So much forgotten
daveso
Posts: 7,007
I installed Bryce 7 Pro yesterday. Did some terrain work and quickly discovered how much I've forgotten about using Bryce. It had been my goto terrain program until I got into Vue, which I used for a long time until Eon went to subscription mode.
My Bryce skills had been getting pretty good in general, using it on the surface always seemed self explanatory. It was that I was deeper into it, lots of terrain editing, creating large expansive terrains, creating materials, doing all kinds of cool stuff, but most of that knowledge has now left the building.
Will need to get Susan Kitchens" Bryce bible out again, which was for version 4 ... but most still applicable.
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Ah yes, Susan Kitchens, just behind my monitors (the book, not the lady). Even though I paid a fortune for it (around $100 13 years ago) it is worth every cent. I have tutorials and links to videos on my website (Raytracing and Bryce & 3D CG Documents) mostly by David Brinnen and some by me. Probably the most complete link collection is at https://www.bryce-tutorials.info/ Tutorials.
thanks for that link :)
For those who got the Kitchen book used, without its CD-ROM, The Internet Archive has a free copy of its accompanying CD: 'The KPT Bryce Book CD-ROM'.
Martirilla - thank you for that link, I had a look.
It appears to be the CD that came with the Real World Bryce 2 book from the Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
The CD for Real World Bryce 4 book came from Peachpit Press in the year 2000.
~ And a book bought from Bud Plant Catelog
Fantasy Art Masters _ The Best Fantasy and Science Fiction Artists by Dick Jude (1999, Trade Paperback)
which does say some about Bryce _
I have been thinking of trying Terragen. It's a few hundred dollars, has modern features, is 64 Bit, and as far as I know, it's not a crashfest.
I really demand one thing: Involvement from the vendor. Terragen is supported, and their devs (I think there's only one of them) are on their fourm.
I admire Horo and David for their support here, but that's not the same as having a fully engaged vendor. DAZ, fix this! I still propose that DAZ consider selling the Bryce source code intellectual property so that somebody else can take a shot at modernizing it and maybe even making a buck for their efforts. Or DAZ should make it open-source, with notes on all the requirements for compiling the code. The open source community, being the enthusiastic bunch that it is, would probably have a 64-bit (and patched!) version available within 2 months, and would probably have Mac and Linux versions available within 6 months.
Save Bryce!
I would love to see Bryce go open source. But IMO Daz is holding on to Bryce for one basic reason. The DTE editor which I believe is the brainchild of Kai Krause (if you used KPT 5) you'll see why I say this. The DTE is hand down the best procedural textures editor I have ever used & I've used or demo most all the low- & high-end 3D programs up to 2016. I would also fear that open source would let it be integrated into Blender which is a great program. I just find the interface hard to learn because it's scattered, unorganized & doesn't conform to most apps standard keyboard shortcut & interface.
Well, maybe Substance Designer (which is further development of older software called MapZone) is more powerful as it has more different functions/nodes/operators (whatever you'd call them) and you can combine those in any amount you want (also it supports recent developments in 3D technologies, like PBR), while DTE has more fixed architecture. However, i appreciate much what talented folks manage to do with DTE, despite it lacking modern tech or not being "infinite" in structure.
There are more procedural material workflows out there, be it from Houdini or Unreal Engine (i'm sure, modern version of Blender also have similar tools).
But i feel like they "own" much to our beloved hero and pioneer, who is Bryce
And personally i love how Material Lab looks in it, as it reminds me vintage music synthesizers.
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Added videos to illustrate references.
I agree that Substance Designer is really wonderful software. I am fortunate that I purchased it when you were able to get a perpetual license from Allegorithmic. Adobe has bought them out and now is subscription only - at least I did not see an option to purchase a perpetual license. Adobe is shutting down the original 3D Substance Allegorithmic site and will be inaccessible come Sept of this year. I just feel like--while I love technology and the convenience of updates and modernization--At the same time also strongly feel that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Too many times Adobe and others have a really great idea, then just abruptly pulled the plug -or remove things that were really really useful and creative--or just break things. I am wondering if I am able to even load up some of my older Adobe software products I spent a small fortune on
.. Now Adobe is removing the 3D capability from Photoshop and sending you a link to purchase Substance 
. (So in essense it feels they broke in on purpose so you will buy Substance) I am not a fan of subscriptions and hope that never happens to DAZ (I am one of those that actually shelled out almost $300 for DAZ studio back in the day along with the 3D bridge to Photoshop). It just feels like many times creativity and uniqueness are lost down the corporate abyss rabbit hole.
So while I really wish DAZ would do something to update Bryce.. esp the 32 bit issue on mondern systems.. I worry what would happen if it landed in the wrong hands.. Bryce is truely timeless!!
Thanks for sharing the info regarding the Susan Kitchen's book!! I was thinking of getting one of these specifically " Real World Bryce 4"
@Horo, which book version do you own or recommend? Real World Bryce 2,4 or the KPT Bryce Book
It is, I believe, stil possible to get perpetual licenses for Substance applications with one (calendar) year of updates from Steam.
@RichardHaseltine OmGosh! really! I did not know this!!! I just looked that up.. wow.. I am gobsmacked... thanks for that!.. Adobe listens!
I just ordered the Real World Bryce 4 .. and just spent the afternoon playing with KPT.. I still love Bryce's texture editor
Terragen is neat, but be warned that the learning curve -- especially if you're used to the 'click it and see what happens' approach of Bryce or even Vue is fairly brutal. If you enjoy hand-editing shader graphs in Poser, you might find it comfortably familiar, but if that isn't your thing, Terragen is a little bit frightening.
I have a soft spot for Mojoworld myself, although it absolutely fails your "must be officially supported" test. The company that made it has long gone and, alas, Ken Musgrave is dead. Still runs pretty nicely on a PC, though.
I think that might be a little optimistic, but I'd love someone to prove me wrong.
I think that preparing it for open-source might be a non-trivial task. That is to say, DAZ could -- if they so chose -- dump the source code on Github. Writing instructions on how to build it might be more time-consuming, however. It's possible that it depends on a rather elderly toolchain, and figuring out how to build using more modern tools could be challenging.
One other thing that I see as a potential obstacle is that it may contain proprietary toolkits or frameworks that can't be open-sourced. I had an idea that the latest versions of Bryce used early versions of the same Qt toolkit that's used in DAZ Studio. I can't actually confirm that -- there's no mention of it in the About box. But if not Qt, then there may be other code in it that DAZ doesn't have the right to give away (some of Eric Wenger's, for example).
Speaking of Eric Wenger, if you're a Mac user you could always look at Artmatic Designer & Voyager. There was a period when it looked as if Artmatic was also destined to die, because it wasn't a 64-bit app and the work of rewriting it to make it compatible with recent OS's was considerable. Now it looks as if Eric has done that work, and released new versions under the label 'CTX'. It's not cheap, but if you want the 2020 version of Bryce, it might be the closest thing.
ArtMatic is very cool and interesting, though it's not replacement for Bryce (or vice versa) due to how different it is. It's unique enough - being totally procedural, no polygons, planets/places system etc.
Rasberri - the Real World Bryce 4 by Susan A. Kitchens and Victor Gavenda I can only recommend. I bought it with the CD in May 2008. I also purchased Corel Bryce 5 by Dr. Joachim Gartz (2001), 300 pages with expensive glossy paper and full of colour pictures written in German. This one could not convince me, even though it looks very nice.