Following a comment on one of drawbridgeps images, I got a few mails with questions about bevelled edges in Bryce. Therefore, I thought I might as well post some sort of a mini-tut here, too. So there we go....

Bevelled edges are rounded edges. Sharp edges or hard edges do not exist in nature. If they did, you would be cutting yourself constantly. On images, hard edges look terrible, because they do not reflect high lights, and there is no shadow under the objects when the are standing on the floor (see picture 1 above).

Bryce does not have primitives with bevelled edges, but you can easily simulate this. For a cube, you need 8 spheres (corners), 12 cylinders (ribs) and 3 cubes (sides), as show in figure 2 above). The degree of rounding is determined by the diameter of the spheres and cylinders. Similarly, for a cylinder with bevelled edges you need 2 cylinders and two of those torus thingies. Cones is a bit more of a puzzle and also requires a few booleans.

Once you have made a small collection of them, you can use them in stead of the default primitives, also in booleans. You will end up with a gazillion of objects (Flak is going to love this, grin...), but they really look better. Oh, and for procedural textures, dont forget to set mapping to world space in stead of object space, otherwise things may look weird as well... Thats it, hope you find some use for it :-)

"Hard edges look terrible"? You saying my picture looks terrible? ;-) Just yanking your chain. Good tut. Worth the little extra effort. But I would retort, that although sharp edges may not exist in nature, buildings aren't natural and stonemasons will always strive to get a sharp edge to marble bricks. Just my little justification for not redoing my courtyard picture. :-p

Sorry Phillip, I didn't mean to be *that* harsh, very large grin... But it really takes only a rainy Sunday afternoon to make all the bevelled primitives you'll ever need (still laughing...). Above a cylinder example to convince the reluctant :-)

I'm in England, we don't have rainy Sunday afternoons. Oh wait, that argument doesn't work. I like that texture. One of yours? I DO like this idea. Gives a more aged look to stonework.

Not to mention the fact that after a few years exposure to rain, wind, pollution, vandalism etc. even the hardest (stone) edges get a little rounded. Some metal buidings are another matter; they rust/corrode a little, then collapse. Use Agent Smith's textures for the former; allow the cat to walk over the keyboard for the latter:-) Not that (especially with a: my PC spec, b: my impatience) I'd ever bother for anything except close-up stuff unless it really glared... Cheers, Diolma

Nope, default Bryce procedural, called "archeological find". No rain in England, hmm..., must be a cold day in hell :-)

Wow.. thanks tons for explaining that to me..I thought that I was loosing my mind for a sec.. hehe =) hugs ~Kristena

Cool Tut Roobol. Thanks for the insight to the beveled edges. This will be handy info for me.

Great technique, very easy and straightforward. And it does add that something extra! Your statement about the hard edges "not existing in nature" seems a bit odd to me, though.

Mother nature loves curves (erosion effects) and mother nature always wins was how a tourguide once explained the shape of every prominent rock formation in central australia.

But I like the idea of making up new sets of primitives. Moebius87 in the LW forum has made up a set of sci fi objects - hatches, joints, hinges... and uses them as his primitives to speed things up.

Hmm.. the gazillions of objects concerns me lol - what if you start with gazillions of objects?

Message edited on: 06/19/2004 06:31

Or if you want to "cheat", such objects are easy to make in Wings3D. ;) Only difference is that you can't really change the radius on the edges once it's in Bryce.

Or any other modelling programme, too. Has the additional advantage that in that case you can also apply transparent or photographic textures.

Great tut... Thought i'd chime in... I do the same 'wear'thering for some terrains and lattices with a blur in PhotoShop. Depending on the scale you need this is a very quick way to bevel/fillet, and as you can see, it makes a difference. The erosion operator in the terrain editor is sometimes nice after this step, to get some grooviness. An advantage is that one material can be mapped to the whole thing with parametric, which I can't always do well on the primitives (The best solution I found for primitives was "object cubic" mapping). A disadvantage is a terrain has to be more or less flat to hide its little steps... I do wish we had beveled primitives and a sphere and cylinder terrain object, It's hard to make a good sphere with two hemi terrains or a lattice, you get artifacts at the seam... :-( If you do quarters or eighths, maybe you could hide it, but lots of work. Cases like that, made me buy Carrara, and I'm still not getting something. My buddy Clark tells me ZBrush has great bevels and fillets.

An excellent addition, Jim. And the reflection of highlights in your example shows the need perfectly. A gaussian blur in terrain modelling is oligatory, indeed.

Hmm, Flak, if you start with a gazillion, you will end with two gazillion (but that shouldn't be to much of a problem, now would it). And did you already buy this new fridge, very large grin....

Well, thinking about this last night, roobol, luckily skeletons don't have edges and so don't need bevels phew As for the fridge, thankfully its going into the heart of winter down here now (20 Celsius and sunny), so everywhere is selling fridges cheap. Also, have you joined a gym yet to toughen up those arms of yours.... wouldn't want you to suffer any bicep strains doing all that lifting... grin

Hey I thought gaussian bluring to smooth out edges was my own dirty little secret. :(

Hate to pour water on this, but there are several collections of Bevelled/rounded edged OBPs about that should be quite easy to find. If you have no luck finding them, I'll post them or e-mail them to you..........

Ohboy! "Drench me" with the links!

Attached Link: http://www.iaw.on.ca/~jspirko/presets1.htm

Here ya go!