The future of Bryce?
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Does Bryce have a future?
Just get someone like Clint Eastwood to mention that he uses Bryce 7 for fun, in his spare time, and bingo, the Daz3D owners would fall all over each other to get Bryce 8 finished and released. Lol
my head feels like a blender on super speed if I use it :roll:
I can give you a newbie impression of Blender. Is it user friendly? The learning curve is straight up, as in Mount Everest. They are soon to release 2.74 but their documentation is still in the 2.6's. They change Blender every few months, adding and subtracting, which makes tutorials outdated rapidly. Their user interface has become crowded, disconnected and daunting.
Andrew Price makes all of his models of plants, tress, grass, flowers, etc. in 3DsMax. He does his post-processing in Photoshop. If you watch his tutorial on making an alien landscape, you'll find that the last half is not done in Blender but Photoshop instead. Can you do it all in Blender? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that there are other ways that are easier or faster and he'll tell you that.
I went to Blender because the price tag was compelling; free. I've since learned that, in essence, almost all of them are free to start with. Download a student edition. You don't have to have a student ID. They want you to learn and fall in love with their product and then support it. I wouldn't try just Blender if I had it to do all over again. I would get 3DsMax as well and compare.
Modeling is mathematical and scientific, per se. Sculpting is artistic from the start. If you want to try sculpting instead of modeling, try Sculptris. It is wonderful, uncomplicated, will do almost everything you need it to do and is free. For modeling, you can get it done in Blender but the learning curve is considerable and this is coming from a 62 year old who is trying to learn 3D from scratch and from my 40 year old son, doing the same.
Good luck!
adorna50
Thank you for your info on this stuff.
I did some CG modeling in the old RayDream program, years ago.
Cararra absorbed RayDream and like the blob seems to be headed in the direction of Bryce.
The again, maybe DazStudio is the genuine blob which is getting ready to absorb Cararra, Hexagon, and Bryce.
"It creeps, it crawls..." ...
a Criterion dvd screenshot from the original and still the best "Blob" film, starring the very young Steve McQueen.
Bryce isn't a modeling program, plain and simple. Yes, it has some minor modeling capabilities, for anything beyond rocks/plants/terrain generator, bryce just isn't cut out for it. Although, bryces boolean setup is still quite powerful, and surpasses where programs like hexagon fails with boolean.....but only within bryce.
Bryce is primarily a rendering program, and compared to what's out there today, it can't compete. It is especially slower than other CPU renderers, and with the advent of GPU renderers, the gap grows wider. Bryce doesn't seem to take advantage of the latest instruction sets for newer CPU's. Bryce still has some powerful features (like its volumetrics effects), but I haven't been able to stand to use it for a long time, even though I even have a top of the line intel i7 CPU that is generations faster than the systems Bryce was originally designed to run on.
For me, bryce has no future, not in the face of everything else out there. There's also too much progress to catch up with without DAZ pouring tons of money into development.
I can create stuff in minutes with other programs that would take me hours in Bryce.
Well, if Bryce is "dead, done, finished ".... and if other CG 3d software programs make us Bryce fans puke, then one other last desperate alternative is possible....dump 3D altogether and go 2D with Photoshop, and Painter.
Watch what this person does with Photoshop
Pene Menn
https://www.youtube.com/user/PeneMenn/videos
Photoshop has a lot of 3D tools now. it's especially good for turning complex flat shapes into 3D models with thickness (like you would with bryce's terrain editor). You can model almost entirely in photoshop if you wanted. But where photoshop really excels, is in on-the-fly texturing. Being able to texture directly on your model, with all of photoshops image tools at your disposal, makes things more streamlined, without having to worry about distortion or seams.
I would still only use photoshop in conjunction with a 3rd party modeler.
Bryce still has its limited uses, like if I need a random terrain or rock or something like that on the fly. There's more comprehensive terrain editors, but none so easy to use.
I hope you are braced to get really pulled over the coals because of this comment
Have you checked the render threads, the challenge threads, the DAZ 3D store and PAS such as David and Horo and Estevez? Would you like to explain to them where you consider the limitations are? Have you ever checked the Bryce Galleries here.
I could pick out hundreds of specific images, like this one http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/1141
Or browse for hours in galleries like this
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/25552/
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/12893
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/11837/
just to pick out a few which concentrate on landscapes, as that is the only use you seem to consider.
BTW, this is posted by Pam the Bryce user, not chohole the moderator. It is purely my view.
And.. What about this? Yes, I know, a mistake.. Still joking.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/568
Yes I was totally spoilt for choice I got lost in the gallery again; just trying to sort out a few examples. I hate just pointing out what I do , but there are just so many superb Bryce images, it is a shame that so many people don't seem to see them.
@user.operator - the result counts, not the means how it is arrived at. However, Bryce can do everything, no need to resort to Photoshop - which is not a 3D program and it can't either move the camera around in the scene, do an animation or a true 3D image like an anaglyph or create a full spherical HDRI for IBL in one go. Every and each program has limitations. If you need Bryce for just creating a terrain that's fine but shows that you haven't yet grasped the potential of Bryce. There's a reason so many stick to Bryce.
To be fair to user.operator, folks should respond, at least, to his full sentence:
It's a comment about how Bryce is of limited use to user.operator.
.
And yet as we show time and time again... It really should be called Bryce Unlimited as we push it's boundaries ever further.
I only do the occasional Landscape.... Most of my Bryce work is close up stuff. I model in Bryce, I design products and packaging in Bryce and I do finished renders for advertising in Bryce. :)
"Who broke this thread?"
OK, how about this one (dates back to 2004) Everything in the scene with the exception of the drivers of the vehicles and the PC and his dog was built in Bryce.
Have you checked the render threads, the challenge threads, the DAZ 3D store and PAS such as David and Horo and Estevez? Would you like to explain to them where you consider the limitations are? Have you ever checked the Bryce Galleries here.
I could pick out hundreds of specific images, like this one http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/1141
Or browse for hours in galleries like this
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/25552/
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/12893
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/11837/
just to pick out a few which concentrate on landscapes, as that is the only use you seem to consider.
BTW, this is posted by Pam the Bryce user, not chohole the moderator. It is purely my view.
I don't feel pulled over the coals -- because I'm not wrong.
What if I told you that this took just a few minutes to setup, and 10 times less to render, not in Bryce.
At the end of the day, fan boyism for certain software is futile. People don't want a brand, they want software that works well and delivers amazing results with the least amount of time and effort while still being highly configurable.
If you want, we could compare a pre-made scene rendered in bryce, then not in bryce, and judge it by both its look and render time.
Bryce was the very first renderer I ever used, back in the 90's I believe.
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Moderator team edit to remove quote of a removed post
Yup, you're right... Bryce does not have a "Make Art" button.
Good Art/Design is not about simply rendering ready made models.
Yup, you're right... Bryce does not have a "Make Art" button.
Good Art/Design is not about simply rendering ready made models.
Yes, and Dave as you are not going to blow your own trumpet I will do it for you
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/galleries/620/
Because we all know that you built these in Bryce (mostly) as well as rendered them in Bryce.
Yeah yeah... everyone want to go faster and faster with everything in his own life.. and yes, with practice, everyone can manage that type of renders (which are fine..). But since bryce is NOT completely dead, there's market AND users that are proud to use it with successful. I know some guys here in France that sold there illustrations made with bryce and they are making money with them like 3dsMAX or Maya users..
Yes 3dsMAX and others software renders are looking better and so much faster, so, do we must leave bryce and let it die because of its lacks? Sure No!! I've exposed my renders in a real gallery last year with some other renders made by other peoples that have use blender, vue, 3dsMAX.. my renders have really concourse good criticism from the public like others one. Some people love Dali, Rembrandt, and hate Magrite or Picasso it's a matter of point of view, a matter of style..
Making art is not a matter of time to me since I have choose to use bryce. If I'd like to go faster, I choose another software but I don't care because it wraps for me and certainly lot of bryce users.
Cynical old me would note that you were sly enough to choose "few" as an unarguably indefinite number of minutes (might be two, might be hundreds) and thus conclude that you might just be trolling.
And then I'd choose to spend no more time on you, except to recommend to fellow Bryce forum members to likewise avoid.
.
Have any of you seen these two youtube videos of rampaging tumbleweeds?
The reason I am asking is because I have been looking for a well made 3D model of the "Russian Thistle (Salsola tragus)" tumbleweeds.
Could they be modeled in say Wings3D and then imported into Bryce.
A Bryce animation with models of these Rusiian Thistle tumbleweeds would be interesting.
Any of you remember that 1960s "Outer Limits" episode "Cry of Silence".
Tumbleweed Invasion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNVcSIZyBuE
Attack of the Tumbleweeds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XBZ9qYDxFs
The images are reference photos of the Russian Thistle tumbleweeds, and not Bryce renders.
Sort of related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsZDWNk_RIA
and completely, suitably, insane.
Yes, I'm working the weekend.
Again.
Yay.
.
By a few minutes, I literally mean a few minutes. I don't exaggerate in the slightest. You would be amazed at how fast even CPU-only renderers are today, compared to bryce, and bryce is a CPU renderer. although part of that may be due to bryce not taking advantage of newer instruction sets. I've got an i7 4790k, which is no slouch of a CPU let me tell you, and bryce still felt like a slow crawl.
For example, this 1080p image was rendered outside of bryce, with some depth of field effects, 6 ray bounces, some anti aliasing, shadow effects, global illumination, a transparent plastic material, a bumpy metal material, and with an HDR. The model is approx. 58,000 poly's in all. everything you see here, took 7:48 to render. I know that such a render would take a heck of a lot longer in bryce, and would take more effort to setup too. Even thrown together with not much content value, that's a pretty impressive render time considering all the factors.
an old Brycer speaks
I feel you user.operator.
I manage a restaurant and the owner always says, "Most guests who have a bad experience at the restaurant will not voice a complaint to the server or the manager. They will simply pay the check and leave. But that same guest will then go and tell a dozen of their friends how bad their experience was, and that is what will really cost us business in the long run. So when a guest does actually voice a concern, no matter how minor, you as the manager need to make them feel attended, and taken care of, so that they will instead go and tell their friends how great everything was."
He is a smart man and he is right and the feedback in this thread is an example of what people say about Bryce all the time behind our backs but in this case it is being said to our faces so we have a chance to make the impression of Bryce better by not being combative.
user.operator only came into these forums recently. I remember when he was first posting inquiries about Bryce about a year ago. He had no preconceived biases, but was entirely open minded at the time. He did his homework on Bryce as well as other applications, compared render speeds and quality, and within a short time decided not to continue using Bryce. I do not think his purpose is to downplay Bryce in this discussion, he is just showing his own process in deciding about using Bryce in his own work. He is actually being helpful.
People compare Bryce to other apps which are faster and smarter, and they should compare it, and we should not fault them for comparing it. You cannot tell a new user who is apprehensious that he should just shut up and stop focusing on the negatives.
Whether we accept it or not as die hard fanboy Bryce users....Artists in CG today have a lot of options, and what Bryce lacks in my opinion is a thing that it excels at in ways that other applications don't. People say..."well, you can do that with Bryce"...of course you can. But what we dont see is people saying "yeah, you must have used Bryce because no other app could provide those results." There was a time when people used to say such things, but that was well over a decade ago. We need to provide current reasons why people "need" Bryce in today's advanced cg market. But right now there is not a single thing Bryce does that other apps cannot also do and often with more ease and higher quality.
Bryce is already an amazing application. Bryce still has world class volumetrics, terrains, procedurals, you name it. Bryce is secretly number 1. All it needs is faster rendering, 64 bit support, and it will become competitive again. But it needs both of those. It needs faster and better quality rendering no matter what. I've been comparing TA with unbiased Octane and I will tell you, TA is good but it isnt anywhere close to unbiased territory yet.
I fully understand that we might never see another Bryce update, and for that reason, this thread and those like them are more harmful than helpful. People turn on each other when really they have no beef with the other forum members, our frustration is with the lack of info from Daz that leads to the infighting.
If by some chance there WERE to be another development cycle, the types of issues we are discussing such as render speeds and render quality and competition from other apps are fair and even required discussions. It's good to know these things.
I'll also add, that if the average Bryce user is already 55 years old, that's not good for the future of Bryce. Not because a 55 year old doesn't still have decades of amazing artwork in them, but because no matter how you slice it this is a shrinking demographic, so unless Bryce can somehow make itself attractive to new USERS (teens/ 20 somethings) to grow a new userbase, then its future will remain uncertain.
On the issue of realism......There is nothing wrong with wanting realism in your renders. Just because Bryce might not be ideal at realism doesn't mean that users shouldn't want realism or should be told that there's more to life than realism or that Bryce shouldnt strive to produce realism. Realism is an awesome thing. Realism sets its own "standard" and gives people like myself who aren't classical artists something to aspire to. Those who don't ever seek realism are the minority, most everyone else seems to want realism at least some of the time. There is simply no good argument against adding a more modern render engine to Bryce in addition to the one we have already. Bryce is a raytracer and raytracing is a very commonly used highly generic technique. Bryce's rendering engine is hardly the most interesting or original aspect of the application, in fact, it is the most generic part and its a part that could most easily be improved without ruining the application overall. All raytracers are the same, same math under the hood, same rays being fired, just that Bryce is hundreds of times slower than other raytracers probably because as was mentioned, it cannot use smarter commands.
So if Bryce does everything you ever wanted it to do then good for you. If however, you are like me and really love using Bryce but hate the slow render speeds and the limited quality then I think we should able to express our concerns. If those who develop Bryce are listening, the userbase is talking.
Bryce needs to be competitive and it cannot compete if it is stuck in a vacuum all by itself. If we really want to affect any change whatsoever, we need to be focused on how to attract new users, instead of focusing on existing users who are already fanboys.
tumbleweeds? - Bryce tree
Those things are totally weird, we don't have anything similar our side of the pond. Our vegetation does tend to be more stationary I think bigh has come close with his Trees.
I don't know if this would do. I had a quick play in the Tree Lab :-)
Mostly if you don't know what you're doing perhaps.
With the exception of some of Rashad's immensely complex and mega populated Atol scenes, I don't see many renders that would take more than 2 or 3 hours to render. The fact that people struggle with render settings and material optimisations is usually the reason their renders take as long as we regularly hear about.
Only this week we managed to help one member here reduce her render time on one scene from 7 hours and 11 minutes to a mere 5 minutes by making a few render and lighting setting suggestions.
The pictures I post here rarely take longer than one hour to render. Yesterday, in the Show Us Your Bryce Renders thread, I posted three renders... All of which I set up and rendered yesterday. Yes, some of them use imported content, but every part of that imported content is then given Bryce native materials.