I am joining the Forum
pbudarick_4a3d2ac478
Posts: 0
Hello to all of you
I began with Bryce v1 in 1995 and immediately became addicted. The addiction to Bryce has not abated even though i also own Lightwave [up to version 9 now].
I have worked with every version of Bryce up to the current - Bryce 7.1 Pro, which i am now testing and will report on in due course.
I purchased Bryce 6.1, Hexagon and Carrara 6.1 Pro a few years ago. I got a good deal and like the software although i have not used Carrara and Hexigon much since then.
Recently i was very pleased to be able to download Bryce 7.1 Pro free of charge. I only hope that when the bug fixed upgrade sees the light of day, i will be able to upgrade.
Even though i have both Lightwave and Carrara, i decided to use ONLY Bryce to make all the models and also to do all the fonts, greyscale-to-height maps, decorative painting, compositing and image editing work [all pre and post production]. That means i don't use Photoshop at all. I can't afford Photoshop and i can do everything Photoshop can do, inside Bryce [at least the stuff i need to do]. And if i need fonts i create them in Bryce. If i was working as a commercial graphic artist, then it would be a different story because to do everything in Bryce not only takes a very long time but also time experimenting and figuring out how to do the "impossible". But most of the Photoshop filters can be emulated in Bryce without to much drama.
I enjoy modelling in Bryce without using any imported objects. Bryce-Only Modelling has been practiced by quite a number of people over the years since Bryce 1 came on the scene. Some people find Bryce-Only Modelling tedious and i can understand their point of view because i have done it for 17 years [i have been frustrated at times too]. I found that i spent much more time figuring out HOW to do something than actually executing it. But that is part of the challenge and the attraction for working in this way. It is very satisfying when you have created a model from scratch in this way. But i must say it is much more frustrating to post anything on this forum a reason why i have never posted here. I may never post anything again if i can't get through with one simple message and image.
Only if and when i introduce human figures into my future work will i use Daz Studio, Carrara and Lightwave. It would be insane to try and create animatable photorealistic human characters in Bryce alone.
Here are 2 URL's to an old website of mine which demonstrates Bryce-Only work, even making animations with Bryce 2.
http://www.oocities.org/soho/veranda/6288/index.htm
http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/veranda/6288/index.htm
I suppose i should conclude by testing an image of my current work to see if i can post messages with pictures.
Kind regards
Peter
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Comments
Welcome to this Bryce community, Kine_magiK. Since you're with Bryce since the beginning, you may still have Bryce 4. If so, you can still use Kai's Power Tools in Bryce 7.1. Might come in handy since you stick to Bryce for everything you do. I had a quick look at the links - impressing modelling work.
It's alwasy nice to welcome another person to our Bryce community here. It is a very friendly forum, even the moderators don't bite (well not often, and not hard)
I am always envious of people who could use Bryce from V1. I had to wait to B2 before I could join in the fun, as I use PCs.
When we arrived at Bryce V3 I added Poser to my stable of apps, and have used that ever since to prep my characters (human and otherwise) into Bryce. I have never used Daz Studio,
You have an inpressive portfolio of work. Hope you stay and show us more.
Thank you Horo
I am still testing how to use the "system" of this Forum - i like to make nice messages and my inability to control things frustrates me.
Bryce is much easier to use.
But my first message with image got through OK which is encouraging.
But i am not blaming the forum only my incompetence in using it.
I will post a few more pictures.
Making a true Helix took me a long time to master - there are two ways of doing it and i have played around with them for a long time:
Thanks chohole,
I began with Mac and later changed over to PC. I also used Poser for a short time. But i never upgraded.
My "impressive" portfolio is not so impressive as i see it now. It is old stuff. I wish to do very sophisticated things and incorporate them in new scenes, stories and animations. Also there are a lot of Bryce-knowlegable people on this forum who give good advice and have made good tutorials. It is good for me to learn from them.
Also i am battling with the limits of Bryce for my work. I have a VERY POWERFUL COMPUTER which i built myself but i still can't open and save the huge scenes that other artists claim to be able to - like 2 or more GB. So i will spend the rest of the year testing the limits of Bryce for my work. That should also produce some useful bug reports for the development team.
Kind regards
More later
[objects made of cubes]
Ok, you're on the PC and have probably more than 2 GB of RAM. As a 32-bit application, Bryce can only address 2 GB. If your computer sports more than 2 GB, the operating system will not eat away part of it. You can make Bryce large address aware and then Bryce can address around 3.2 to 3.5 GB. That's what many of us have done.
Ok, you're on the PC and have probably more than 2 GB of RAM. As a 32-bit application, Bryce can only address 2 GB. If your computer sports more than 2 GB, the operating system will not eat away part of it. You can make Bryce large address aware and then Bryce can address around 3.2 to 3.5 GB. That's what many of us have done.
Snagged it, thanks for the tip :)
Welcome from me too, you have some lovely renders, just starting out with Bryce here and eager to learn :-)
Ok, you're on the PC and have probably more than 2 GB of RAM. As a 32-bit application, Bryce can only address 2 GB. If your computer sports more than 2 GB, the operating system will not eat away part of it. You can make Bryce large address aware and then Bryce can address around 3.2 to 3.5 GB. That's what many of us have done.
Thank you Horo,
I have been following some of your technical posts on this and other issues. They have been very helpful. I have followed your advice and opened the task manager and done a few other things you advised.
I have two computers:
A laptop which i purchased. 2 GHz Quad core 32Bit, 4GB of RAM, Win Vista. On this one i could install Large Address Aware.exe. I have not yet tested the limits on that one because it is rather slow [vista is not a good OS].
The other one is a workstation i built myself which is very fast [but now rather obsolete compared to the latest].
Has following specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P
Intel Pentium III Xeon (Quad Core) 3.0 GHz
8.00 GB of Fast RAM
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition Version 2003 Service Pack 2
Graphics: GeForce NVIDIA GTX 285.
Large Address Aware.exe. will not install on my work station. So i can't use it.
Otherwise Bryce renders twice as fast on my workstation compared to the laptop. For single scene files i can render 4 at the same time and i save much rendering time using this method - 50%!!!.
For rendering Animations it uses all the resources [all 4 cores at 100%] and there is no point in running two or more anim segments in parallel because no time is thus saved.
So the rendering of big animation even with volumetrics is not so frustrating on my workstation.
The problem is with the files of models constituted of a large number of Bryce primitives ONLY [ i don't use imported meshes unless i create then in Bryce first]. The polygon count therefore does not mean anything because the 6 Bryce primitives are all procedural and not mesh objects. I have tracked it down to the large number of objects. There may also be other factors like the number of nested boolean operations.
I will do some more tests over the coming month and report back.
Here is a picture of 2 text objects made entirely of cubes. If i duplicate them to over 8 copies, Bryce 7.1 crashes.
Also it takes hours to save the file [if it gets saved]. I thought the Cube Primitive is a very simple mathematical description. I should be able to use many of them.
Thanks very much and i will be following your posts and tutorials.
kind regards
Peter
Hello IanzThingz,
I appreciate your welcome and as you are "starting out" with Bryce i can assure you you will be in for quite a ride.
I have done a few "conventional" Brycean things too, which are unfinished projects of mine requiring much more work.
You and other members might like them:
Kind regards
Peter
Peter, if your laptop has "only" 2 GB, forget about LAA (large address aware). For the main machine, it should run. I have it on a i3 4-core 8 GB and on a i7 8-way 8 GB, both Win 7 Pro. There is no installation, just copying into a folder of your choice and run it. I use the free tool you can download from http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556 and also use the Process Monitor, free too and also on the same page. Process Monitor shows CPU and memory usage for a selected application, e.g. Bryce.
Your models look quite elaborate. And very nice renders, top and centre ones are excellent.
Horo, thanks for advice. My laptop is 2 GHz but HAS 4 GB of RAM. I will try LAA out tonight on this. I will get off the forum and make some sphere matrice files and also substitute cubes and get some data. On my main machine LAA won't run! You are right there is no need to install.
Last night on my Workstation i have made a cube matrice file of 27,000 cubes [30 x 30 x 30].
In BR5 it is 261,466 MB big.
In BR7 it is 114,924 MB big.
I watched the Memory usage for BR7 - it went as high as 500,000 MB !!!
Looks like BR7 is using some kind of compression.
Files would save and load OK in both Apps. and BR7 could load BR5 file.
The saving was VERY slow but they opened quite fast.
In BR7 the creation of the matrice file was very slow, the last Multi-replicate taking over an hour
Kind regards,
Peter
These images are fantastic, Kine Magik!
There are differing schools of thought on boolean modeling as you already well know. The benefits of boolean modeling are obvious, but the drawbacks are less widely understood.
It has been my experience that boolean models are unstable, and the more complex the more unstable. As you mentioned, primitives dont use real geometry, at least not at first. When boolean operations occur however, conversion begins to take place. In scenes with lots of nested boolean operations the more nesting the greater likelihood the file will go corrupt.
My suggestion for those who love boolean modeling is to avoid nested operations that are unnecessary. It is better to use a few helper meshes, like the "Additional Primitives" included with Bryce 7 Pro. Clearly these are not truly primitives, but no matter because they are practical and will avoid nested operations to create shapes people often need but would otherwise have to build themselves. I tend to think of boolean operations are precious, only but so many will be allowed so I use them only when I need them.
Lastly, polygon count is a serious consideration even when working with primitives. Even the standard cube requires a decent amount of memory.
Another drawback of nested booleans is the Materials information trapped within those nests. There are often loose ends with materials that creep up on us later. if you boolean a positive and a negative item and select the transfer material option, then use that resulting object to build yet further more complex elements, at some point the software can get confused on the status of all those hidden cut up primitives with no real geometry in the first place.
On LAA, your system spec sound as if they should benefit greatly from Large Address Awareness. You will get roughly 3.4gb out of Bryce now.
Yes, Bryce 7 zip compresses files when they are saved. This is wise because otherwise a scene that used 3.2gb of ram would also require 3.2gb on disc, eating up memory on users systems. Saving is slower as you observed, but in the end your hard drive will thank you.
Hello IanzThingz,
I appreciate your welcome and as you are "starting out" with Bryce i can assure you you will be in for quite a ride.
I have done a few "conventional" Brycean things too, which are unfinished projects of mine requiring much more work.
You and other members might like them:
Kind regards
Peter
Much more work? I beg to differ, especially the middle one, the sense of vastness is awesome, and love the trees in the bottom one :)
Rashad is right. Compressing on saving and decompressing on loading has yet another disadvantage than speed alone. Compression is done in memory on the whole file before it is saved. Bryce loads the compressed file in memory, then decompresses in memory. This can be observed with the Process Monitor. This is also one of the reasons why you can still work on a scene and when you save it, Bryce crashes and leaves a corrupted file on the HD. This doesn't happen with Bryce versions earlier than 6.0. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Ah - your laptop sports 4 GB. Then using LAA makes sense. By the way, on your 8 GB system (even without LAA), you can load several instances of Bryce and work on each of them. Each one can use up to 2 GB (rather less because of saving/compression).
If you work on elaborate scenes/models, start saving your work regularly with an incrementing number for the filename. Editing can be undone, the undo buffer fills up and up until all memory is used up. The only remedy to clear the undo buffer is to save your work, quit Bryce, start it again and load your work.
Another good tip, thanks Horo :)
Aye, I would be lost withour the icremenatal saves as I do have a habit of pushing my poor little machine to it's limits. And one edit too far will crash Bryce. But at least with the saves I rarely have to go back too far .
I also love the way Bryce does them automatiaccly, once you have put a number on your first save. So as long as your forst instance of a scen is saved as Scene 01, then Save As witll save the next one as 02, and so forth.
Which reminds me I have a few bryce crashes need clearing out of my bryce render folder.
Hello Rashad
Thank you for your warm welcome.
I have had a look at some of your work (yes actually done some research) It is absolutely stunning! I like it very much and will have a look at some more later.
I have NOT had problems with Constructive Solid Geometry based on Boolean Set Operations. I have found them stable more so than many other features of Bryce.
Perhaps one reason is that i do what you have advised: "My suggestion for those who love boolean modeling is to avoid nested operations that are unnecessary." That IS good advice!
The other thing is correct assignment of the solids. Say you want to build a cutter to engrave another object or to shape another object. First all the parts of the cutter must be set to positive. Then they are grouped. Then the group becomes a new object which must be set to negative. Then the object to be cut must have all of its parts set to positive. Then it must be grouped. Then the group must be set to positive. Then the 2 parts must correctly aligned and scaled . Then they are grouped and voila you have a nice transformation and it is stable. If you need two cutters to work together they must be made into one.
Perhaps when i have some time i will dream up some super complex "booleans" and try them out and demonstrate how it is done. It is similar to reducing a complex equation into the simplest terms. Bryce can't do this so the artist has to figure it out.
Any way i have started a new thread on Bryce Origami
I want to be done with this because i want to look at your lovely work
Kind regards
Peter
Much more work? I beg to differ, especially the middle one, the sense of vastness is awesome, and love the trees in the bottom one :)
Well IanzThingz, i meant that i wanted to add vegetation and buildings and perhaps also people which suggest human habitation. That will take a lot of time. Some of the renders already take many hours.
kind regards
Peter
@ Kine_magiK.
Peter, I went to your site for a look and with the others am very impressed. However in that very extensive list of tutorials their appears to be only 1 completed and the site has not been updated since 1999. Going through that list I found several I would love to have a go at.
Cheers
GG
Hello kiwi_gg.
Yes that is correct.
It is an old [dead] website.
I will endeavor to present some nice tutorials on this Forum when i have the time.
Alternatively i could start my own new Bryce website.
Horo has already given me some advice and i am sure that he and David Brinnen would help me when i have completed something useful to share with others.
Kind regards
Peter
Kine, You are very kind to look at my stuff. I am a bit well...obsessive in the way i do things. I am always trying to push Bryce into territory it was not really designed to handle. I am curious how you are finding images, with the galleries here at Daz3d down it might be hard to get much imagery.
Here are a few links to a few galleries of some people you know here in these forums. These are Bryce5.com galleries, I and Horo have limited Renderosity galleries as well. I really like the Bryce 5.com galleries because it is interesting to see how artists grow over the years, and how the software's growth can spur user growth.
http://www.bryce5.com/search.php?search_user=rashadcarter1
http://www.bryce5.com/search.php?search_user=Horo
http://www.bryce5.com/search.php?search_user=davidbrinnen
http://www.bryce5.com/search.php?search_user=slepalex
http://www.bryce5.com/search.php?search_user=foleypro
Thanks again for the support, Peter!!!!!
In fact, bryce5.com is the most friendly and helpful forum/gallery I have ever seen. Renderosity is nice, if you get comments, they are good for the ego but otherwise not very helpful. I prefer to get constructive critics, they are what help to improve - or look at things at an angle that hasen't occured to you yet.
At the moment, with the Daz galleries MIA we are encouraging people to start render "portfolios" in the Art Studio, as they have also discontinued the WIP forums, because they felt they were not getting enough use.
Thanks for the links.
I will get myself organized after i recover from being stunned by your work.
Beautiful and intelligent excursions into the less obvious.
It is rather strange that i somehow knew you were a great artist without being able to get to many of your images.
Now you have given me the links i asked for.
I am absolutely stunned!
You don't need any support from me!!!!
And again i am not really surprised because Bryce is a great application - but it depends utterly on the genius of the artist.
Kind regards
Peter
Peter,
You are an exceedingly kind person. You live up to your username "Kine" as in kind. You really have made my day, thanks so much!!!! If at any point you would like descriptions on how anything was done please let me know.
Hello Rashad,
Thanks, you are welcome. When you become an old man like me, then you may realize that seeing the positive in what others do [or have done] rather than critizising because of ones own ego needs, is much more enjoyable. Your work has self evident merit which does not require my praise. In fact i am reluctant to give praise because there are so many good Bryce artists who could feel left out. But i do understand that admiration from ones peers when it is deserved is a wonderful reward. So i am not saying it does not matter. But in my own work i need NO admiration from anyone. Bryce is a personal challange for me. Most of the work i did has been destroyed because i only did it to find out "what if". Everything i ever did in Bryce was an experiment!
As for creating "great art" - in Bryce i have difficulty getting my head around that concept. I wish to build a model railroad in my home which is my primary project now. I "used to be" a world famous pyrolumikinetic artist [ you can google it up]. I am no longer interested in that.
I have just got a dialog on my other computer: "Bryce 7.1 Out of memory!". Task Manager is open and confirms 371,800 K of memory. [well below 1.5 GB] That is the final straw. Bryce 7 Instancing does not work! But to report all my finding will take a long time. I don't see any point because the people developing and fixing Bryce won't be able to fix it. I know, i have worked as a programmer. I could not even fix my own code! I can't even imagine how one could understand and fix the code of the geniuses who wrote the original Bryce!
No, i am not going to waste my time. I am going to have another look at YOUR work at the end of the links you gave me. I need a bit of enjoyment before i go to bed.
I also got to join that Forum you mentioned.
Kind regards
Peter