BryceBlog

Sculptris – intuitive 3d sculpting software?

Many times I have been asked why I prefer to use the Bryce software in preference to something like Carrara for instance or even something open source and free like Blender.

My answer is rather uninspiring – I guess. It is certainly not the cheapness of the software. Bryce 6 is cheap compared to something like Vue 8, and not as cheap as Blender. (inside joke)

Nor is it the features of the software: Bryce 6  is somewhat sparse – these days – on some basic features like displacement mapping and ambient occlusion, making use of multiple CPUs or 64-bit support, and it is as slow as molasses when rendering, and cannot currently see more than 2Gb of RAM to work with – hugely frustrating!

It is its intuitiveness that makes the program shine for me. Ever since Bryce 3D (the first version of Bryce I ever used) I have been able to work easily with the software without fighting the interface, searching for obscure functions and getting the program to mimic the creative flow in my own brain! A program must work with me, I don’t want to read through a 500-page online help PDF to find out how the change the reflection value of an object. It must be there – easily found – and not buried 3 or 4 levels down in a requester with no visual feedback and lots of numbers to type in. (remember I never got past Grade 9 in math)

That is what Bryce does for me. It works with me! It doesn’t fight me! That is what software should work. Imagine for a moment using a computer mouse that didn’t mimic your hand’s motion on a flat surface. Clicking on a single button would be a taxing, tiring waste of time.

At this moment that is what Blender, Vue 8 (which I could never afford), and Carrara are to me. They are a heavyweight wrestler in my ring. They don’t belong there.

[Confession time: I bought Carrara when it was fresh in DAZ 3D's growing arsenal of 3D tools. I even had a copy of its early predecessor Ray Dream Studio on my computer at one time. I bought Carrara 6, installed it went one round with it in the wrestling ring, trying to read the manual and gave up. When a free version 7 upgrade was offered to me by DAZ3D, I took it - why I don't know - and it was stored on a DVD backup somewhere and forgotten - I simply didn't have the time or the resources to learn this new and difficult bit of software.

This was in contrast to Bryce - I could still get the aged software to go in the direction I wanted it to go, and although I might not have all the wonderful tools and "bells & whistles" offered by other programs, I could spend an hour or so a week and make progress with my art projects. Often an hour was all I could manage - remembering that art is my hobby - something to do in my spare time when the demands of being an IT Manager, the father of a child with a relatively severe learning disability, and a devoted husband.]

I like modelling in 3D, and Bryce doesn’t model, so I have to resort to other software. Hexagon works OK, but it is crash prone and more unstable than Amy Winehouse on crystal meth, and it doesn’t do what zBrush does at $600 a hit!

Now I am looking at a new product I strayed across in one of the Blender forums – Sculptris – its main feature is dynamic mesh tesselation that will provide additional detail where necessary, without the you needing to worry about it. (one way to kill your PC with Hexagon to to subdivide or smooth your mesh one step to far)  and that fact alone makes it definitely worth a look. One comment from a user on the Blender forum was: “This is what the sculpt tool in blender should have been like…” (Hmm, didn’t even know Blender had a sculpt tool!)

Sculptris is an early Alpha version, and weighs in as a 1.7Mb installer (yes, you read correctly – not even 2 Mb!) It works only on Windows at the moment, but has been reported as being able to run in Linus via WINE.

Give it a try. I am impressed so far and am getting to grips with its somewhat different interface.

Using Collada models from Sketchup Warehouse

Here's some tips for using the DAZ Studio Beta to convert Google's SketchUp Warehouse models into OBJ files to use in Bryce. 

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Not all of the models could be converted (only about 1 in 5 or so..) and many of those were either poorly made or poorly textured, and thus un-usable. 

*But*, even with that, there are some really neat models there which I could bring over to Bryce and render. Many of the world's most famous buildings have been made into 3d. and the best thing is that they are free! There are a few problems to be dealt with, but I'll mention those later.

If you are interested in the process:

1.) Download from SketchUp Warehouse the model you are interested in: choose either the zipped Collada file (.dae), or the Google Earth (.kmz) file. In my run-through any of the actual 'SketchUp' (.skp) files are useless, as you need SketchUp Pro (ie. money!) to convert them.
1a.) If you choose the Google Earth (.kmz) file, **rename the file extension to .zip***…. (KMZ is a form of zip, and you should be able to open it with no problem once the extension is changed.)
2.) Open the zip file as you normally would.
3.) Using the latest D/S beta (not sure if the latest regular version can handle it, so I used the beta, which definitely does…) import the .dae file from the opened zip file.
4.) If all is well and good, you should see the model. If you don't, follow these steps:
4a.) On the list of the scene content (usually in the left-hand tab column), find and select the item called "Model".
4b.) On the list to the right-hand side of the screen, look under the "Surfaces" tab for the "Shaders" drop-down. Click on that, then click on the first listed 'mesh'. Then when you are exited from there, click on the "Shaders" drop-down again, scroll down to the last listed mesh, and shift-click on that mesh name. This will highlight all of the included meshes for the next step.
4c.) Just below the "Shaders" box, will be a slider for "Opacity". Slide that all the way to the right (100%) to have the model become visible.

Once it's visible, it is ready for export for Bryce. Choose the File_Export option from the menu, and In the OBJ Export box, make sure that the Convert Maps (for Bryce) is checked. Name your model, and you're good to go.

Now for the caveats:

While most of the models are low-poly, and don't take a lot of memory, there are a few that are HUGE! (Pity, because some look *beautiful* There is a reproduction of the Baths of Caracalla which is superb in it's preview, but I couldn't convert it.). Some of the models should only be used as background filler, as the lack of close-up detail may be noticeable.

To make up for the lack of modeled detail, the system relies heavily on photographic detail on the texturing. As a result, there are sometimes baked-in shadows, and things like people and cars that are captured when the person took the photo of the building. Again, you may have to choose which side of the building to render.

SketchUp/Google Earth for some reason uses white as it's transparency color, so some items (for example, a propeller blade) which is modeled as a simple square with a picture attached) will render out the whole image; prop blades on a white square. You may have to do a bit of trans-map work.

Lastly, because of the system, most of the model makers call their model "Model.dae" and all of their textures something like "Image1.jpg" and Image2.jpg"…. Thus, trying to use more than one of the models in a scene becomes a nightmare, with cross-references getting all messy.

But, if you can maneuver around these pitfalls, there are some gems to use. I have gotten about 100 building models converted to a fairly acceptable stage. Some will need tweaking, but most render quite well as middle to long distance elements.

And the reason I started rummaging around in SketchUp Warehouse: Bryce 7 beta 'lists' the Collada .dae file format in the import menu… not yet working, but once it is, you won't have to do the DAZ Studio conversion run-around.
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Alcazar Castle

Boston's Trinity Church

Brabant Castle

Mont St. Michel

Schloss Schwetzingen

Bryce 7 Beta – Early days still…

I have been a user of Bryce since version 2 (when it was ported to Windows), and have seen the program passed from corporation to corporation like a bad case of herpes, no one wanting to do anything with the program, consigning it to the dusty top shelf of software development.

In 2004 when DAZ3D bought it from the software behemoth, Corel, we Bryce-disciples rejoiced, that at last the program was being returned to the hands of people who would develop and take ownership of the little unwanted orphan.

Since then the Bryce has been fixed and tweaked to some extent by DAZ3D, but in my opinion these have been largely "bug fixes" and minor enhancements. (Changing the color of the Camera controls and the "widgets" is only window-dressing, not an improvement or upgrade!) For me the only real enhancement was the DAZ|Studio Poser Importer that allowed me to import Poser figure with considerably less trouble than before, and even that still continues to frustrate me with its failure to import Poser morphs and customizations!

So in the last few days of 2009, DAZ3D release Version 6.3 and that was supposed to address some stability issues, and in a quick one-two combination the owners of Bryce 6 were allowed to join in the open development of Bryce 7.

This new initiative was announced on the DAZ3D forums on January 13, 2010, and caught us all by surprise! DAZ 3D were "looking for feedback" as they worked on Bryce 7 to try and take the software into the 21st century and make it something other than a hobbyist's toy! I was and still am excited!

Already there are a number of new features added and there are bound to be many more additions to the software before final release. However, keep in mind that this is just the first Beta version and DAZ has promised more before the final release. The current Beta I have will expire on February 10th, but DAZ have assured us that the next build will be available for download – and testing – shortly before then.

This is definitely a Beta release, it crashes more than Tiger Wood's SUV at a sorority pajama party! There are some issues and bugs in the program, and if you are considering giving it a go, do not remove your previous installation but install it in its own directory!

I have run Bryce 7 Beta alongside 6.3 and I can see how far DAZ3D have come with this new release. The program does indeed run faster and renders faster, and the new Lightning Network Rendering Client also has increased performance. There are some rumors that the rendering engine is now the Carrara engine, as this 3D program (also owned by DAZ3D is considerably faster than Bryce.) I wonder if there is any truth in this? If DAZ can build Bryce to render faster, and do nothing else I would be happy, as I have had to contend with hours and hours of computer time rendering images or animations!

Also new to this release is support for the Windows Vista and Windows 7 file structure. Now as a user of Windows 7 at work, and a fan of the first decent OS that Microsoft has released since Windows 3.1, I thought that I could now see Bryce 7 perform! I was disappointed, but it was largely my own fault – I run Windows 7 64-bit and Bryce is still a 32-bit application, so there is no advantage in having 4Gb+ of RAM and dual multi-core processors!

Please DAZ! develop a true 64-bit version! It is a long overdue feature!

DAZ are developing a "Serial Number management" system for licensing which will supposedly enable different features to be unlocked within the same program.

To the uninitiated, this means that a single install can be a time- limited demo, or a budget version with some features, and finally a full-priced heavyweight with all the bells and whistles, all from the same download. I suppose this makes marketing sense, enticing potential new users (who bring in the cash) to upgrade to get more features. Us old stalwarts, with several versions under our belts might find the upgrade path restrictive and pandering to the whims of the bankers rather than the needs of the digital artist.

So let's look briefly at the Bryce 7 Beta:

The new Instance Lab does not use true instancing (yet) – and it bombs beautifully with no error message or hint of trouble – so beware and save often!

It is very easy to run out of memory when placing large amounts of objects – a 3Gb XP 32-bit computer is not enough!

In the Instance Lab, (Hidden in the tiny [I] button next to a selected object) you can paint a mix of tree species with brush. Apparently you can paint species, change proportions and spacing, which because of the "out of memory issues" I have had only a modicum of success.

It is quite easy to replicate Objects and paint any object using the Instance Brush tool, like rocks, grass, and shells on a surface, and already the various Bryce Forums are filled to the brim with trees or grass on hills, but I am sure that with imagination and creative thought, this instance painting lends itself to greebles and nurnies! 

One feature that stands out for me is that Bryce 7 can now use the current sky as HDRI scene lighting. I love this feature!

The Import and Export of OBJ, image formats, FBX and COLLADA, have been improved, although the DAZ Studio Bridge does not work and continues to trash Poser-created OBJ files.

Rendering speeds have improved although the so-called "major improvements" of the DAZ Press release are deceptive and misleading. Faster, yes, but not that faster!

Only a few of the major 6.x Bug fixes have been addressed:

• Importing 3D objects – maybe but big OBJ files still give me the infamous "Out of memory" crash.
• Slow render times – Yes fixed.
• Nano previews different from main window – But there is STILL no way of enlarging that sh*tty little postage stamp nano-preview and it is still only landscape format!
• Keep loosing HDRI probe – Yes fixed.
• Tree Lab "file not found" error – Hallelujah!
• Default Ground Texture – One of the dumbest things ever done by DAZ – the default ground texture that slowed the default scene render down to a crawl!
• User Interface Improvements – None visible that I can see, or perhaps these are hidden "easter eggs" like most Bryce features?
• Native Bryce UI elements (DAZ Studio Version dialog) – Duh?
• Animated Splash Screen – So what if the splash screen animates – anyway nothing animates on my version! It does nothing to enhance the program's functionality!

I have been hard on DAZ, and I sound pretty sceptical, but overall I think Bryce 7 has a great future ahead of it, even though it is early days!

Hamfast

Jerry Composano aka Prizm Website is online again

I was contacted by Teresa, the late Jerry Composano's daughter, to tell me that on the 2nd anniversary of Jerry's passing, his site was resurrected and is once again available. Our gratitude and thanks to all involved in reviving the legacy of this great champion of Bryce. Go there right away and don't forget to sign the guestbook!

Quick Tip: Exact Colour Sampling

If you are using the colour picker tool (the pipette) in the Material Editor to copy or duplicate colours, then you should be aware that the colour picker  samples the program interface NOT the colour field that you might be trying to copy.The colour fields only have a very small area in which the exact colour can be sampled (in the image this area is marked in white) The light blue area samples the colour one less than exact colour. Try it now, and click on a white colour field. It will sample as 254,254,254 and not 255,255,255.

If colour accuracy is important to you use the colour picker on the right edge of the colour field to get the exact colour.

(Discovered on a printout from an old Usenet Bryce Group for Bryce 3 and 4! Even in Bryce 6.1.3 this “bug” still is around)

Quick Tip: Changing the preview pictures of Material presets

Discovered on a printout from a now defunct Bryce newsgroup…

To change the preview picture of a material, adjust the preview to the object and orientation (using the Alt, Ctrl, Shift and Space Bar) you would like to have as the material's preview, then Ctrl-Shift-Click (Cmd-Shift-Click for Apple users) on the material's thumbnail and it gets replaced by the current preview!

Genetica Viewer textures in Bryce – a quick tutorial

Using Genetica Viewer 3 to generate textures is very easy. What to do with them in Bryce might be a little daunting to the n00bs – myself included. So here is a quick-and-dirty tutorial to help you:

First of all fire up Genetica Viewer 3 and select the texture that you want to render:

Then select the "Render Effect Maps" on before rendering. (The Genetica Viewer 3 can only render to a maximum of 2048 X 2048 pixels but that is fine for most needs)

Sit back and wait…make yourself a cup of coffee, read your e-mail, take a walk around the garden… because some of the textures will take a long time to render. Once the texture is rendered it is time to export to a usable format.Click the Export Image:

Once the "Diffuse" image is saved change the drop-down menu (to the right of the 6 big numbers) to a channel other than "Texture" to save the Bump map and other maps like Specularity etc.

…in this case I want a bump map (which is called "Bottom Material" in this instance) so I export that.

Export to .JPG format with 0% compression the reults will be quite satifactory.

Once that is complete it is time to fire up Bryce, create your object and set your materials (by clicking on the tiny [M] button next to the object in Bryce's Main Editor)

Select the P button to select or create an image-based texture.

Then click the rightmost button above the "Leonardo Vitruvian Man" thumbnail to open up the texture editor.

 Click on an emply block to load the diffuse channel image.

…then click on the middle white placeholder to load the bump map as an alpha channel to drive the bumpmapping.

If the results look like this, you can click the green check mark on the lower right corner to exit the Texture Editor.

 Now set your Bump Map in the A Column on (with the blue button switch) and set the value to get the right bump detail. (I used a value of 50+)

The render will show you if your settings are correct. In this instance the Ambience is set too high and the image is washing out a bit.

Return to the Material Editor and set the Ambience to 0.

Fiddle with the Specularity too by putting a blue button in the A column next to Specularity.

This will make the rock texture less washed out and shinier.

That is it – in a nutshell – of the basics of using Genetica Viewer's textures in Bryce. It think you will agree that the results are quite spectacular!

Keep on Brycin'

David

aka Hamfast

Genetica Viewer – A useful tool for Bryce

Trawling the Internet for textures has never been my favorite pastime. Just too much time is spent on avoiding malware sites or commercial sites forcing you to pay exorbitant fees for access to their databases, or public domain sites filled with poor quality textures that have been used, reused and abused ad nauseum. Nothing yells "loser" more than an image that look like a showcase of Quake 2 textures!

If I hate looking for textures, then trying to get a workable texture using Bryce's Deep Texture Editor must rate up there with having root canal treatment without Novacaine – pure agony!

However I have discovered a remarkable tool called the Genetica Viewer product from Spiral Graphics. The blab on the Spiral Graphics website describes Genetica Viewer as "your doorway to a world of textures that have been created with Genetica.  Specifically, Genetica Viewer is a free application for rendering seamless textures that are saved in the Genetica texture format (GTX)"

Insofar as this claim, Genetica Viewer delivers on its promises. I downloaded this 8.5Mb installer (it needs the .NET framework installed to work) and it ran with no problem on my home machine. (running Windows XP SP2)

The Genetica Viewer can only use and display the predefined .GTX files and the  installer comes with a full set of over 1000 built in texture files so you have quite a bit of textures to play around with. The .GTX files are resolution independent and allow resolutions of up to 6000 x 6000 (however the free Genetica Viewer will only go as high as 2048 x 2048)

The .NET framework might be the bottleneck in the the program as I found the rendering to be very slow, even on my 3.4Ghz Core Duo 3Gb RAM machine, but even though a single 2048 X 2048 resolution texture took almost 9 minutes to render, the end results were very impressive. I made a point of rendering the effects maps as well as the bump maps and noise maps proved very useful for alpha-masking and getting the effects to jump out at you.

As a test I rendered a built-in .GTX texture file called Herculaneum.gtx and saved the files on my old work machine, a 1.97Ghz P4 with 512Mb of RAM. This old machine is running (would you believe it) the Debian Linux operating system and managing it very nicely. Then running the Windows "emulator" WINE, I ran Bryce 5.5 on it and pulled in the textures and wrapped them on a cube. I rendered the scene in Bryce 5.5 and I admit that I was impressed with the results. Here are some screen shots.

 I found the program very easy to use and barring the slow render times and the need for the .NET framework I found little else to criticize. I would recommend it to anybody looking for a basic texture creation tool.

A word of caution though. The full Genetica 3.0 Program is incredibly powerful and allow you to create textures from the ground up, but costs anything from $110 to $300! Not for the cash-strapped hobbyist like myself! Stick for now with the Genetica Viewer. It does enough for now!

Preventing a Bryce “B6Axiom.dll crash.

Here is how one Bryce user described the indiscriminate crashing of Bryce:

“…everything was going great….creating scenes, saving, opening files….
Now if I try to open a .br6 file, Bryce6.1 crashes!…”

The guilty party is the B6Axiom.dll file and apparently the way Bryce 6 does not allow the saving of a file larger than 2Gb. Now I cannot vouch for the technical merit of that – I am not a programmer – but one thing I do know is that I lost my most recent project file this way. Every time I try to open up this .br6 file now, I get the dreaded “B6Axiom.dll” error and the file is, for all intents and purposes, lost!

What can one do to prevent such a crash? What are the practical steps to protecting your files and stop Bryce from corrupting your hard work?

Rashad Carter a well-known personality at the DAZ3D BryceTalk forum had this to offer in a way of advise and “caveats” for Bryce 6 users. Rather than letting the post be relegated to the backwaters of an obscure or soon-forgotten forum thread, I asked Rashad’s permission to place it on the BryceBlog as a posting – which he graciously gave!

You could be hitting the 2gb file size limit in a couple of ways…

This error can demonstrate itself in two ways.

1. Out of memory error during save
This means that Bryce acknowledges that the file will not save and warns you so that you can at least save the final render.

2. The second option is much worse. This is what you experienced today, when Bryce failed to realize the save would be corrupt, so the file appears to save properly but when you re-open the file you get nothing but the awful default sky. The first clue to the problem should have been the time needed for the save. What you will see is that the save will hang at a certain percentage for a bit longer than it usually does, many minutes longer in some cases. I once had a render hang at 63% for about 6 min, I knew the file was corrupting even though it completed the save 100% based upon the screen display. Sure enough the br6 file read 1.99gb when I checked it. Corrupt as could be.

Now I can say that I have not had this error occur on me recently because I now have strategies to ensure that I at least get a finished render out of the deal.

Crash Causers:

You can cause this corrupt save in a number of ways. Most likely, your scene is nowhere near 2gb in real life, but inflated at the moment of corruption.

A. Replication, duplication, cut and paste commands. These commands really gum up the undo buffer, which is the true core problem with these corrupt saves. You need to save every few minutes when you are making duplications and the like. More on that in a second.

B. Undo commands. Using the undo command at all will often lead to a corrupt save. Try to never use the undo command at all, it is very unstable.

C. Bryce 6.1 is extremely sensitive to any and all system instability. Try not to work in other programs while working on high ram Bryce scenes. I have found that the mere act of minimizing the Bryce window to work in other programs, them restoring the Bryce working window sends the undo buffer into madness, guaranteeing a corrupt save. I often went back and forth between PaintShop Pro or Truespace or whatever, editing textures and models minimizing and restoring Bryce regularly. Combine this behaviour with a single replication command of an imported flower and you could get a corrupted save.

D. Watch the Task Manager at ALL TIMES. I swear, I never close it, I keep it open in the taskbar and I refer to that bad boy about every 3 minutes as I compile a scene. Reason, because the true file size limit for accurate saves is only about 1.3GB. Because Bryce 6.1 zip compresses br6 files in a way that previous versions of Bryce do not, there is a good bit of overhead (nearly 500mb seemingly) of RAM needed to compress files at save time. This leads to smaller disc usage but it also seriously limits the true size of Bryce scenes. However, just because you cannot save a file larger than 1.3gb does not mean you cannot continue to add more items. More on that in a second.

E. Never save a file while closing it. Always save the file first, then close it afterward manually after you have had a chance to check the integrity of the save. After saving and before closing, you will look to the target folder to see what the memory footprint is of the file. If it has jumped from a few hundred Mb in the previous version to 1.98 or more Gb, then the file has gone corrupt and can no longer be accurately saved no matter what you do. Which reminds me, when you do save always save the file as unique, this way you will not copy over a good save with a bad one, then you really will lose everything. Not all is lost however, because you have not yet closed the source file. Regardless of the corrupted save attempt, the still open file will allow you to at least complete the render itself. Which you will then export as a bmp before closing the file for the last time ever. No need to try to save it again, you already know it will not save accurately.

I have safely rendered scenes that used RAM up to about 1.85gb. Naturally, the files could not be saved but the final renders did survive.

Good luck, and hopefully by watching the task manager closely every time you add complex objects or make replications or duplications or whatever, you can avoid having this issue to sneak up on you unexpectedly. Hey, at least you still have the previous versions.

The Bryce demi-god Horo was also able to contribute his own thoughts on memory and corrupted B6 files:

Talking about memory issues, I’d like to add the following observation.

If you use IBL, you need a large HDRI if you want it to show it as backdrop. The largest HDRI Bryce 6.1 can handle has a 6400 pixel diameter. The file cannot be saved anymore. A workaround is to use a smaller HDRI. As for the lighting quality, the size of the HDRI doesn’t matter, a 600 to 1200 pixel diameter probe is good enough (I even lit scenes with a 300 pixel diameter probe). If you are satisfied with your artwork – except the blurry backdrop – save the scene, quit Bryce, restart Bryce and reload your scene. Then load the large HDRI, render and save the rendered picture.

If you have an elaborate scene, loading the max size HDRI may already crash Bryce. If so, render with a low resolution HDRI, save and then render an object mask. Then remove all objects, save, end Bryce, start Bryce and load the empty scene with the HDRI, then replace it by the large one, render and save the picture. Combine the render with the low res HDRI with the hi res HDRI using the mask. I do this with HDRShop.

Please keep in mind that the X- and Y-position of the HDRI is not saved. If you have the probe rotated to X=120° and tilted to Y=60°, the next time you load the scene and access the IBL Lab, X will be at 0° and Y at 90°. As soon as you make a change in the IBL Lab, the HDRI is set to the default position. Note the positions before you quit Bryce. If you have the sun disabled and the Sun and Moon not set to visible, you can enter the HDRI positions as the Sun position and that one is saved along with the file.

To quote a character from the old police drama “Hill Street Blues”:

“Let’s be careful out there!”

Quick rendering using the Bryce desktop shortcut…

Believe it or not there is a use for your desktop shortcut to Bryce 5 or 6 – apart from cluttering up your screen real estate!

You can do a quick render by simply dragging any Bryce scene file icon (.br5 or .br6) onto the Bryce 5 or 6 desktop shortcut.

It will load Bryce, render the file and save it in the same directory as your scene as a .BMP bitmap.

A very neat little “trick” that Susan Kitchen’s taught me.

It has a few restrictions however. Firstly you have to set up your document size, and any other rendering options and save it with the scene file before you do  the drag-and-drop render, otherwise it will do a default render.

Secondly it saves the file only as a .BMP. You will have to bring it into your favorite image editing program to save or convert it in your preferred format.

Thirdly (and this is my biggest gripe) is that in Bryce 6 it only renders one file at a time. You cannot drag a number of files onto the shortcut and expect them to all render. This trick used to work with Bryce 5.0 but DAZ broke this in Bryce 6 it seems! I could be wrong, but I have never got it to work in Bryce 6.1.