Ceera said.

There's a huge, deep, procedural texture generator in Bryce. You don't need to take a screen shot of your textures, either. Just click the Terrain to make a new one, click the E in the Icon Column to Edit it, and choose New from the menu in the Terrain Editor. That totally flattens your terrain.

Leave the Terrain Editor, and click M to enter the Materials Lab. Apply your material (or create and apply it,) and click the checkmark to leave the Materials Lab.

Then Export your terrain. It will allow you to export the Texture, and that's all you need, so export the mesh at the lowest possible setting. (Or not at all, if it'll let you do that. I'm afraid I don't remember if it does.)

I'd give you more of a step by step, but I've found out why DAZ said that Bryce 5 doesn't work with Tiger (Mac OS 10.4)

The program works; you can do all the stuff in there that you ever could. But the Open, Save, Export, etc. interface no longer does.

In other words, you can open the program, create a texture, render it, create trees, change the lighting, make Boolean objects, and do all that stuff to your heart's content.

But if you try to Save, Open, Export or do anything else like that - the program freezes.

Sigh.

I'm sorry that I hadn't tried to Open or Save a file before I stated earlier that it works with Tiger. It does.. and it doesn't. Like a Demo, not an App.

It's still great if you want to take screen shots, or if you want to play with it and see how the tools and things operate. But yeah, it doesn't exactly <i>work</i>. Not so much.

IMHO it's still worth downloading, though, just in case you ever want to have Bryce, so you can get the upgrade.

All of which being said; the reason that I was posting here, really, is that I've been reminded to let you guys know that I have a complete course on line that will teach you everything about Bryce (including the Deep Texture Editor) in 12 easy lessons here.

They were originally designed for an online course that I was teaching, and were paced to spend a week on each lesson. But when I stopped teaching the course I threw 'em all on my site for free, and you can take 'em as slowly (or as quickly) as you want.

But yeah; no need to do this without instruction. Instruction is free, too!

Hope this helps!

Hmm, this looks SO great! But when I've tried to download the past three times, I get a file that can't be opened. I'm trying to download the Mac version. Has anyone else been having any difficulties with this?

I got a file named "Bryce5FreeVersion.sitx.txt". Removing the ".txt" properly identifies the file as a .sitx file (StuffIt X format). If you don't have StuffIt Expander, you can download it from http://stuffit.com. (StuffIt was the standard format for Macs for the longest time.)

Turns out that I didn't have the latest version of stuffit. Once I downloaded it, all was right with the world.

I downloaded the Free Bryce5 and am playing with it. Does the pay version have a larger work surface than the free version? My screen resolution is 1152x864 and the free Bryce canvas fills a very small square in the center of my computer screen. I'm not complaining about a freebee, just curious in case I want to upgrade to a higher version in the future.
Also, are there any other differences between the freebee and the pay for versions?
thx,
Ethan

Hi Ethan!

That's easy to change.

If you look at the row of icons on the right side of the workspace, you'll see what looks like a Marker, a Spray Can, and, third from the top, a rectangle with black corners at the top left and bottom right.

That's the Interface Max/Min icon. Click it, and the interface will expand to fill your screen.

The area that represents your image itself, however, will stay the same size.

To increase that size, you need to go to File > Document Setup, and choose a different size. There are a bunch of presets (on the right), or you can type in any dimensions desired in the text fields at the top left.

Be aware that the Render Resolution (bottom left) will not affect the size of the Workspace. That's for renders only.

If you want a quick resolution, just click Max Recommended on the right. That will pretty much fill the screen space you have available, while keeping an aspect ratio that conforms to standard.

Changing the workspace will also change the apparent size of the Interface, since Min makes the interface elements (which can be moved around, by the way, by holding the Space bar and dragging them,) cling to the sides of the Workspace. Max, on the other hand, makes them cling to the edge of your screen.

If you want to know more about the Bryce interface, you might want to check the Bryce 5 Interface tut I have here.

Hope this helps!

That's odd... I posted this to reply to a post from Ethan Habsburg asking about the interface size. That post was there when I began to type my reply. But now it appears to be gone. But that's why this was posted.

I deleted my question. I saw your excellent turorial and am now a Happy Camper learning how to use my freebe Bryce.
Ethan

Bryce is definitely a lot of fun to play with, but it always makes me want to hunt down Kai Kraus and stab him in the eyes. God how I hate his interfaces.

ROFL, Chip!

Yeah, I've gotten into trouble before for referring to them as StupidKaiInterfaces.

Good to hear I'm not the only one.

I also got the free poser 5 ( not saved it to PC yet ) but its safe.

I 'did' have Poser 6 but that was back in the day when I was stll struggling with PS7 so that just messed me up when I loaded it up. I promptly removed it from my PC and then lost the cd! rofl

SO im thinking im ready to give it another go.

I must say of the 2 Bryce is prolly gonna be of more interest to me as a texture maker.

Im not interested in poses and clothes at all.

Ceera made a wonderful bamboo woven blind from some presets in DAZ Studio and thats always stuck with me how id like to experiement with more 3D type tools for texture creation.

'apparently' you can make anything in PS CS that you could in any 3D software as long as you know your tools.

I love PS CS ( wouldnt look at it for ages was learning PS7) but WOW the 'Warp' is amazing I love the fact I can actually see the text type before chosing it as well as the Vanishing point

I recently joined NAPP ( National Ass Of PS Profesionals ) and get the monthly magazine and the thing about PS is you ALWAYS learn something new

That fact theres 10 ways to do the same thing initialy annoyed the Hell out of me but now i see that as a sign of how powerful it is

Its the graphic design industry tool of choice worldwide....so would some-one who largely creates textures from high rez photos in PS have use for anything else?

sorry just rambling lol