What can Bryce Do?
Lotharen
Posts: 282
Hello everyone,
I'm purchasing some things to really get into the 3D art that I love looking at so much. I stumbled upon Bryce and thought it would be amazing for adding to my work flow. But I have a few questions before I make the purchase.
1. Can Bryce landscapes be ported into Daz Studio for use with iray?
2. How powerful is the Built in Bryce render engine?
3. Can I achieve realistic landscapes that will allow my fantasy or sci fi figures to look like they belong?
4. If I purchase the pro version will I have enough to build any type of landscape or will I need to purchase tons of addon's?
Thanks in advance for any answers/help. I'm just trying to make an informed decision to make sure this program is right for me and what I want.
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Comments
1. Not easily.
2. It is good render engine in terms of quality, but the price paid for that quality is time.
3. Diffiult to answer since it depends on your skill level. If you want to know what Bryce is capable of and how to do it I recommend looking at http://www.bryce-tutorials.info/ or my own youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldbpx-WrHFHUD-w3IaIKkw (edited to see if I can get the link to work).
4. With a few exceptions, HDRI, some software by Horo and a few image textures, the content we make for Bryce is entirely made within Bryce. http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Horo If you visit the "Show us your Bryce renders" thread, you'll see what other people are doing with Bryce which might also help you see what it is good for.
1. Studio needs a mesh for a terrain. Bryce can export a terrain as mesh in different resolutions. Natively, Bryce works with height maps for terrain, not meshes.
2. Bryce sports 2 render engines with surprising capabilities. Every render engine out there is too slow for impatient people. Quality needs time, but there are always strategies to make it faster. Bryce can render over a home network, if you have more than one computer connected to it, batch rendering is also possible.
3. The landscape is not the problem here, after all Bryce is called the ultimate landscaper. Human figures, if rendered up close, can be an issue. Skin is very triky to get right in Bryce. Any other object renders just fine.
4. The pro version has all you need to build any type of landscape. In the package are many additional goodies. Addon's may come in handy now and then, but aren't mandatory. After all, most of the addon's we offer in the store were made in Bryce.
Have a look at my private gallery (click on Website below and go to Raytracing > Gallery 2) where there are many landscapes I made in Bryce. I mention this to give you examples what can be done directly without addon's or tinkering with post in a graphics program.
Thanks for the reply's everyone! It's much appreciated.
From what I gather, I could use Bryce for distant landscapes to use as a back ground? Do close up work of tree's and figure in Studio and mat in the faraway landscape from Bryce?
I'm also looking at Carrara and I see it can do landscapes as well - would Bryce have a place with Carrara and Studio?
Thanks again for your replies!
A render that I did with just 3 Bryce terrains, and other items from the Bryce Pro included content., plus Bryce prcedural mats.
Lotharen - Carrara can do landscapes as well. I have every Carrara versions from 3 up to 8.0 but hardly use it. It's a very capable program but I feel more at home with Bryce.
Chohole - that's a very beautiful landscape, Pam.
Wow! that is a very nice render, thanks for sharing.
Chohole
I'm sure you guys are mining my picture library. That is incredibly like places I have been to.
Ever visited the foothills of the Brecon Beacons, Heads of the Valleys area?. Was what I was aiming for.
Only ever done my walking in the Highlands Pam so, no, never walked in Wales, or England for that matter
I just realized that Bryce can make HDRI images. That would come in handy for Studio and Carrara scenes I would imaging. What do you all think?
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned, why not create your models and props in Studio and then import them into Bryce for full scene rendering.
The control over light and atmosphere is quite phenominal in Bryce.
Thanks Dave, thats a good idea too. I'm also looking at purchasing Carrara and I'm not sure I need both programs. However, the HDRI creation could come in handy when sending a render to Lux. With as cheap as Bryce is right now I might just get them both!
Bryce can export loaded HDRIs and create an HDRI from the sky, which can also be exported. The HDRI can be also exported in the spherical or latitude/longitude projection, not only as angular map, to be used in Carrara, Studio, Octane, and many other programs. By the way, renders can also be exported as HDRI and spherical HDRIs can be created from renders as well - though that's a bit tricky.
EDIT to add: Bryce can also diffuse and specular convolve a loaded HDRI up to a Phong exponent of 100 and can also tone-map.
If you have the opportunity to try before you buy, then I recommend trying to see what software suits you best. It is not only a question of performance or capability, but your own compatibility with the interface is very important. DS for example is very good software in terms of its abilities, but I find it very difficult to get on with because of the interface. Beyond what you pay for the software, which is an immediate and apparent cost, the other cost to consider is how long you will spend using the software and how much of that time is enjoyable or frustrating. Mostly everything can be done in Bryce one way or another, but you really have to like using the software to achieve some effects because they require some effort. So my ultimate recommendation is to give some weight to how much you like using the software along with all the features the software boasts. For example, I have Octane which is a very capable render engine, even in comparison to phicially based renderers like Iray, Octane is potent. However, with enough time and thought, Bryce can even outrender the mighty Octane under certain conditions. But that takes some time and thought. Things like Octane and Iray give resonable results out of the box by relying on physical simulation of the scene, Bryce doesn't work like that, Bryce offers more control to the artist, which is a good thing if you want to take control of your scenes, but does not offer the "quick fix" that physical simulation gives.
Thanks again David and Horo! I really appreciate you guys helping me out. I havn't made up my mind one way or the other at this time. Seeing how cheap Bryce is at the moment I might just grab it while I can. Not sure yet.
Well of course we 'may' be a bit biased here, but Bryce is brill and Carrara smells
Despite the odds being toally against me (being a Mac user). I keep an old laptop with the old Operating System just so I can still use Bryce in my commercial workflow. What David says above is totally spot on, different people get on better with different software for different reasons. I find the Bryce interface to be more creatively inspiring than the much more technical looking ones such as C4D, Vue, Carrara etc. However, Bryce does have quirks and annoyances too and as David says rarely works to get the result you want without going through a learning curve. In my humble opinion, a curve worth following.
Here's some of my results: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/?q=Dave+Savage&x=0&y=0
Lotheran - Answering your Question: “What can Bryce Do?” I’ll say anything your heart desires; landscapes, seascapes, stills, scifics, abstracts, fractals, kaleidoscopes etc.
Chohole – wow, beautiful landscape
I agree with most of what is said here already. Mermaid said it very briefly: it can do a lot!
Please go and look at the threads 'show us your renders' and at the contest threads in the Bryce discussion and you'll get a very good idea of what is possible. One of the things several of us Brycer like (I think) is a challenge to do something with Bryce that a much more expensive and extensive tool might do more easily, but that Bryce might do at least as good, once you know how. Many of us like to experiment as well, with David Brinnen being the master of experiments and tutorials. I personally do not mind spending time instead of money. 3D work is just a creative hobby for me. Rendering can be done overnight or over many nights (in some cases), though a fast computer does help (something I don't really have).
But, you have to like the tool to really work with it. If you don't like the way the tool works, you won't use it a lot.
I have some questions... is the HDRI output of Bryce capable of providing proper/good IBL in, say, Daz? That's been a bugaboo of mine for a while -- I've tried all sorts of methods to make HDRIs with decent lighting qualities, and they've all either failed outright or been substandard.
Also, can you create a render/sky with clouds below you? I've wanted to do that effect for a while and Carrara has proven uncooperative.
This one I did a while ago Will. Clouds, mist and airplanes
Click on image for full size.
Or this one.
Click on image for full size.
timmins.william - Bryce can export a loaded HDRI in the spherical projection as Radiance RGBE HDR file that can be used in DS/IRay (Daz Studio), and Carrara, or any other program that can load such files.
Making a spherical HDRI panorama for IBL is not trivial. Usually, you make them from photographs. You need several photographs to cover 360° azimuth and 180° elevation (from nadir to zenith). Each of those photos must be taken several times with different exposure times, at least 5 in 2 EV steps. These photos with different exposure times have to be merged to an HDRI (e.g. using the free Picturenaut) and then assembled to a panorama. You need a software that can handle 96 bit floating point pixel values, they don't come free.
If you're really interested in this topic, I have a 20 page PDF on the subject of Creating HDRI Panoramas: https://horo.ch/photos/pdf/CreatingPanos.pdf
You can also render several images under different, but controlled, light conditions and continue as if you would use photographs. With Bryce 7.1 Pro come a couple of tutorials, among them 4 how it can be done in Bryce.
Yeah, I've tried my hand at a lot of that stuff, but my big problem with Carrara has been a the lack of an explicit exposure setting. I've played with Picturenaut. And, well, the only time I got anything to work is by using Photoshop, and the result was ugly.
I ended up picking up Bryce -- $12, what the heck. (And actually $6 with monthly PC+ coupon, yay!)
Wait, Bryce doesn't have spherical camera but I have to buy YET ANOTHER product to get it to do so?? Mutter.
Ah well, $6 might be worth it for old Bryce content I can export to Daz.
I picked up Bryce as well last week. Took me a while but I though I could use the Clouds/sky for my daz renders. Now I just have to figure out how to use the program lol.
and you need a spherical camera in bryce? hmmm, let me look for that.
You can look it up for other people, I decided to return it (yay Daz's generous returns!)
I only got it for easy HDRI lighting, and, well.
I did the same becuase I wanted it for the same thing. lol
The tutorials I mentioned work with what comes with Bryce. There is no spherical camera in Bryce and none to buy. What you can buy is a lens for the camera that renders spherical panoramas directly. But you don't need it, it's just for making things easier.
You would probably want to create a volumentric slab and apply a cloud material to it (as opposed to using the sky materials that only affect the clouds in the sky.) There's an example scene floating around somewhere in my content, but I don't recall where, or if it shipped with Bryce or one of the pro materials packs or something else. Of course you can try moving the camera above the cloud plane in one of the many example scenes, although some work may be required if the clouds were designed to look better from one angle than from another. And of course be prepared to spend a lot of time when working with clouds! It's worth it, but can be quite slow.
Lotharan, I am only a hobbyist (taught myself 3D with help in forums when needed) but somehow I prefer Bryce for most renders. Only programs I am using are Bryce 7.1, Daz Studio, Hexagon (still learning) and believe it or not, SketchUp. I have used my own built shop model for renders. I am so impressed that any SketchUp format model (when exported as an .obj) can be used in Bryce and reads SketchUp's textures! How cool is this!? Only thing is sometimes it crashes but it depends. On attached images though never crashed! :)
The images are all SketchUp models been used, except the human figures are Daz Studio's. I did a tiny bit postwork on the pavement but the rest are all BRYCE! :)
Interior image done on Win10 laptop yesterday.
Laura
I tried the Spherical Mapper : http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro-spherical-mapper
Just clouds so far, as it's been years since I played with Bryce. Good grief the icons are small !
Anyway, I found I got good light from one of the bundled Bryce skies.
The sky was saved as HDR from Bryce and then I took it into the environment in render settings of Daz. No tinkering.
If I can figure out what all these miniscule icons do I will make some mountains in the background.