All,

Remember I said that you could get really great software at a great price at certain times?

Well this is one of those times...

www.daz3d.com

DAZ is GIVING away Bryce 5.5 for FREE. You can upgrade to the full version of 6 for $19.95

Just an FYI.....

Joe B

Dang, that's awesome. My Bryce was stuck at version 3, which didn't even really run under Classic (wireframe drawing was unusably slow). This makes me happy if only for nostalgic reasons. I'm downloading as we speak.

Too bad I don't really have time for that sort of thing these days. Should still be fun to give it another whirl and see if some of my old scenes still open and render properly. :)

Joe, could you give us a short description on the difference between Bryce and DAZStudio?  Which one would we use to create background pics?

Wow, thats a deal. My brother bought Bryce 5.0 for $200 afew years ago!  :o

I registered yesterday and they still haven't sent me a serial number. :( Can't really complain since it's free, but still...

Bryce vs DAZ.......

Think of DAZ as the actors guild and Bryce as the set designers.
You can use things from DAZ in Bryce (actually the interface between the 2 has been VASTLY simplified) and visa versa but what they do best is what I describe above.

For instance in GH the opening "room" has the castle in the mountains (the new version of Bryce actually uses that castle on the box cover and splash screen). The castle is from DAZ (Shroom Castle). I played around with elements of Shroom in DAZ until I got it correct and got the lighting figured out. I exported it as an object file with all the scene elements (lights, textures, etc.)
In Bryce I designed the mountains from scratch using the Terrain Editor until I got what I felt was a good place for the castle to sit. I played with the atmospherics (fog, haze, ambient lighting, sun position) until I got it the way I wanted it.
Then I imported the castle object, scaled it and placed it where I wanted. I then moved the camera around to get all the scenes (including the ones where the castle isn't visible) and saved them as jpegs. What's cool about this method is that the scenes are consistent as you "move" around and up Ghost Mountain because you're really IN the scene.
I then did post work in Photoshop using the Alien Skin Eye Candy 5: Nature filters, Smoke (add depth to the fog) and Snow Drift for the snow. I used the Alien Skin Xenofex 2 filters, Cracks (for the lava channels down the mountain), Little Fluffy Clouds for the clouds.
Phew.......
But I have gotten a TON of positive comments on the GH backgrounds and they really speak for taking a little extra time to setup. If anyone is interested I have the source files, Bryce, DAZ and Photoshop laying around if you're interested (email me). As I mentioned the Bryce promotion was well worth the time to register at DAZ and DAZ Studio has ALWAYS been free. DAZ also has weekly free objects. Bryce and DAZ are not tools that you just go into and use right away without taking time to use them but they are POWERFUL! There is a HUGE forum that you can get to from DAZ that has links to lots of free content and you can get questions answered quickly. AND there are a bunch of free tutorials. My forum ID is joeb3651
And you can always email me......

HTH,

Joe B