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How to create a flat top "Devil's Tower" style mountain.

kenwmay_bab7cfcd5fkenwmay_bab7cfcd5f Posts: 68
edited December 1969 in Bryce Discussion

I have a castle that I need to put atop a tall narrow mountain. Making it look like the castle is an unreachable inescapable prison. I have the castle. Anyone know how to make the mountain. I have Bryce 7 Pro.

Comments

  • GussNemoGussNemo Posts: 1,855
    edited December 1969

    edifex, look at this YouTube video and see if it doesn't help you create the mountain you're after.

  • GoshtacGoshtac Posts: 0
    edited May 2014

    Hi edifex:

    Are we talking about something along this line. Sorry, this is not a great example as I just slapped this together. But I created the primary flat topped mountain in Paint Shop Pro. Depending on type of graphics program you have access to, if you can just create an image ( I did this as 800 x 800 and original pure black ) I then took a selection tool and in center created area I wanted as the top flat area and filled it with pure white.

    I was then able to expand the select area about 5-10 pixels at a time and each time I would slightly lighten the selected area so you have various shades of gray expanding from light to dark which created my mountain. (See image below) In Bryce, I created a terrain mountain and then used the terrain lab to replace the mountain Bryce created by using the picture of the mountain I created. Once back in Bryce main work area I edited the mountain using the scale tool to adjust height and width as I needed and assigned a material to it.

    Once the main mountain was as I wanted it, I created some more mountains around it and assigned the same materials to them as well as changing the ground plane to water. To finish it off, I added the castle I exported as an object file from DAZ Studio and sized it to fit on top of the flat topped mountain.

    Now this was just a quick and dirty way to do this and you should still check out the video that Guss mentioned to probably get a better idea on how to do this properly. Such as if I had spent more time on my example, I would have tried to create some type of road into the side of the mountain (People have to get to the castle somehow)

    Hope this gives you some ideas though and I hope you really enjoy playing around with Bryce. Have a great weekend!

    Bruce

    EDITED: PS: Thanks Guss for the link to David's tutorial video. I finally have been able to address my graphics card issues so I can watch vids online again - Great tutorial and I learned a few new things watching it.

    Mountain_Topo_1.jpg
    800 x 800 - 46K
    Castle_Rock.jpg
    1514 x 1009 - 335K
    Post edited by Goshtac on
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    @edifex - easiest way is to create your terrain in the Terrain Editor (TE), then cut the top with the bracket. You open that part right of the Canvas by clicking on the thumbnail on top right. Then you can grab the top (or bottom) of the braces and move it down (or up). The part that gets yellow will be flat on top (and the part becoming red cuts the lower part of the terrain for islands). You can also grab the bracket and move it up and down. The preview shows how it looks.

    TE-cut.jpg
    827 x 575 - 69K
  • GoshtacGoshtac Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Hey Horo;

    Thanks for the simple way of doing it. To think I have been over complicating my efforts for some time and didn't know the easy way to accomplish the flattening effect.

    Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks - Seems like every time I come to this forum, I learn some new tip or trick I never have known about before - Again, thanks and have a Great weekend my friend. :-)

    Bruce

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    @Bruce - there's always more than one way to do something. There's no better or worse, only more or less appropriate for the task at hand and the tools available. I've resorted many times to Photoshop to create a terrain. Problem here is that not many graphics applications can save as 16-bit gray-scale TIF the TE needs to make a terrain without steps of it.

  • kenwmay_bab7cfcd5fkenwmay_bab7cfcd5f Posts: 68
    edited December 1969

    Thanks guys! I'm new to Bryce and can use all the help I can get.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,643
    edited December 1969

    @edifex - Just a small detail I forgot to mention: the terrain must be set to solid, otherwise you get a hole. Can be handy for a volcano. The preview in the TE doesn't show the difference.

    TE-solid.jpg
    800 x 500 - 93K
  • Miss BMiss B Posts: 3,071
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for that tidbit Horo. I've often wondered what was the best way to achieve a "mesa" look at the top of a terrain.

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