We've all been talking and complaining about not being able to read or export bryce files or objects. I say we crack this sucker now! What we know: Bryce represents objects as mathematical coordinants and equations. Bryce knows how to use polygons and export them. What we don't know: How the code in a bryce file is organised. How abject attributes are defined in the code. How to separate object code from other code (render settings, animation, etc) What we need: a utility that can read a bryce file and map polygons based on the object's coordinates and attributes. (booleans, groups, object type, etc.) The ability to export all primitive objects and groups. The ability to export trees and leaves! AHHHHHH! What we don't need: exporting of metaballs, since that's just about impossible. Exporting of animations. Exporting of textures. How to do it: We need to develop a simple program that can recognize the object parameters if given a bryce file. Then it needs to recreate all the objects in the scene using polygons based on the coordinates provided in the bryce file code. THen it needs to perfrom boolean operations based on an objects attributes. Then finally it needs to export the new file in a common format. Most likely .obj, .3ds, or .dxf For trees, it will need to be able to "grow" polygons along a trees mathematical shape as given in the bryce file, and know to keep leaves and branches separate from eachother during an export. With your help we can do this! Go down in Bryce history as the ones that saved bryce! (I know it's corny but go with me here! ;) )

sorry, but exporting textures would also be great. I've tried to look into Bryce scene/object files, but I dont know where to start with decoding them.

Try talking to the authors/programmers of various graphics/modeling freeware and tell them your plight. Who knows, one might take up the cause. Odds are they'll still be quite busy trying to make their own program better, but it couldn't hurt to ask anyways. And if you get lucky, you'll have somebody with a real knowledge base to work from. Just my $0.02. L8R!

Well, it's been ages since I cracked program codes, so I'm outa the loop there, but you have my whole hearted support for the endeavor....:)

Before we rush off and write something, we should check freeware/shareware/retail to see if this is done already. Pauljs75 does have a good point. Probably have to write this for Mac and Pc owners to be fair about it. We will need this 1. File format of a Bryce object file. Hopefully its documented somewhere, if not we have to dope it out ourselves. Have to do this very methodically or we will get garbage. Once we have that then we can write an app that reads the object file and displays what's there in 3d and in a list. Users can pick what they want and it gets saved in the format they want. Some of these should be documented somewhere (.obj, .3ds, or .dxf).

I've spend hours surfing the net for bryce-format documentation, but I never found anything. I think that contacting Corel might help. A "one-man-and-one-company-fileformat documentation-deal". Documenting the format for the public might be too much for Corel, but a waterproof contract with one person solely(sp?) for the goal of making an export-bryce-models patch/plug-in/program should be possible. Especialy if the contract states that the format should remain secret.

yeah seven the main problem is that there is no bryce file format decoder thingy. It's never been cracked. I'm sure an application would have been developed already if we new the structure of a bryce file. There are two people I know that might be of help with this. The first is wolfie, who was trying to do something like this a few years ago. wolfie@wolfiesden.com Also ken musgrave(doc mojo) may be of some help, but i don't know how to go about contacting him. As for corel, they have been stingy with the whole issue. Most emails are never returned, and i don;t think they've ever given it up to anyone before. To bad it still wasn;t part of metacreations.

yeah, so basically most of our work will be cracking the file format. But we'll be heros for it! Weeeee! If anyone has any ideas about how to do this and how I can help please tell me right away. Would be a shame to waste all this time i have over christmas break! BTW i see no harm in trying corel some more.

It'll probably be a while... Make one sphere and save it as a file... Make a bigger sphere save as another file. Make another sphere original size and move it some amount of BU to the right, do it again to the left, etc. Then repeat the process with cubes, yada yada yada... Then get fancy and start trying with booleans... Sounds like it'll be quite a while before somebody figures out the file code. But it seems like that would be the process of going about doing it. Lotta plug and chug work, eh? Goodluck to whomever decides to take on this task.

Has anyone thought to contact MetaCreations? After all they had the program originally and should have the basis for the bryce file format. Unless MetaCreations signed a non-disclosure someone there might help...You will find no help coming from Corel....hmmmmmmm, wonder if they'd sell Bryce and it's coding to get it off their hands, support seems to be a headache for them... just a thought

WE can try to contact metacreations. There's little chance that they didn't sign a non-disclosure, but it's worth a try.

There was this guy a few weeks ago telling that there was some lost skylab-code in bryce. I think he was one of the programmers at metacreations. Maybe he knows some stuff. Usually you have to sign a contract that keeps you from telling company secrets as the coding of software, but that is usually only for a few years. Maybe he may tell some-thing about the bryce format by now. Does anyone know his name?

yeah he's doc mojo (ken musgrave), the main developer of mojoworld.

ooops....

It probably has occurred to a lot of you that what you will have to do is reverse engineer proprietary files to get where you want to go. Better read the EULA before proceeding too far with this - at least on a public forum. I'm not saying that deveopers don't reverse engineer stuff but . . . The only way to get the code legally would be to convince Corel that it would be in their best interest to make the code necessary to make conversion utilities publically available. try working on it from that angle. -TJ

madmax: If you or anyone else is interested in contacting Doc Mojo, just IM him here, as he is a member, his Renderosity handle is Doc Mojo, capitals included (I checked).

Best way to get Corel to do anything would probably be to appeal to their greedy side, tell them how this will benefit them in the long run (i.e.money, money ,money)...

I send Doc Mojo an e-mail and asked him if he could help us out or give his opinion on this matter. Maybe he'll come by this thread on of these days.

on = one

cool