Bryce 3D is MetaCreations' newest addition to the Bryce series. Released less than 1 year after the initial release of Bryce 2 for the PC, it seems that Bryce 2 PC seems to have been a pre-alpha of B3D. The most important new feature of Bryce 3D is the animation capability. Using a simple key frame system, every object, texture and terrain can be animated. This feature alone is worth the cost of upgrading ($99 U.S.) This is not the only new feature in Bryce 3D, though. The Deep Texture Editor now has a semi-easy-to-use interface and the Materials Lab had received a make over. If this hasn't sparked your interest, how about volumetric textures? Now you can create objects that have volume. Take a look at what Metacreations added to Bryce 3D and most of all, have they worked?KEY FRAME ANIMATION
Think of stop-motion animation. Set up an object, take a picture, move it slightly, take a picture, move it again, take another picture. This is how Bryce 3D's key frame animation works. Don't worry you don't have to move each object every frame yourself. You define major changes to an object's position, size, and texture over time and B3D (Bryce 3D) does the rest. The key frames are defined with the animation controls. The time line is controled by the blue slider. The farther you slide it the more time is covered. Key frames are added and removed with the two buttons on either side of the key. When you drag the slider to the time you want, you then move the object you want to animate to the correct place in the scene and click the "+" button. This adds a key frame. Can then click the play button and watch the animation in wire frame. When animating with Bryce 3D you must remember that each object has its own time line and motion paths. You should work on one object at a time, start with the major object in the scene and define all of its motion paths, then animate the other objects around it. Otherwise your movies will turn out more like stills because you will have only animated one object or your objects will not be in sync.
When you have your scene set up and you need to tweak the timing of objects, the Advanced Motion Lab is the perfect tool. Remember, every object has its own set of key frames. The Advanced Motion Lab allows you to edit the speed at which the object moves from one key frame to another. The window in the upper right corner shows the position of the object while the window in the left corner shows the time curve. A straight diagonal line like the one shown is the default time curve. However, it you were to draw a sharp curve upward the object would start at a slow speed and then rocket off to the next key point. Every object, including the camera and sun can be modified in the Advanced Motion Lab.
PLANES, TERRAINS, AND TEXTURES
The Terrain Editor works exactly the same as it did in Bryce 2, however now it has a time line at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to animate terrains in your scene. For instance if you wanted to make the terrain shown erode over a period of five seconds, you'd first click the "+" button to add a key frame at time 00:00:00:00 and then you would drag the slider until the time read 00:00:05:00 (time is show in H:M:S:F). Then you would click the Erode button in the upper right hand corner until you got the desired effect and then you'd click the "+" key again to add the end key frame. If you clicked the play button you would see a realtime preview of the terrain eroding.
The Materials Lab looks completely different, however, it still works the same way. There are a few new features (other than a time line) in the Materials Lab. The "Metalicity" slider is no longer a secret function, it sits right under the "Specularity" slider. The two buttons on the left edge of the color section are randomize and reset buttons. See the green button just to the right and above the reset button? That is the second most important addition to Bryce 3D. It controls wether a material is just a surface or if it's a volume. If you click it, the picture of a rock turns into a cloud and most of the sliders (which are the transparency controls) are replaced with a set of sliders that control the volume of a material. A texture cannot be a surface and a volume so you must choose which type of texture you want. If you choose a surface texture, you can control the reflectivity and transparency of an object and if you try and move the camera through it, the object will be hollow. If you choose a volumetric texture you can control the density of the volume. If you try and move the camera through a volumetric texture you will be inside the texture. Think of volumetric textures as cloud, if you look at it from outside of the cloud you can see the surface of it. If you look at it from the inside you see white wisps around you. This is what a volumetric texture does to an object. I have but one complaint about the new Materials Lab, there is no longer a numeric display/input for the frequency of a texture. This was a very important feature in B2, so I hope MetaCreations will put it back in a service release.
For those who like maths and want to create your own textures, MetaCreations gave the Deep Texture Editor a semi-easy-to-use interface. There are still three components that create the final texture, however, here they are more organized than in B2. Each of the three components can be used as a color map, alpha map, or bump map. You can also define how each component affects the final texture. For instance you can multiply the colors of the first two textures and add them to the color of the third. You can also adjust the frequency, phase, and noise of each of the 3 components. There is also 3 ways to view the texture. The three icons in the upper right hand corner control wether the texture is shown on a flat surface, a square, or a sphere. This makes it much easier to tell what the texture will actually look like on a real object.
THE SKY'S THE LIMIT!
Well, not exactly. The sky's not the limit, in fact, I've done some great space scenes. But, there are a slew of new features for the sky in Bryce 3D. The first is rather insignificant. Notice that the pictures for the basic settings have been replaced. The real cool stuff comes when you go to the Environmental Attributes dialog. This is accessed by clicking the triangle in the lower right hand corner and then going to "Edit Sky Settings..." There is now a real moon in Bryce 3D (there was always a sun), you can turn on the Horizon Illusion which makes the sun or moon get larger as it approaches the horizon. The Rings setting, when turned on, creates rings around the sun and moon, this simulates the effect of ice crystals in the air. There is also the Moon Phase button. This allows you to use a real picture of the moon on the moon and it allows you to control moon phases. You know... Full Moon, Half Moon, Quarter Moon.
The next tab, the "Cloud Cover" tab allows you to animate cloud movement. The basic turbulence and complexity controls are still there, but now there are also cloud motion controls. This allows you to adjust the direction, speed, and turbulence speed of clouds. Cloud cover settings are the only thing that are animated without a time line. The speed setting controls how fast the clouds move across the sky. The direction setting controls which direction they move in and the turbulence setting controls how much the clouds' appearance changes. This turbulence control is not the same as the one at the top of the screen, that controls how the clouds look to begin with.
The last tab, the Atmosphere tab, controls the global atmosphere conditions. From here you can enable rainbows, which appear in the direction that the sun is shining. Volumetric world basically puts dust in the air. Any lights in the scene create a visible beam without the "visible light" attribute turned on. The final option Blend with Sun, makes the haze and fog change color as the sun approaches the horizon. This looks great when making sunsets and sunrises.
IN THE BEGINNING
In Bryce 3D there is only one new object, the Infinite Slab. This is exactly the same thing as an Infinite Plane, however it can be given a volumetric texture and can be used in boolean operations. The object attributes dialog has been changed slightly. There is now a Neutral setting for boolean operations, this allows you to group an object with a positive and negative object without screwing up the boolean. The Linking tab shows what object the object whose attributes are being edited is linked to. This means that is will follow the same motion path as its parent object. The Linking tab also show what object is being tracked by the current object. If an object is tracking another, the front of the tracker object will face the object it is tracking. The animation tab contains a few settings for displaying animation paths and how the object follows its path. An object can be set to follow its path as One pass, Repeat, Pendulum, or Circular. The setting names are self explanatory.WORKING WITH OBJECTS
Working in wireframe mode is much better in Bryce 3D. In Bryce 2 if there were more than a few complex objects in a scene the program was almost unusable. In Bryce 3D, this has been fixed. I've been able to put in over 50 terrains and 3 imported models, and each one had a complex motion path and the wireframe moved like I had one object in the scene. To move an object the controls in the edit menu can be used, or the object can just be dragged. There are now two ways to position the camera. The first is from the directors view. From this view the camera is an object and can be given a motion path just like any other object. The second method is to use the camera view. When the camera view is used the controls on the left side of the screen control the position of the camera. This is useful for tweaking the camera position. The render controls are the same as in Bryce 2. However, to render an animation the "Render Animation" command must be accessed from the file menu.
WRAPPING IT ALL UP
If you've read the entire article you probably have a good idea of how Bryce 3D works and how it compares to Bryce 2. If you are new to the 3D field and are looking for a program that is relatively simple to use but incredibly powerful, pick up a copy of Bryce 3D. With a price tag of $199 U.S. you can't go wrong. If you want to see some examples of what Bryce 3D can do feel free to visit my website: lucky.innet.com/~glenlake/index2.html.
This review was written by Jeff Craighead who can be emailed at glenlake@lucky.innet.com
