I knew I was going to be getting Bryce 7 Pro plus DAZ's ME Dragon 2 for my birthday. Turns out I also got LOADS of preset scenes, materials, models etc for Bryce and DAZ.
Why Bryce and not Vue? My old P4 won't run Vue and Vue is enormously expensive. If you're on a budget, go for Bryce.
I was very much looking forward to not only landscaping in Bryce but also being able to import .OBJ's from DAZ. As it turns out I'm still just playing with Bryce; learning the interface and figuring out the controls.
I figured the best way was to take an existing scene and modify it. That way a lot of the early legwork is done as I'm a complete Bryce novice, but I'd still have a chance to figure out the controls and still create something REALLY COOL!
I started with a free scene made with Bryce 4 called Lava Lake. There was no sky nor clouds, not much in the way of texturing, and minimal lighting.
Here is the "stock" render of the scene as it was given away with Bryce 7 Pro. You'll notice it looks very "plasticy".
I decided to do some work on the scene. First I moved the camera so we're closer to the lake and also panned up to see the sky. Then, of course, I had to make the sky. The Sky Lab, cloud, and atmospheric controls in Bryce seemed very easy to me. I don't care a lot for the color picker, wish there was some numerical type control and a larger colour palette.
The main terrain had to be changed along with it's material so it didn't appear "plasticy". Again, fairly easy controls... me likey.
Adding more lights was simple and the control of the lighting suited me fine.
Added some primitives with a fire preset material (obviously jiggled the presets; colour, falloff, etc) to add goodies to the lava pool. And I texturized the texture of the lava.
Once you select any item a discrete flyout menu appears and from that menu you can do pretty much anything to the object, light, terrain, etc.
Here's what I came up with. Just remember to click on it to embiggen the picture to fullsize cuz I think it's fairly impressive.
Once you get used to the graphical interface of Bryce 7 Pro you'll find it's very easy to use. I'm still learning though... lots more to figure out.
cheers,
dave
