The future of Bryce?
Fetito
Posts: 481
Hello! Is there news on updates of Bryce? B8?
Post edited by Cris Palomino on
This discussion has been closed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
No news yet. Chohole posted in another thread somewhere that currently DS, Carrara
are in the development cycles. So I guess we could assume that once those develpment cycles are finished they'll start looking at Bryce again. When that will be no-one seems to know outside the DAZ 'need to know' group I expect. I wouldn't hold my breath...I personally am hoping it will be next year.
... I don't see how this assumption follows.
Neither DS nor Carrara have 3 year development cycles: most software is either constantly updated or has yearly cycles. As the last release of Bryce was in 2010, and there hasn't been so much as a bug-fix let alone an update since then.
The assumption that follows is that Bryce is no longer in any development cycles.
Studio and Carrara have dedicated dev teams as far as I've gathered from the bios of some staff that was published on the old forum site. Maybe that changed in the meantime, I wouldn't know. Currently, there are no Bryce supporters at DAZ3D HQ as far as I can tell. The last ones left about a year ago. We should not forget that Bryce is in many ways way ahead of other 3D applications (though certainly not for being 32 bit) and there are not many people able to grasp what jewel they own. Stop development and keep up the bugs is certainly a good way to give the competition time to catch up.
If Bryce has reached the point of being abandonware, I'd like to see it fall back into the hands of someone that's worked on it in the past, like Kai Krause or Ken Musgrave.
I know some people would want Eric Wenger to get involved, but were that to happen, I think we'd end up with a Mac-only product that sells for $600.
They wouldn't want it. Unlike Bryce, they've moved on.
I like many other would be crushed to see Bryce die. It is a great tool. I have been working with Bryce since version 2.0
Now the bad news is if you look in the market place Bryce 7 pro is selling for $20 . To me this is a sign that Daz 3d has kicked Bryce in the corner like an unwanted step child. This makes me very sad as Companies have a habit to discount price software they are sun setting and say screw the community.
I have a feeling once other tools get a following they will jack the prices up and leave Bryce to die ( no updated for almost 3 years is an indicator that a software has been abandoned). I think they are attempting to position Carrera to "Fill" in the void from them abandoning Bryce. Just my 2 cents but as I work in the Software development world I have seen companies do this Time and Again. Daz 3d has become another pure profit company with not regard for community loyalty to a product. If they were to release Bryce 8 as just 64-bit with a couple additional features I believe many in the community would pay a bit higher price point to get it( a bit more than the original $99 I have paid over the years for the other versions of Bryce)..
As such I do not believe this is going to happen. Believe it or not I introduced my daughter to 3d graphics using Bryce. She got into it so much she is going to Ringling university next fall to study Computer animation. Many of you may not know this but Ringling produces many of the top animators that the studios use for their movies now days.
It will be a sad day when there will not be Tools like Bryce to inspire you people to get into 3d work. :down:
Bryce on,
SpecMan
Well, Eric Wenger has moved on. I'm not sure that Kai Krause and Ken Musgrave have moved on. Kai Krause is being a recluse and won't tell anyone what he's working on (if anything). The last I heard of Ken Musgrave, he was selling real estate, the MojoWorld site hasn't been updated since 2006, I really don't know what he's working on, either.
MojoWorld had so much potential, but the interface, imo, was just too hard to work with.
...What? No. When Bryce 7 Pro was offered for FREE for 18 months - THAT was a sign that DAZ was killing the product line. When DAZ subsequently started selling it for $20, that was a sign they'd gone into software necrophilia.
Also... I think your parenting metaphors are somewhat darkly Victorian. Bryce isn't THAT old. Just saying.
Jeez... So many fatalists in these types of threads.
Bryce is no longer being developed. Whatever. This is very, very different from "Bryce is no longer being USED."
Like my first guitar, the memory of using Bryce and enjoying it will always be with me. I still have my first guitar, and hoo boy, is it in need of repair (especially the bridge). Even with new strings it sounds buzzy on the fretboard. But I still use that guitar to nut out a melody or chord progression. I wouldn't use it for a finished track, because I'm after a quality of sound that my guitar just can't deliver.
I pretty much only use Bryce for simple, fast animations. Most of my modeling's now done with either Blender or Sculptris, then brought into Bryce for finishing. Why not do it all in Bryce? Because Bryce exported objects don't have the rigor demanded by current, high-end applications. I can make things in other programs and deliver them to Bryce: it's extremely hazardous going the other way.
There are MANY 3D apps people can use for 3D. Not all of these are appropriate for introductions, but even with the most complex app you don't start by learning everything at once. What makes them different to one another is purpose and interface. After using other apps I now find the Bryce interface to be extremely unwieldy for modeling and animation. Some of this opinion is based on my experience with other apps, but mostly it's based on Bryce's inflexibility and redundancy of its historical interface. Bryce's interface has not grown with its very large, yet buggy, feature set.
Bryce's interface (which hasn't fundamentally changed since its inception) is no longer appropriate for the new-to-3D fringe audience it garnered in the mid-late 90's. Current-Bryce might have traction in 10-15 year olds, learning 3D concepts. But even the kids have moved on. I feel ill-at-ease thinking that my intro to 3D should be their intro to 3D. Back then we didn't have Leap Motion controllers, Oculus Rift technology, even 3DConnexion SpaceMice, all of which make Bryce's clunky, window-trapped, icon-based interface largely redundant and overly complex.
But I'll keep my hand in with Bryce for the next 18 months. I still use it, though less and less. No regrets. I believe DAZ is far past the point of yelling "SURPRISE! NEW VERSION!!!", because all traction on Bryce's brand name is lost. There might be room for a de-featured version for the iPad, that allows you to put selfies on fantastic, self-composed backdrops, but don't hold your breath: if idea like that works for Bryce, then it'll work for Carrara, and ONE of those software items is being developed.
Yes, but the problem is that there are enhancements that Bryce needs, and which won't happen without development. IMO, it needs to be 64-bit, and it needs to use OpenGL to render. If development ends, we'll never see these or any other enhancements.
Also, eventually, there will be OS incompatibility. The versions that currently work on Windows and Mac will need to be upgraded to work with future versions of Windows and Mac.
So, someone needs to step in and save Bryce from the abandonware bin.
The people using Bryce don't need 64-bit nor OpenGL. Primarily because they're using OSs that allow Bryce functionality without 64-bit nor OpenGL.
Dude, development has ENDED. It's been over 3 years since any official word regarding Bryce development has been mentioned. No customer emails, no magazine/blogosphere interviews, website announcements, Kickstarter projects. NOTHING. The best, literally, the BEST, you can hope for is one of three things:
1) Bits of the Bryce featureset will be frankensteined into either DAZ Studio or Carrara, or a spin-off app for the iPad will be launched;
2) DAZ 3D will sell Bryce to a party interested in developing it, or;
3) DAZ 3D will launch a crowdfunding campaign to re-vitalise Bryce.
And, just to address it:
4) DAZ 3D will sell/ giveaway the sourcecode to Bryce to an Opensource project groupNO MONEY FOR DAZ IN IT = WILL NOT HAPPEN.
My best estimate: 2) or 3) requires 4-6 coders full time for at least 3 years to dig through and re-invent what is largely undocumented, foreign code. Add 4 testers, a project lead and a couple of support peeps to glue this all together, not to mention a re-launch marketing campaign that will have to set fire to a pretty cynical and flooded 3D market. The entire UI will have to be re-designed to take into account hi-res screens, the controllers I mentioned in my penultimate post, and we haven't even BEGUN with porting Axiom, the proprietary code driving the fractal algorithms Bryce uses, to a language that people program in today, using modern coding practices (Jira/GIT/STASH, anyone?).
If you see change out of US$2.4M, consider yourself lucky. If you spend US$2.4M, you'll want to earn at least 60% on that over the next year, so you can continue to develop Bryce. So plan on getting in US$3.8M in sales. Let's say you're selling it for Bryce's current price: US$20. You have to move 192,000 copies.
Sound doable? 192,000 copies? Sounds like you could do that just in the US alone, right? Nope. The tricky bit is the market. Currently, Maya and 3DS are the industry heavyweights. If you want to have a skillset that's transferable, you want to have an app that at least nods to how one or both of these apps work. That's one key. The second key is making this power easy to use. During the upgrade process from Bryce 6 to 7, many experienced Bryce users had input into the feature set 7 eventually came up with. Many of the features were fantastic... on paper. But in practice, even excluding the bugs, many of the new features were just too difficult to understand for new users. They were advanced user features thrust into an app whose core market was beginners.
Bryce has reached its limit. It's done. It has run its course, like so many other great apps of the day, like Multiplan, PageMaker, Mac OS Classic, Windows 3.11, Netscape Navigator and many, many others Bryce has reached the point where the cost of maintenance has exceeded the cost of income and/or its demand. People can still keep using it, DAZ can still keep selling it, but passionate arguments don't move units. Large groups of people move units. The undeniable fact is that if there was a large, active base of Bryce users, DAZ would want to keep them by continually maintaining the software. DAZ hasn't, so we aren't, however passionate we might feel about Bryce.
"Eventually"???
Embrace change. Bryce can still work for you on a legacy partition. 3D software is among the most hotly contested categories of software looking for your dollar (even the so-called 'free' apps could really use a donation from time-to-time, folks). Bringing an app up to current data conventions IS NOT AN UPGRADE. That's just a compatibility revision or bugfix. You don't 'upgrade' to what's current.
It's not enough for Bryce just to get to 'current'. Otherwise it's forever lagging behind.
1) That's far from ideal.
2) That is ideal, that's the best outcome.
3) I'm not sure that it would raise enough cash.
4) That would certainly be better than just burying the source code, but corporate greed makes it unlikely.
Anyway, I think you're being a fatalist. I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel. I still feel it's possible for Daz to find a party interested in further Bryce development. People involved in past development would seem to me to be the most likely to be interested, but finding new developers is certainly a very real possibility. I wouldn't declare future development dead just yet.
In order to begin, the new buyer of Bryce has to answer some pretty tough questions.
0) How much does DAZ value the price of Bryce's IP and goodwill?
1) Who's Bryce aimed at?
2) What will the new Bryce do that is different to its competitors?
3) How long will it take to make a marketable product out of Bryce?
4) If the product is to change to handle modern advances in UI and technology, WILL IT STILL BE BRYCE? If not... Why not just make something different from a clean slate? At least that way we don't have to shell out craploads of cash just to buy old software and spend years porting and testing undocumented code...
Notice that none of these questions are about software development, really . These are big-picture marketing questions. It's pointless spending millions of dollars for a product that only brings in thousands of dollars with no path to profit. What's more, you and I, as users, have no perspective on these questions: We're not privileged to DAZ's sales figures and costs.
I'm not a fatalist, but I am a software atheist :) That is, I refuse to pin my hopes on something that might happen without any evidence to support it. Over the last 5 years I've seen a marked downturn in traffic to this site. Granted, this forum isn't the only one for Bryce-users, and there were probably hundreds of Bryce users who didn't use, or know about, this site. But as a person working a technical writer for an enterprise-level software company, with experience in marketing, I cannot see any economic benefit in purchasing Bryce in order to continue developing it for a vanishing clientele, just speculative hopes and dreams from sentimental users who can ALWAYS find small scale features, but can NEVER see the big picture, ironically.
Are you able to offer a realistic pathway to Bryce's resurrection? One that answers my four questions? I'm particularly interested in answers to 1) and 2), as these questions define Bryce, and it may be that some features will need to be either excluded or made accessible in a very different way, in order to fit the Bryce paradigm.
Oroboros there are far more Brycers around who have the same feelings as aarrgghhh does than you seem to think. Brycers have always tended to be fairly quiet, forum wise but that doesn't mean they are not still around.
I haven't had Bryce that long just since version 5 but it still does a good job for me......I will stick with it thick or thin..
Who is Bryce aimed at? Well I guess anyone who wants to use a great 3d program...and in my view Bryce7Pro is already a marketable product......Its in the top 23 sellers at Daz....The new features??? It already does things that no one knew about till David and Horo started their experiments with it.....Check out the videos on you tube and then tell me what it can't do.....Sure if you want to compare it to Houdini or Zbrush fine they would win hands down but for the price Bryce its a great program.....Carrara and Studio get updated all the time because Daz is in the business of selling models... and if they didn't keep updating whos to say how long they would last.....any model they can put in those 2, I can always use in Bryce....Michael Frank has already shown what a great modeling job it does....The reason I think its not updated is because the programing language its written in and not a lot of people are able to write for it ask Horo if you want to know about that......Trish p.s. when you say who is Bryce aimed at well who is Carrara or Studio aimed at .....People who want to buy models..
2 years, 2 months and 2 weeks have gone today since the last compilation of the code. That's slightly less than over 3 years.
I'm not saying, and have never said, that there are no Bryce users around. I AM saying that passion and fandom are no substitute for a buying market. We could be the noisiest, busiest, most loyal community around. But the math doesn't add up. If Bryce dragged in the money (and DAZ knows how much Bryce users spend and when) then DAZ would snag the talent. DAZ would be falling over themselves finding the developers to get things moving.
And trust me: developers are there. If the demand was there, the developers would be there: DAZ would be putting out emails saying "Hang in there, community, we're getting you the service you want as fast as we can!", or after 18 months, say, they'd be demo-ing a new way to go at some trade show, or launching announcements/updates on the DAZ forums.
Nothing.
Can anyone provide one good reason why, if a piece of software was being developed right now, the company making it would be completely silent about it? I can: so competitors don't get advanced warning of a new thing.
...Does this sound like a position even REMOTELY like DAZ has with Bryce??? Can anyone point to another piece of competing or superior 3D software that pinched ideas from Bryce as far back as Bryce 5, say?
There's not even a hint of acknowledgement that DAZ are progressing on Bryce. And I don't blame DAZ for Bryce's inactivity. It's easy to understand. I don't think there's a surprise waiting around the corner.
Adobe stopped developing/supporting PageMaker, a flagship product for 15 years, at around 2004. Adobe announced they would continue selling it, but encouraged PageMaker users to move to InDesign. Currently, PageMaker is still being sold to users with old systems on old computers, often middle-eastern users or old-school hobbyists. It costs Adobe nothing to sell, and there's no Adobe support for PageMaker, just a few passionate users in forums, doing it for free. It's money in, no money out.
Compare with Bryce. DAZ has NOT announced it has stopped development for Bryce. DAZ continued to sell it, and then gave it away free for a while, and then under new management started selling it again, but encouraged Brycers to move to Carrara in 2011. Currently, Bryce is still being sold to users with old systems on old computers, often middle-eastern users (Hi, Waleed!) or old-school hobbyists. It costs DAZ nothing to sell, and there's no DAZ support, just a few passionate users in forums, doing it for free. It's money in, no money out.
There are only two differences between Adobe selling PageMaker and DAZ selling Bryce. First, Adobe announced it was no longer supporting its product, and second, DAZ's real money spinner isn't applications, it's consumables: models, ani-blocks, scenery.
Bryce is a portal to DAZ's shop. That's why DAZ won't announce Bryce's retirement, nor Hexagon's. Anyone remember what turned Bryce 5 to Bryce 5.5? That's right: DAZ | Studio Bridge. Now Brycers could create animorphs! Oh - can't make them? No problem, we'll SELL you some!
I like using Bryce. It's a crazy program, and I still only know about 40% of it (the DTE still flummoxes me). But there's no way this program can upgrade as much as it needs to and still be the Bryce I'm familiar with at the end of it. Some things need to go. Others need to be completely overhauled. It might as well be a new program. Bryce is a hammer, not some old faithful dog. If the hammer is no longer adequate for the job you get a better hammer: you don't try and make the hammer comfortable so that it can pass its remaining years in pain-free untroubled bliss.
2 years, 2 months and 2 weeks have gone today since the last compilation of the code. That's slightly less than over 3 years.
I agree. How does this conflict with what I said in the quote, which is about official word development? If memory serves, I believe the last compile was to patch some fatal errors brought about in the Bryce 7 launch, while the last word on development, shortly after the Bryce 7 launch, was that Bryce was 'not in the next development cycle'.
Oroboros, most of what you says makes perfect sense, and in a normal non-DAZ world I'd fully agree with you.
Thing is, some time ago for a sustained period (can't remember whether it was between 5.5 and 6.0, or 6.0 and 7.0) I was saying pretty much the same thing with as much conviction. I was absolutely sure that Bryce was dead. There were no updates or bug fixes and no word from DAZ at all, and unlike now, the DAZ Bryce forum was completely unmonitored and non-moderated. Raucous gallows humour abounded.
And then, out of the blue, it all started up again.
So I would add a fifth option to your list of best hopes:
5) At some point DAZ decides there will be enough return to do another limited upgrade to the legacy program, and we will see a new version with a couple of new features (that might be already partially developed) and some bug fixes and OS updates.
This would take minimum investment from DAZ and is a distinct possibility. There is precedent, and it fits with DAZ's modus of making small tweaks to what people already own and persuading them to pay for it again (see Victoria X).
Or it's dead. Just as likely. The strange thing is, it's possible that there is no-one at DAZ who knows for sure one way or the other. They might have planned to take a look down the line and then decide.
@Oro - it doesn't conflict. I just read a lot about 3 years but it is less. Nothing against your assessment, you are as welcome as any other to bring up your thoughts. Whether I agree with your views or not doesn't matter because I don't have the hard facts to contradict or support you.
For the records (hard facts):
Bryce 4.0.0.13: March 1999
Bryce 5.0.0.1 (German version, certainly also the English, Spanish and French ones): December 2001 (Corel, 2-1/2 years)
Bryce 5.0.3.0 (English version): August 2006 (DAZ 3D recompiled it and gave it away).
Bryce 5.5.12.40: July 2005 (3-1/2 years between Corel and DAZ 3D)
Bryce 6.0.18.6: October 2006 (1-1/4 years from 5.5)
Bryce 6.1.13.1: March 2007 (this was 1 dev cycle 6.0/6.1 where Brian Wagner came in for 6.1)
Bryce 6.3.0.84: December 2009 (2-1/2 years, just bug fixes from 6.1, mostly for the Mac)
Bryce 7.0.1.34: July 2010 (1/2 year to bug-fix, then dev for 7 started)
Bryce 7.1.0.109: August 2011 (1 year, 6.3 to 7.1 was one dev cycle without interruption)
We're now approaching again 2-1/2 years. Who knows what will happen?
Hi Peter, nice to see you again here. It's been a while.
Are you a betting man, Horo? :D
PJF makes some really interesting points. But I've been a fairly regular member and watcher of this forum as well, and there's a difference in PJF's observation of the announcement history and the forum today: No DAZ staff currently contribute in this forum.
You can imagine why :) The continual question "When's the next release coming out?" would be dragging this forum to its metaphorical knees as soon as they appeared.
But staff participation is just one of those "things are happening" indicators I'd expect to see if the software was being developed, along with customer mailouts, teaser campaigns, tradeshow appearances, blogs, general announcements, interviews, Facebook updates, competitions – there really is no end of cheap, near-free possibilities DAZ could employ to both keep the customer informed of progress, and excite the current customer base to tell others about what's going on.
Nothing.
And the longer you leave these announcements, the larger the gaps become between what the software does and what more agile development orgs are developing.
There was a golden time when Bryce wasn't just software, it was an artstyle. That time has passed - the artstyle can be replicated by other software. For many people in this forum, Bryce needs better, and more, features, and people are right to ask for these.
The problem comes right back down to marketing again. Who is Bryce for? I can tell you who Maya and 3DS is for. I can tell you who Pro-E and SolidWorks are for. I can tell you what types of markets and people Houdini, Mudbox, FormZ, Blender, Massive, DAZ Studio, Cheetah, Cinema4D and others are individually for. But I really struggle with that question with Bryce, because its interface says one thing (easy to use, simple, intro-level mouse-only driven 3D), but its users say another (buried functions in reveal triangles, inconsistent Labs, riddled with undocumented easter eggs, all of these things and more speak of an app that has out-grown its own interface paradigm).
Even if DAZ suddenly decided to announce a new version, out-of-the-blue, tomorrow, for free, it would either be a pared down version of what it is now, to appeal to new users, OR it would be so packed with features and modern compatibility re-designs that it would fail to be Bryce, but for some completely superficial icons.
Tough position to be in.
Actually there isn't much Staff participation in any forum really. Some in the Commons and in Members only, but the dedicated forums don't tend to see anyone from Daz very often at all nowadays. DAZ_Spooky does post in Carrara forum sometimes, but not on a regular basis.
I can assure you that during the extended period I'm talking about (which from Horo's chronology would appear to be between 6.1 and 6.3) there was zero (or next to zero) DAZ involvement. The forum wasn't even monitored. Blazing rows with bad language and personal attacks. Rather fun sometimes.
A lack of participation by DAZ staff is no particular indication that Bryce is dead. We've been here before.
My bet would be that it's a case of Schrödinger's Bryce; being both alive and dead at the same time with an outcome only decided when DAZ takes a look inside.
Hello Horo, thanks for saying. I've been in deep lurk, dropping by the forum to admire the work and keep an eye out for developments. Very busy with something called real life, a strange description of a condition that doesn't seem especially real or indeed much of a life.
You and David amount to at least a three man development team, discovering and describing new aspects of Bryce that we already have.
So it's not true to say that Bryce has stopped moving.
Ah yes. The Pumeco days.
I'm not sure, but I think this was the period where key users were singled out for some... Bryce steering committee or something? Where they all had to sign NDAs and not talk about developments in Bryce 7?
My key indicators for software being dead are several of the following (No, not just one or two - MANY):
• Announcements that software is not included in development cycles.
• Users are expected to log bugs and answer support questions.
• No news on software development for years.
• Incentives to move entrenched users to a different platform.
• Price placed on software to act as a disincentive.
• No completed manual, no status changes on bug fixes.
• No rebuilds to keep pace with current OSs after OSs are released. Never mind upgrades to the actual software - just a passive OS bugfix.
• Two or more inquiries from people per month asking if there's a new version out yet. (One can only fantasize that actually THOUSANDS of people hit this forum every day, but diligently read the stickies in the forum and go away, but it's more likely that 10 people hit the forum, 8 read the stickies and 2 just try their luck or see if anyone still uses this forum.)
What, in anyone's opinion, are the key indicators that Bryce is 'alive'? I'm sure there are users around, no question, and that the opposite of what I've just written doesn't apply. But if you, as a user in a DAZ-sponsored forum, were interested in keeping your software up-to-date with current technologies, what would you expect to see from your software developer?
Half of these apply to DS as well, more than half to Carrara.
Really. Which half.
Last I saw, DS received an update about 5 months ago and Carrara went to 8.5 a couple of months ago.
I mean sure, if you think all the details I listed have equal weight, by all means, generalise away.
EDIT: It's also worth repeating that DAZ 3D isn't really in the apps business. Apps are just a portal to their store. Content is their core business. Otherwise they'd be selling DAZ Studio, not giving it away.
Really. Which half.
Last I saw, DS received an update about 5 months ago and Carrara went to 8.5 a couple of months ago.
I mean sure, if you think all the details I listed have equal weight, by all means, generalise away.
EDIT: It's also worth repeating that DAZ 3D isn't really in the apps business. Apps are just a portal to their store. Content is their core business. Otherwise they'd be selling DAZ Studio, not giving it away.
I stand corrected, it's only 3 of 8 for DS:
• Users are expected to log bugs and answer support questions.
• No completed manual, no status changes on bug fixes.
• Two or more inquiries from people per month asking if there’s a new version out yet.
If wishes were horses
Beggars would ride:
If turnips were bayonets
I would wear one by my side.
I, like all old Bryce users, wish for a new version. Or at least fixing a few of the most annoying bugs in the current one. But the reality is this is very unlikely to happen. Those of us who have been around a while have been duped by Daz PR promising the sun the moon and the stars on more then one occasion. But the bottom line is that our beloved program is just abondonware and unlikely to be anything more again.
If it works for you 'as-is, where-is' great. Otherwise move on.
A fine description of Bryce's state. :)
Yup, Peters Schrödingers Cat is a very appropriate description.
No, I don't bet Oro, I'm always wrong. It's a habit.
DAZ 3D and documentation cannot co-exist, they exclude each other. Even if users write up the doc for free, DAZ 3D refuses to use it. This is not exclusive Bryce: Carrara, Hexagon and Studio users have been complaining about this sad state for years. This resistance to document their own software is the most incomprehensible part of this company.