Having posted in another thread a DTE (Deep Texture Editor) tip on swapping channels to create new materials, subsequent posts indicated to my surprise that not too many people were familiar with the procedure that I have taken for granted. With that in mind I decided to write this small tutorial on another procedure that, like the other, people might not be too familiar with and also uses the DTE. These procedures are well documented all throughout the Internet and of course, in the Bryce bible by Susan Kitchens Real World Bryce 4. This particular procedure will allow you to bring a DTE texture directly into the terrain editor in the form as either a terrain or a lattice. I find this useful when creating impromptu cityscapes or even play around with abstracts. Create a terrain (could also be a lattice) in Bryce and bring it into the terrain editor by holding down Ctrl + E or clicking the small E in the object control panel along side the selected terrain. Once in the terrain editor, click New in the editing tools panel and increase the terrain resolution, I usually use anywhere from 512-ultra fine 2048-gigantic resolution. Click on the down arrow on the upper right hand corner of the terrain canvas window and select solid to make your terrain a solid object. See fig. #1. We are now ready to import the DTE texture. We do this by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys together on your keyboard while clicking on the Picture button in the editing tools panel. Now, you have different options here; Holding down the Shift key and mouse clicking will bring up an empty DTE with no material in it, a blank, but this will not allow you to apply the texture to the terrain editor but does allow you to create a new texture to later apply to the terrain editor by using the Ctrl + Alt key combination. Holding down the Ctrl key and clicking will bring up your 2D picture library allowing you to use a picture you may have stored in your picture library. Holding down both the Ctrl and Alt keys will bring up the DTE with a material already on it usually the last used. Holding down the space bar while clicking, as would simply clicking the Picture button by itself, will bring up a file download dialog window allowing you to bring in any picture which resides on your hard drive. Hitting the Esc key anytime while importing will bring you back to the terrain editor without any changes to your terrain or lattice. Hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys together and click, this will bring up the DTE. Here you will see the 3 component windows and a combination window. We have the option of creating a new texture or importing one from the texture library. On the upper right side of the combination window there is a button that will take us to the texture library. See figs. # 2, 3. Now you can play around with your texture to your hearts content or click the little check mark on the lower right hand corner of the DTE to accept your texture and bring it into the Terrain Editor. Hope someone will find this useful also.

Thanks for writing that up! The only thing I'd add is that the terrain created is based on the Alpha Channel so to get a better feel for what's going to be created, turn off all the Color dots and click on the the Alpha dots. Oh - some DTE terrains take a long time to create and there's no indication that it's "working" so it may appear that Bryce has hung. Best; Dan

Oh yes, good point Dan. The material will be converted to black and white alpha information, no color information when brought to the terrain editor.

Thankyou, yet another thing I did not know about this wonderful program.