A short history of Bryce

Slepalex

Eugenius Maximus said:

That being said, some of the layout decisions that were made should be revisited, for example, the Brushes in the Terrain & Lattice Editor should have Rock & Terrains Alpha brushes already installed (ZBrush/Mudbox-like); the default brushes have no relevance to terrain or rock design.

Nothing prevents you from making a hundred of your own custom brushes in a couple of hours.

 

Eugenius Maximus

Slepalex - You're absolutely correct, though I was looking at a possible newbie point of view. 

Horo: If Bryce, Carrara and Hexagon are no longer Daz3D's core business than perhaps it should look at how Smith Micro website; the digital content has its own website separated from their software. If not, then perhaps we should all be nervous. 

mindsong

Eugenius Maximus said:

Slepalex - You're absolutely correct, though I was looking at a possible newbie point of view. 

Horo: If Bryce, Carrara and Hexagon are no longer Daz3D's core business than perhaps it should look at how Smith Micro website; the digital content has its own website separated from their software. If not, then perhaps we should all be nervous. 

I recently heard that the SM content website is shutting down sometime in November with (willing? or invited?) vendors being migrated to Rendo.

That said, Hex has been recently refreshed (64bit w bugfixes) to positive reviews, so there's always hope.

Bryce is still a huge favorite of mine and still has so much potential (even as a texturing engine, let alone its other 'features'), that I still have hope that somehow it will also be 'refreshed' as well. Rehashing old code from older defunct development platorms is quite a trick though - I can hope. Carrara is a similarly hidden gem in stasis as well. sigh.

--ms

 

MonkeyT

S Ray said:

For anyone interested, here's a Bryce animation done by the creator of Bryce Eric Wenger
https://youtu.be/zX_Hw65m7dY

I've never seen that one! Very cool.

During the beta testing for Bryce 2 (five or six years earlier than Eric's video), Bryce's programmers hacked together a secret, custom interface for animation.  It wasn't officially part of Bryce 2's feature set, but they left it, as an easter egg, in the release, after we begged for it.  Several of the developers and exerienced users (including AuntiAlias) used it to collaborate on an animation which was eventually published and sold as "Planetary Traveller". Bryce3D made an animation interface official, as I recall.  There's some great stuff in that film, considering how early it was in Bryce's history. Lots of heavyweight Bryce users from back in the day in the credits list, including one of my favorite artists, Bill Ellsworth.

Planetary Traveller

The beta test for Bryce 2 also included the first version of the Deep Texture Editor, which we also begged MetaCreations to leave in. Originally, they thought it was too complex and unfriendly.

Gulfbrzer

Soooo.... I am not the only one missing Bryce. I am currently trying to figure out how to build or obtain a machine that will run Bryce 4 or above. I think 4 was my favorite version. There were so many bugs that were fun to play with in the material editor. I am Mac and I still have the original version of Bryce 4 in the box, all the updates on a Disk somewhere and tons of files too. Anyone have ideas on how I might get this accomplished? Thanks and so glad to see the interest is still there.

 

Chohole

If you want to stay with a Mac then you need to somehow find a model that is running Snow leopard (10.6) or lesser OSX

WendyLuvsCatz

or use ArtMatic and Artmatic Voyager also created by  Eric Wenger 

damn I would buy it or try the demo but alas no Mac, is OS only

Dave Savage

I use a Mac and have dipped in and out of Bryce since KPT and have been a constant Bryce 7 Pro user since it's release... I simply always keep an old Mac that runs 10.6 and use it almost exclusively for Bryce.

2 years ago, my lap top died, but it was dead easy to replace it from eBay for a mere £150, which when you consider how cheap Bryce is, is a real bargain for a fully functioning 3D programme that does everything I need it to do.

Chohole

Dave Savage said:

I use a Mac and have dipped in and out of Bryce since KPT and have been a constant Bryce 7 Pro user since it's release... I simply always keep an old Mac that runs 10.6 and use it almost exclusively for Bryce.

2 years ago, my lap top died, but it was dead easy to replace it from eBay for a mere £150, which when you consider how cheap Bryce is, is a real bargain for a fully functioning 3D programme that does everything I need it to do.

A bit like I still have himself's little desktop sitting over there → cos it has win XP  and I do have a couple of programs which won't wrok on more modern windows.

akmerlow

Wow, Artmatic Voyager  looks fantastic. Now it's another app in my list of "i should have been using Mac too" regret notes alongside with Five12 Numerology.

WendyLuvsCatz

akmerlow said:

Wow, Artmatic Voyager  looks fantastic. Now it's another app in my list of "i should have been using Mac too" regret notes alongside with Five12 Numerology.

I will get clubbed for saying this but it looks like Bryce 2018 

Chohole

akmerlow

*need to specify that it's pics where they showcase combination of Voyager and Artmatic Designer that impresses me the most.

Though i know there are many fractal apps nowodays, like Mandelbulb or Incendia.

Then again, i see some of you make scenes in this style in Bryce using metaballs for weird alien creatures

Jamahoney

Chohole...you're just naughty, but lovely

Jay

MonkeyT

I use Parallels to run Snow Leopard Server in a Virtual Machine on newer hardware.  It's not a "perfect" solution, but it's stable and runs very well.  Finding Snow Leopard Server is the toughest part. (Snow Leopard Server is the first Mac OS that was licensed to operate in virtual machines, so Parallels tests for that.  It's also the last Mac OS that could emulate the PowerPC chip, so in effect, it's running an emulator inside an emulator.)

akmerlow

akmerlow said:

*need to specify that it's pics where they showcase combination of Voyager and Artmatic Designer that impresses me the most.

Though i know there are many fractal apps nowodays, like Mandelbulb or Incendia.

Then again, i see some of you make scenes in this style in Bryce using metaballs for weird alien creatures

i meant those

http://www.uisoftware.com/GALLERY/amfamily/am6vy/gallery1/index.php

http://www.uisoftware.com/GALLERY/amfamily/am7vy/vy4launch/index.php

akmerlow

S Ray said:

Here's an interesting read about Bryce Talk during the transition from Metacreations to Corel...http://2020hindsight.blogs.com/2020/2000/05/my_take_on_bryc.html

Link now gives me an error, and sadly WebArchive nor GoogleCache don't have a copy. Was there a back-up of that read elsewhere? 

 

bytescapes said:

Some minor corrections: the first version of Bryce (KPT Bryce 1.0) was released by HSC Software Corp., not MetaTools. (I have a vague memory that 'HS' stood for 'Harvard Square', can't remember what the 'C' was for).

Actually it stands not only for "Harward Systems Corporation", but also "Happy Software Company", which i now learn from this awesome essay:

https://www.mprove.de/script/99/kai/index.html

This page is recommended to read as well, as it mentions which projects several key figures were doing after MetaTools/MetaCreations disappeared as a company:

https://www.mprove.de/webdiary/meta/index.html

S Ray

The dead link was Susan Kitchens (AKA AuntieAlias) telling the story how Corel dropped Bryce Talk. After saying they wouldn't. Bryce Talk was her contribution to B4 & her baby.

Thanks for the links. They basically tell the same timeline (Ruth Fry) AKA  Calyxa told me. Eric Wenger saw a presentation by Ken Musgrave "Doc Mojo" at a SIGGRAPH. Wenger then went on and made his own little program for making landscapes based on Musgrave's thesis. Then in 1994 Wenger joined Kai Krause & Ben Weiss at HSC & created KPT Bryce 1 in 1994. Then the 3 left HSC Software in 95 & created Metatool where they upgraded to Bryce 2 & also acquired Poser 2. In 1996, Ray Dream was acquired by Fractal Design, and in early 1997, Fractal Design merged with MetaTools to form MetaCreations.  Where they upgraded to Bryce3D, Poser3, KPT5.. While at Metacreations the Bryce team did 2 vacation trips together at Bryce Cannon. They called them Bryce Camps. Here they would get R&R while banging new ideas around. I got into Bryce the first month Bryce 4 was released.  I joined The Bryce Forum at Delphi the same day. This is where most of the prominent Bryce users, Beta testers & a few developers hung out. Also, Ken Musgrave & Calyxa joined the Bryce team for the B4 upgrade. They both left soon after & started Pandromeda & created MojoWorld. Which like many fell by the wayside.

 When Metacreations fell they sold Bryce & KPT to Corel. Where they finished the 5 upgrade Metacreation was working on. Which added the Light Lab & Tree Lab. They also finished a plug-in link Metacreation had been promising us from Poser animation to Bryce. It came as a separate download a few months before Corel sold to Daz. Metacreation also sold Poser to Curious Labs.  You can find the full story on Ray Dream Studio (Carrara) Here. 

 Here is a picture of the last Bryce Camp. The female on the far left with the yellow under shirt is Susan Kitchens, the guy in the center on the floor is Ken Musgrave & the female he has his left arm on is Calyxa. 
Here are some of Calyxa early Bryce Renders & her Bryce Tutorials







 

RexRed

Bryce 8 needs multicore rendering (all cores), preferably GPU rendering (even better) and better integration into Daz Studio.

If Bryce became more integrated into Daz it might get more love.

Bryce is a great HDRI and terrain maker. Daz seems limited in that capability.

Bryce needs to be able to export in larger resolutions 8K and higher.

And perhaps a more detailed/defined cloud system.

I don't think the advancements that Bryce could use are that out of reach.

Try and keep it true to form and just expand its capabilities a bit.

A lot of artists would find Bryce useful in their Daz productions if a few small improvements were made.

I would definitely pay for a Bryce 8 (Daz Plugin).