Having viewed Zhanns thread where she inspired several of us by her wonderful depiction of the Armillary and providing the URL to The Noble Collection and turning us onto several of their gorgeous pieces, and seeing Erliks model of the Armillary done in Rhino after which a discussion started by TheBryster and picked-up by fellow Brycer, Richymaveety, ensued concerning Bryce modeling and 3rd party modeling packages, this then followed by Nuskis show of allegiance to Bryce by modeling the Armillary completely in Bryce, I wish to thank everyone for inspiring me to model Noble Collections classic sextant completely in Bryce. Its all their fault! This is a WIP, which is rendering as I write this and should take the better part of 2 days unless I have to stop the render again to make corrections. Funny how just as youre sure its all ready for rendering when you realize something else is just not right and you need to stop the render process to tweak the model. Ive also included a separate image of the seahorse using a different texture than in the sextant image, which I decided to use instead of the mermen. Below, Ill provide the grayscale bitmap for those wishing to use the seahorse lattice in their own images.

Using lattices import the bitmap into the terrain editor using a high resolution, I use gigantic (2048). Then using the raise/lower button I lower the lattice until I think the upper half looks just right to when the lower half is created and I hit smooth about 4 times and click OK.

Whoa!! All hail the Meister Bryster!!

P.S. Seahorse grayscale bitmap was created using Photoshop.

thats a great old copper material u used on that seahorse show us the grayscale of the merman too lol

Way too cool! You did a nice job!

Very cool Seahorse and mat.

Looks great and thanks for the seahorse, a long time I have wanted one of them.

That is one piece of amazing Bryce modelling Quest. It looks fantastic, bravo!................and thanks for the seahorse too. 8) Catlin

Three cheers!! Does it work?????

I meant to also say that that is an incredible Bryce model you've built. The more I analyze it, the more impressed I am with the skill it took to do this!

Wow. I'm speechless.

Very nicely done sir! I saw that sextant on the cover of Noble Collection mailer.

zhann's turning out to be quite the troublemaker, isn't she?..;)

An outstanding display of both analytical and creative modeling abilities. . . . . . within the Brycean universe. As Quest has demonstrated, it doesn't matter what 3d app (Bryce, Rhino, Maya, Amapi 3d, etc.) is used to create an image. It is the artist's ability to creatively solve design problems, by using the tools at hand, that bind us all together.

Ricky: Many Thanks! or are you taking my name in vain? ;-)

Quest: Very nicely done. I'm very impressed and I hadn't even noticed the sea-horses on Zhann's original.

Thank you gang. Ysvry, I didnt say I had a grayscale map for the mermen. I said I decided to use seahorses instead of the mermen, which appeared on the Noble Collection sextant. Although I think its quite possible to model mermen in Bryce I thought it would be very time intensive and a project all in itself. Originally I thought I would model them in Poser and/or 3D Studio Max and import them into Bryce, which would have been less painful and a lot faster to do, but that would have defeated the purpose of modeling the entire sextant in Bryce. So after some thought, I decided to substitute the mermen with something else that wouldnt be so time intensive and would still relate with the concept of the sea and the sextant. The seahorse came immediately to mind and I instantly envisioned that it was a symmetrical object so I set out to design the grayscale bitmap in Photoshop. LOLsorry Ysvry, but if you want to see a merman bitmap youll have to create it yourself. If you should decide to undertake such a challenge, please keep us abreast of the progress, I for one would be most interested. LOL@TheBryster (meister)Bryster, the original catalog picture of the sextant has two mermen holding up the sextant at the base. As explained above, due to the complexity and time requirement to model the human form in Bryce, I decided to substitute them using the seahorses instead.

Oh yes, should anyone take it upon themselves to make a merman in Bryce let us all know. We could then have a rash of seafaring type pics. lol 8) Catlin

Attached Link: http://uk.geocities.com/bryster3d

I made some mermaids and a merman's tail in poser for a Bryce thing called 'Merefolk at Play'...(See my website) I suppose you could pose them for this sextant....?