Is Bryce dead or alive ?

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  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,120

    Hmmm, reading the forums and it is is much cheaper I think to make Hexagon a modeling plugin for DAZ Studio and it be 64 bit and then follow that up with Bryce plugin and Carrara plug-in for DAZ Studio. I do think stand-alone versions of Cararra, Bryce, and Hexagon will be EOLed as well as the 32 bit versions of DAZ and associated plug-ins. However that is my opinion based on my experience as a programmer and what I think is good business sense.

    I do hope if they do go the DAZ Studio plugin route for Carrara, Bryce, and Hexgon they will let us upgrade from our old versions, LOL, especially since I went ahead and coughed up the cash for the last one of those I didn't own. 

    If DAZ 3D is a content store than they want to sell all comers as much illustrative, film, and game content as they can to hobbyists and professional and the way to do that is to integrate all that content alteration and preperation for those media into the same program...solve the problems of bridges too.

    Abode didn't buy Mixamo because they think that game creation as a hobby is going to tank. Unity's Asset Store, UE4's Asset Store, Amazon Lumberjack, Cryengine. If you ask me DAZ 3D and Smith Media are lightyears ahead of those others because they have a huge library of reuseable, easy to use content that's easy to alter. And it looks almost unfailing better that what you can find in those other asset stores. Creating games will be a hobby just like the digital art and digital film hobbies of Poser & DAZ yesteryear.

    ...and then you have to wonder if DAZ 3D will add a game engine?...I don't think they will as that won't sell content and much more difficult with much more programming and support work than generating images or films. Beside there is already Unity, UE4, and Lumberjack (Cryengine), and a long list of lesser players but if you look at commercial content producers for the public there is really only DAZ 3D and Smith Micro and a raft of mostly independant moonlighters.

  • Tim82Tim82 Posts: 859

    you forgot blender ;)

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    TBH  many Brycers that I know consider that DS and Poser are merely tools to work with when one is using Bryce, so they are adjuncts to Bryce rather than the other way round.  

  • Peter WadePeter Wade Posts: 1,623

    There is no way I want Bryce to be a plugin for Daz Studio! Bryce's texturing, lighting, sky and atmosphere systems are intimatetly tied to it's renderer, and they are all part of what makes it uniquely Bryce. I use Bryce, Daz Studio and Carrara and I chose which one is best for each picture I want to make. They all have their own distinct character and I like to have the choice.

    Anyway the bridge lets me use Studio as a plugin for Bryce which is the way I think it should be.

     

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,120
    edited March 2016

    I didn't forget Blender, but Blender isn't owned by DAZ Studio but I see it being a free tool set and there is a large collection of CC0 and for sale Blender content. And alot of the Blender content has developed it own pleasing coherant 'Blender style' to it.

    Bryce and those other DAZ programs being plugins to DAZ Studio is not so bad as you think but I admit the DAZ Studio UI is dizzying more so then the much complained about Blender UI. It's not the the UIs are so complex really but modeling ereally is almost like speaking a language - dictionaries are huge and unwieldy and even the most fluent and sophisticated speakers of a language use only a fraction of the languages' flexibility. It becomes almost like mathematics in that it's how big of a subset of all that can you utilize and call yourself able?

    Maybe if those do become plugins in the future DAZ can continue to refine the UI with those tabs at the top where the Viewport and Render Library tabs are - you just switch between DAZ Studio, Hexagon, Bryce, and Carrara functionality & relevant UI sets by switching to tabs labeled as those program names.

    But my mouth has been in hyper lately and actual work has suffered, spring must be about to break.

    Post edited by nonesuch00 on
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638
    edited March 2016

    nonesuch00 - There are UI's made for masochists, and there is one I know that was made from an artist for artists. Tastes may differ (this is a free world - mostly, or at least partly). wink

    Post edited by Horo on
  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,486

    nonesuch00 - There is no way I want Bryce to be a plugin for Daz Studio. Bryce and a bit of Wings 3D are the only 3D programs I use. Then again I don't use them professionally. Bryce is an amazing program and a fun way to spend one's golden years.

    Long Live Bryce yessmiley

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,120

    Well, rest assured it's not up to me or you but whatever they do you'll be able to run the old Bryce in a virtual copy of an old version of Windows or osX should a Windows or osX upgrade ever break Bryce.

  • foleyprofoleypro Posts: 485

    Well this is a discussion I havent been apart of in years...

    Bryce can still be run on PC tho it was originally a MAC program...

    Anyone remember KIA or Ken and many others...

    Will there ever be a bryce 8...Not in a comapny dedicated hands...

    It needs to be open sourced for it to survive..I mentioned this many times in the last months of the Bryce steering committee ...

    And I still stand firm...

    In order to go froward in the dev of Bryce it needs opened source...

    DAZ has exclusive rights on content created but the source code needs to go GNU...

     

    My opinion and thats that...

  • foleyprofoleypro Posts: 485

    nonesuch00 - There is no way I want Bryce to be a plugin for Daz Studio. Bryce and a bit of Wings 3D are the only 3D programs I use. Then again I don't use them professionally. Bryce is an amazing program and a fun way to spend one's golden years.

    Long Live Bryce yessmiley

    Why not...? having DS as a plugin means you have Characters in Bryce and can be animated...Best of both worlds...Thank goodness for FBX because I can get my DAZ characters into my fav programs like Max and Maya and of course Bryce...

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,486
    foleypro said:

    nonesuch00 - There is no way I want Bryce to be a plugin for Daz Studio. Bryce and a bit of Wings 3D are the only 3D programs I use. Then again I don't use them professionally. Bryce is an amazing program and a fun way to spend one's golden years.

    Long Live Bryce yessmiley

    Why not...? having DS as a plugin means you have Characters in Bryce and can be animated...Best of both worlds...Thank goodness for FBX because I can get my DAZ characters into my fav programs like Max and Maya and of course Bryce...

    Yes I think you are right, especially when one uses multiple software, and uses them professionally, one gets the best of all the worlds. smiley

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited March 2016
    foleypro said:

    Well this is a discussion I havent been apart of in years...

    Bryce can still be run on PC tho it was originally a MAC program...

    Anyone remember KIA or Ken and many others...

    Will there ever be a bryce 8...Not in a comapny dedicated hands...

    It needs to be open sourced for it to survive..I mentioned this many times in the last months of the Bryce steering committee ...

    And I still stand firm...

    In order to go froward in the dev of Bryce it needs opened source...

    DAZ has exclusive rights on content created but the source code needs to go GNU...

     

    My opinion and thats that...

    This is a thread that has been necroed several times, it is littered with dead horse carcases, beaten but not stirred. Normally the people who are bringing it back from the dead yet again are not regular Bryce users.

     

    Bryce users know that Bryce may be a little long in the tooth, but it is far from dead.  

    And Open Source is no solution. Never has been, and hopefully never will be.

     

    BTW this is Pam the Brycer posting,  not my alter ego.  

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638

    As a regular Bryce user, I cannot see any benefit in integrating Bryce into Studio, rather the other way around. GNU isn't an option in my opinion either because of the risk that the code gets into other applications that are still years behind Bryce (though there is still potential to improve Bryce).

     

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,120

    I dislike the term necroed very much. People should be more civil in the language they use when they make arguments to support their preferences. The forum moderators merge threads all the time will the same theme so this is a case of being darned if you do post to an open thread on topic and darned if you don't as unnecessaily opening a new thread. Such language is not a polite or civil way to try and win your point.

    Anyway my point is simply to point out the trend in DAZ Studio has been to expand it to be a comprehensive free solution for the 3D Modeling and Animation communitions and now the Gaming community and for DAZ 3D and others to sell content to those communities.

    Bryce, Carrara and Hexagon, make no mistake, have more value now then they used to have for DAZ 3D but with free competition like Blender they can't be left in there current state for extended periods of time and grow their customer base and hence their sale of content. I can't even install Bryce Content I've bought with the DIM but I can Carrara Content. And if ever a product belonged completely integrated as a plugin it's Hexagon into DAZ Studio. And then you can easily say DAZ Studio into Bryce and then Bryce into Carrara. What they'd call it would probably be DAZ Studio for business advertising reasons but personally I like the name Bryce better. The amount and quality of Blender content is growing. All this is a popular hobby now.

    DAZ Studio will continue to expand in functionality I'm sure. While the easiest solution would be to open source Hexagon, Bryce, and Carrara to the Blender Foundation and build a Blender bridge, the business case says it makes more sense to have potential buyers for all that content within the same DAZ Studio shell connected to the DAZ Store and buying and installed content from there. They can still build a Blender bridge and that will get some Blender hobbyists over but ultimately they want better content and better tools in DAZ Studio. That's what businesses do, offer better products then their competitors or close enough to the same quality but cheaper. Blender has cheaper in it's pocket already.

    Unity is doing pretty good with their Asset Store, it's much more recent though and I hear the claim that it just barely more than breaks even in profits although I doubt that's the case anymore and clearly they'll be making much better profits in the future from it as they learn to manage their Asset Store.  As Unity improves the way they allow 3rd parties to submit and have their items vetted and how those items are sold and installed and managed without trouble the profit will increase as well as the product quality.

    However, there still needs to be a human intervention in vetting the products to keep the store from be flooded with products that aren't popular or wanted. It may be down to personal opinions of the vetters that a product isn't accepted in one of those stores and some will complain but it beats letting programmers automate the submission of products and take over store fronts through pure volume and the lack of patience for customers to build filters to filter out all the products they aren't interested in.

  • Well, I still am impressed after all these years with the kinds of things bryce can produce.  To be honest, the terrains and textures/DTE have never really been duplicated.  I remember some years back when one of the authors of bryce's texture engine made some water textures converted from Bryce to DS which were just amazing and there was talk of a general convertor for bryce textures but it never came to be.  In fact, the old DS textures have long since disappeared with the changing of versions.

  • Dave SavageDave Savage Posts: 2,433

    Well I'm pleased to announce that Bryce will stay alive for another 8 or so years at least here at Savage Towers because I've just bought a second hand Macbook (running Snow Leopard OS) on eBay for a mere £150.... Worth every penny to keep using this excellent software... My next project, to get Bryce running on the new iMac too, but it seems I'll be needing some thrid party emulators and a partition running Leopard Server software... It'll give me something to do. laugh

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    When you see some of the wrok that is produced by Bryce artists like Dave and Horo, which is not at all typical of what people expect Bryce to be able to do, you can see that we believe that Bryce is very much alive and kicking.

    How about this, done by Horo, completely within Bryce and with no plug ins

    And he offers a PDF, so others can learn   http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1063416/#Comment_1063416

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    Chohole said:

    And Open Source is no solution. Never has been, and hopefully never will be.

    Just curious... why "hopefully" never? Is there any specific example of proprietary software gone open source and failed, or?..

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    Chohole said:

    And Open Source is no solution. Never has been, and hopefully never will be.

    Just curious... why "hopefully" never? Is there any specific example of proprietary software gone open source and failed, or?..

    I think Horo already explained why.

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    Chohole said:

    I think Horo already explained why.

    Is this line the explanation you refer to?

    Horo said:
    GNU isn't an option in my opinion either because of the risk that the code gets into other applications that are still years behind Bryce

    It's probably sufficient for those "in the know" - who understand what those applications might be; I have no idea because the other landscaping programs I know about, which are Vue and Terragen, are anything but "years behind" it.

    To me, any open source licence would increase the chance of some kind soul developing a new UI for Bryce. You have to be an artist to use it, y'know. Like Horo says above. I am not an artist, not even remotely; I'm a tech-minded person. Working with any of the Kai Krause interfaces is torture to me. So I see the neat things that Bryce offers... but they are like behind a glass wall to me. I can't use them. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

    I can't see DAZ ever developing that alternative UI (the perfect world would have both, switchable).

    So if there is no open source... you get the drift.

     

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited April 2016

    I guess we have to differ there.  I love the Bryce interface. I like the Poser interface, I can live with the Carrara interface. Other interfaces  I won't say anything about

    I taught myself to use Bryce, back when it was Bryce 2, with just the help of a double page Mag article. No internet in the Chohole household in those days and I was working full time, so not much spare time.

    And Vue etc are only just catching up with what Bryce has had since last century, imo.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,929

    I agree with Chohole on the interface of Bryce. But maybe that's because I am more of an artist than an IT Tech-person. I really like Bryce's interface, so that should not be changed. Of course, once you know an interface well enough another interface is always more difficult. There are other, much more relevant improvements to make in Bryce, but this has been spelled out by several people before.

    I tried the trial version of Vue some time ago on my old computer. Somehow I always got stuck and it crashed. I never tried Terragen, so I have no clue about that one.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,638

    Mustakettu85 - yup, I'm a tech person and frankly, I first struggled with the Bryce interface, found Terragen more accessible at the time, though I couldn't get the hang of PovRay. However, when I tried to see the Bryce interface as an adventure game, click on everything and find a treasure, it dawned on me. Now I love it and I hate those cluttered interfaces other programs have. Obviously, Carrara has its roots with Bryce and I think its interface is not bad. Of course, we love what we know best. Getting the hang of the Bryce interface may be a struggle for some at first, once you grasp it, you look at the other interfaces and wonder how anyone could like them.

     

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    Well, I can only say I'm happy for you all =) 

  • ShelLuserShelLuser Posts: 749

    I'm still reading up on the thread but couldn't resist a (maybe premature) response anyway. I think the main thing to keep in mind here is that although a product doesn't get periodic updates doesn't mean it's dead. Looking at it from another perspective you can also conclude that it might be more or less "finished" (at least as intended).

    Note that I'm an amateur on the 3D rendering field, but a very enthusiastic one and my software of choice is all Daz3D. Daz Studio, Bryce and Hexagon. I consider the latter two an invaluable addition to Daz Studio, and maybe vice versa too. What I like best is that they're not a part of DS and fully concentrate on their own key strengths. I think the Bryce interface for example is really suiting for what you can do with it. I honestly wouldn't like a DS (-like) interface. Different programs, different intents and different ways to work with it. True story: last week I dove into Bryce a little more again (I wanted a custom sky for a Studio render) and ended up playing around for most of the night with rainbows and sky textures. Why change a winning formula?

     

  • Bryce is the Schrodinger's cat of renderers both dead and alive simultaneously!

    Couldn't resist.

  • I have the PLE edition and I lost my serial number and cant use Bryce PLE so I am a bit bummed. love the product and cant afford the new PRO version. so what do I do????????????

  • edited June 2016

    I have the PLE edition and I lost my serial number and cant use Bryce PLE so I am a bit bummed. love the product and cant afford the new PRO version. so what do I do????????????

    I fear they're not going to bring Bryce back, so it's time to learn something new - Blender, maybe? Or what do you think of Cinema 4D?

    Bryce now refuses to work under WINE on my iMac so that's something i have to look into now - all my previous creations in Bryce, now useless.... Thank you so very much, DAZ

    Post edited by akeel1701_2a0cb6b70c on
  • therixxtherixx Posts: 123

    Well I'm pleased to announce that Bryce will stay alive for another 8 or so years at least here at Savage Towers because I've just bought a second hand Macbook (running Snow Leopard OS) on eBay for a mere £150.... Worth every penny to keep using this excellent software... My next project, to get Bryce running on the new iMac too, but it seems I'll be needing some thrid party emulators and a partition running Leopard Server software... It'll give me something to do. laugh

    Hope you did succeed, Lord of the Savage Towers :-)
    And your render of the Bryce interface parts is simply brilliant!

  • therixxtherixx Posts: 123
    Bryce now refuses to work under WINE on my iMac so that's something i have to look into now - all my previous creations in Bryce, now useless.... Thank you so very much, DAZ

    Come on Akeel, I'm sure you can find a way to run Bryce and not let them win.
    I have a Win 10 machine refusing to run Poser9. So I "persuaded" it by installing Poser9 in a Win XP virtual machine run by Oracle Virtualbox... :-)

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