Attached Link: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/story.asp?id={F62DECC3-E182-4F12-8595-DB72F8E6EEBE}

Pandromeda?

If you did the Vue questionaire you'll see that Vue d'Esprit look like they're considering taking Bryce on. Now where on earth would that take us? Cat

Somewhere I don't want bryce. If Vue is going to take on bryce theres a huge chance that bryce will merge with Vue and become Vue-ish rather then Vue becomming brycian. My answers to their questionaire have clearly stated that I'd hate to see bryce merge with Vue and that I'd rather see bryce in the hands of other companies.

Doc Mojo sent a post to The thread I started about some answered questions. He may be going to check it out, although he did say that we would probably lose the Bryce UI if he did get it. That is the one thing I really don't want to see. The Bryce UI is the best and I think if he changed it then it would become like every other app out there and what's the point of that. It would become dull, difficult, and boring. 8( Cat

"In 2002, Corel's losses continued to mount to $96.4 million US as the company spent heavily on acquisitions, product development and marketing in an effort to make a strategic shift to new high-growth products." Greedy, greedy. greedy. They thought that with entering into the office arena, they will reap huge monetary rewards. And yes, I wouldn't want to have a Vue-Bryce.

Catlin, I saw that thread but can't seem to find my way back there. I wanted to ask him - Why? What is the problem with the interface? (I am in complete agreement with you about about the UI.) I need bryce to be my virtual camera, to shoot my pictures whether I am in space, a room in a house or the great outdoors.

I spent a good part of lunch looking through Vue and MW tutorials at the interface layout. So far vue has the edge as relates to my style of use. I am not keen on the 4pane CAD look, although I get the idea one can maximize/minimize to simulate bryces view. Mojoworld has two main issues that concern me. It seems to be on too large a scale for me (not knocking it for what it sets out to do but as a bryce alt, that's a problem!) My other concern is that it seems to be a non-graphical feedback numerical entry process (if this is true I have a problem with that - it is not how i work or want to work). So far, my feeling is bryce is the only one with the graphical feedback that allows me to be a virtual photographer.

I downloaded the Mojoworld demo..and played with it some. I find the Bryce interface easier (don't have to drill down as far for what I do..;). If it comes down to no new Bryce, I'll just keep using 5 until I cain't use it no more..;)

I'm beginning to think the same way pakled. If Bryce gets changed beyond recognition then it won't be Bryce any more and if that's the case then I'd rather play with the Bryce I've got and go with Maya when I get it. I'm not looking for a new Bryce I'm looking for an updated Bryce, one that still has all the familliar characteristics I've come to know and love. Incarnadine here's the link : http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1161488 Cat

The user interface IS the reason i use bryce. It it what I know and what allows bryce to be friendly to everyone. Let us not forget the mission of kai krause, to "create a powerful program yet enchanced with an interface simple enough that anyone could use it." The mojoworld interface IMO needs some work. THe icons are too small, some are misplaced, and it feels a bit awkward. I despise the vue interface. It confuses me and I can't do anything with it. When trying the demo, I could not find out how to rotate an object within the 10 minutes i spent, hence closing the application in disappointment. SImilar to the 3dsmax interface, in which you have to select a certain cursor to rotate, another to resize, and another to move. It is also very difficult to move things freely in 3d space. Often the motion is confined to one axis at a time! Now the bryce interface I love. It is well organized, customizable, (moveable palettes) and can hide within a number of advanced features while still leaving them accesible. (for example, the material editor is its own space, rather than trying to squeeze it into a window in the UI; pulldown options for all editing tools like rotate, scale, etc.)And that marks a well designed interface. It retains all the advanced options, but does not try to cram all of them into one space. And honesty, who uses all 4 views at once anyways? Maybe from time to time, it could be useful to have an accesible alternate view. Why not simply upgrade the UI to make it more customizable? I.e. make it so the user can configure it like the vue interface if they desire, but at the same time let it also be configurable the the original bryce views and everything in between. All that aside... If bryce's interface were to change significantly in layout without an option to configure it as it currently is, I WOULD NOT CONTINUE TO USE BRYCE, and I am sure there is a large portion of the bryce community that feels the same way.

Changing the basic Bryce interface would be a totally stupid and retarded thing to do. Improve the skies, improve the water, improve the lighting, add plug-ins and speed up rendering, but LEAVE THE INTERFACE ALONE!

By the way, Mojoworld Generator produces great images but have you ever seen its control interface? Geeeeeesh... it's cryptic and almost mindboggling, and could definitely use a makeover. Remember the famous words: "power and complexity are no excuse for an unfriendly user interface."

"I despise the vue interface. It confuses me and I can't do anything with it. When trying the demo, I could not find out how to rotate an object within the 10 minutes i spent, hence closing the application in disappointment." Madmax, max_, please try Rhino. Then you'll see what can be done with a traditional 4-view interface. What I like is when you move an object in a view pane, it moves only in the two axis that are in the view, no need to choose the axis you'll move in. A simple double click on the name of the view maximizes it, not like the misterious W in 3D Studio. You can customize the work space by opening almost as much palletes as you want. To rotate, you click on the icon, choose the view and axis for rotation, and that's that. Zooming zooms on the selected object by turning the mouse wheel. And so on. Icons might be a little more clear, but you can do only so much with icons before you have to learn what a particular little picture means.

Change the interface and color me gone. I've learned Vue. I'm much better at Bryce, but if they lose the interface, I'd just move on to another app.

rhino is pc only, :(

If they lose the UI they'd better get a really good new one.

The Bryce UI IS Bryce!! If you're going to take it over, don't change that - there is nothing wrong with it - it does exactly as Bryce users want it to do. Concentrate on making it a faster renderer and refine the tools more. Being able to select objects by materials would be useful! :)

If they really want a new interface, why not do it like Amapi? Amapi allows you to choose between the new and the old interface.

Please god no!! - I hate the Amapi interface!!! :0 But yes, a choice of 2 would be the best workaround if they insist they want a new one also - but it would be beyond me why.

True about the interface being the core of Bryce. Leave it alone. What Bryce does need: A way to create mesh models. Perhaps a modeling lab of sorts. Being able to combine mesh editing capabilities with its current boolean, terrain, and meta abilities would be quite pleasing, especially if one could export them as .3ds or .obj. This would make it complete right out of the box. Incorporating mathematical functions into multireplicate. So one could perhaps have true fractals into the 3D generation of objects. I suppose one would have to assign the replication number to a variable, and one could build around that. It'd be interesting to see trigometric and other functions implemented. It'd be a powerful tool indeed. A rendering engine that could take advantage of graphics cards would be nice. It would most likely speed up lighting an atmospheric effects for those with the right hardware. Also a way to control transitions between materials would be cool. A few refinements to current controls. Nothing that really changes the original behavior or layout, but makes them more functional. For example the number of familys one can assign objects should be virtually unlimited and having a heirarchy tree would make grouping and parenting much more clear. Also making use of more than the left mouse button would be appreciated by those in the PC side of the house. I could see some benefit to using the right button for some menus and having the scroller wheel zoom, and holding in the scroller button could be used for the trackball. Other than that, I'm willing to bet Brycer's want their program the way it is.

Paul, I'm all for the use of the right button and the wheel. That's why I've been carping on about Rhino. Ctrl+Shift+right click rotates the world, Ctrl+Alt+right click rotates the camera. Bliss! :-)

As far as multi-view interfaces go, I used it 12 years ago with StrataVision. I have no use for it in Bryce since I can toggle between FRONT, RIGHT and TOP views with a single click of a key, and at the same time being able to instantly zoom in or out of the selected area with the + and - key. It can't get any better than that.

And the mouse issue for me is a non-issue because I use a tablet and would never go back to a mouse. Even a cheap graphic tablet is soooooo much better, easier and faster to use. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find out that Bryce works well with a tablet.

I got a cheepo tablet a while back and although it works perfectly in 2D programs it just won't behave with Bryce at all. 8( Cat

My Wacom works fine but I find the mouse better for bryce. For postwork though...

Well, Having pt my foot in my mouth in regard to Bryce's future before, I guess it's time I do so again... How is the UI Bryce? So it's unique and what we are all comfortable with at this point in our collective Bryce careers, but how does a UI make the program? I mean, I can understand how it can break one, but come on. If the UI were different, but still managable, would not the end result "be Bryce." Maybe I'm naive, but I always thought that it was the fantastic images that rival $1500-$5000 programs that "made Bryce." I thought it was the level of complexity available in the material and terrain editors that "made Bryce." Am I wrong and all this time I was using Bryce, I could have gotten all the same results with another program and UI? Simplifying, expanding and or flat out changing that interface may be a hard pill to swallow, but I consider the Art made possible by Bryce to be what "makes Bryce."

{Simplifying, expanding and or flat out changing that interface may be a hard pill to swallow, but I consider the Art made possible by Bryce to be what "makes Bryce." } Yes, but under a Lightwave type interfcace for example, you wouldn't get that many great images anymore, as people would be wrestling, or just plain giving up to achieve the same things. {the fantastic images that rival $1500-$5000 programs} Yes that's possible, but thats more to do with artists skills and workarounds than flat Bryce. I have Bryce and Vue, and they are both capable of very much the same things - but Vue's interface doesn't get you there as easily or logically IMO. Besides - why change something into something else when Bryce has a vast and established user base - tart it up a little, better than Corel did at any rate, but it doesn't need a radical overhaul in layout.

Thanks Kromekat. Sometimes I like to see the logical counterpoints to my opinions. I have to wholeheartedly agree about he Lightwave UI. I loaded the Demo from Digit or 3DWorld and deleted it the same day. :)

"{the fantastic images that rival $1500-$5000 programs} Yes that's possible, but thats more to do with artists skills and workarounds than flat Bryce." Wouldn't completely agree. For instance, the thing about True Ambience that people were posting a little while ago. It's in Bryce or nobody could do it. And that certainly rivals the ability of much more expensive programs. What I think, many capabilities of Bryce were neglected because it was very easy to do some things, like create a landscape. Bryce was one severely underused program. But I agree that people who like it pushed it beyond its nominal use. BTW, I'm told by people who work in 3D Studio that its renderer is nothing to write home about. That's why there are programs like Mental Ray or Brazil. Not to mention plugins like True Grit or various particle systems. Hey, whoever! Give Bryce plugin ability!

Wouldn't it be excellent if you could also export a Bryce scene file into another app like Lightwave, Cinema, Max or whatever and use their renderers!? Plugins would be a great asset to Bryce and would open up a whole third party market for tools and fx. {For instance, the thing about True Ambience that people were posting a little while ago. It's in Bryce or nobody could do it. And that certainly rivals the ability of much more expensive programs.} I can't say that I have ever really used that, and much the same for many of the special rendering fx, primarily because the slowdown on render times is ludicrous - especialy if you work commercially, you don't have time for that. The basic Bryce renderer is excellent - I love the quality, and I can count on the results it gives, but lets face it, it's still very outdated in terms of it's ability/speed ratio, and that is something that should definitely be addressed either as a second render engine, a completely rebuilt one, or as I said above, the ability to be used in other sw renderers.

", but how does a UI make the program?" If it wasn't for the UI, I'd already be using Lightwave, Cinema or True Space since they have more advanced features than Bryce. I've tried out a dozen other 3D programs so far, and compared to Bryce they all feel like a nightmare to use, even to accomplish the simplest tasks. When first starting out with a program It would take me a week or a month just to become 1% productive, where in Bryce I became nicely productive after 1 hour of use. Remember the famous words: "power and complexity are no excuse for an unfriendly user interface."

Thats it - there is something very natural about the Bryce UI, and after Poser, I would think its one of the most popular and used 3D apps with members of this site. The quality of the images posted can be extremely varied, from newbie to pro, but it's testatment to Bryce's 'easy to make a relatively competent picture quick' that encourages new users to at least try! It's also true to say (as before) that Bryce obviously has that 'all round' appeal that allows the user to attempt every kind of imagery and subject matter - it's far from just a landscape app, which from what I know/have seen, Mojoworld is. There is a definte X factor to Bryce, and it would be a shame or even commercially foolish to mess with it's most popular features. If someone is truly willing to take it on, and further it's development, the first thing they should do, is consult the community(s) on everything that Bryce IS and COULD be, and then decide how much of the points can or should be addressed for version 5.5 or 6 and so on.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1161488