ok- As I understand it Bryce has never played well with others- by that I maen the render engine is one of the SLOWEST around. Also it dosn't export only terrain files that other apps can use. So, beyond the thinly disguised posting by daz employees praising the benifits of the merger. What is the advantage? Why would I get bryce instead of Vue or 3dsMax that can do the same thing in minutes that bryce takes days or weeks to do. Why get an app that can't export to other apps? This is a real question?

What is the advantage? Why would I get bryce instead of Vue or 3dsMax that can do the same thing in minutes that bryce takes days or weeks to do. Why get an app that can't export to other apps?

Well, if you have the financial resources and want some serious power, get 3dsMax! I use Max myself, and there's really no comparing it to either Vue or Bryce (it's a lot more powerful). ;-) Oh, and if you have a few extra bucks after getting it, I recommend grabbing the Vray render plugin for the fastest GI and raytracing on the market. hehe. So in total, you would need:

$3000 for 3dsMax single license, and another $800 if you want the Vray plugin. Oh, and maybe another $200 if you want BodyStudio, which imports an entire Poser .PZ3 file (including dynamic hair and cloth) into Max.

But as for VUE, the only advantage I see in getting Bryce over Vue is the price (Bryce is cheaper), and also (as I just found out today) Bryce has network rendering. I don't think Vue can network render, though I might be wrong.

If you have a few computers in your house, you can use them as a render farm with Bryce, which should dramatically "speed up" it's rendertimes for you. If none of that matters to you, then there really is no obvious "advantage" of getting Bryce over Vue. ;-)
Message edited on: 06/24/2004 08:13

"ok- As I understand it Bryce has never played well with others" Surely that makes it the perfect product for DAZ (or CL for that matter) to purchase? Meeeow! Cheers, Cliff

Vue with Mover does have network rendering.

Heh... I would never ever buy max... so overpriced. If I was inclined to suffer thru learning the interface I'd buy Lightwave, which costs half as much as Max and has many more features "out of the box".

Max is great too, it's just you have to buy all those plugins to make it work.

Then again, (not too long ago at least) Caligari Truespace was (is?) the most widely used 3d software on earth. It's quirky as hell, but costs half as much as lightwave for the latest version and as low as $100 for older versions when on sale. and is compatible with poser using Konan's Truepose plugin.

Anyway a talented person can make a Poser 4 pic look better than what an untalented person can do in Lightwave. :p

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 09:13

I admit that Bryce is jolly cheap (for Plat members anyway). I brought Vue at Christmas and am very pleased with it - great outdoor lighting and easy Poser imports. So Bryce can import from Daz Studio - not a major annoyance coz I already have to set up in Poser first to get stuff into Vue - but I must say I do not find Studio as easy to pose in as Poser (maybe just habit). They say Bryce is slower - but is it any good as a renderer otherwise? Is it better than P5? I brought Vue coz it offers something that Poser can't do as well, ie the atmosphere thing and vegetation. With Vue and Poser 5 already, would I get anything extra by buying Bryce?

They say Bryce is slower - but is it any good as a renderer otherwise? Bryce's lighting controls are nearly unequalled, IMHO. That has always been its strength. I use Bryce extensively for my set design renders (http://hometown.aol.com/atthisstage), and I'm always amazed at the results. Yes, it's a slow render, but worth it.

***Heh... I would never ever buy max... so overpriced. If I was inclined to suffer thru learning the interface I'd buy Lightwave, which costs half as much as Max and has many more features "out of the box".

Max is great too, it's just you have to buy all those plugins to make it work.***

Just to clarify what you stated, Max is definitely expensive. I wouldn't call it overpriced.

What features does Lightwave have "out of the box" that Max doesn't? I can't think of any. In fact, I can think of a few things that Lightwave didn't have until recently (vertex color baking for example) that Max had for much longer. Also, Version 6 of Max comes with Mental Ray renderer, which beats Lightwave's native renderer hands down with it's micro-poly displacement and faster GI.

Yes, there are tons of plugins you can buy for it, but none of them are needed to make it work. Just clarifying that. ;-)

I'd never want to use Lightwave with all the "rooms" you have to work in. There's a module for modeling, then you have to switch to another for rigging, then another for animating, blah. ;-)
Message edited on: 06/24/2004 10:57

"Also it dosn't export only terrain files that other apps can use." Actually it does. Coldrake

Well I havn't looked at Max in a while so things have probably changed in the most recent versions, But I was talking about the old Max renderer, which was inferior to LWs and the lack of character animation stuff, soft body dynamics, and voxel particle engine. Nice to know they Give you a better renderer now. anyway just a casual outsiders observation. I don't personally use either app. (too rich for my blood) and I admit LWs interface is a pain in the butt :D

Someone asking questions about Bryce will probably not spend $4000+ on max, and have a whole battery of puters to set up a render farm. It is not a question which 3Dapp is best as that question is easy to answer: the best is the one you have mastered. This said: For Plat members, Bryce is $42. Otherwise, it's some$70 or so if I remember well. I am not bying it myself because there is no good output to the next class of 3D apps (yes: Max is part of that, as are Lightwave, Maya, XSI, Realsoft, Cinema4D,... and several more). Also, to import Poser stuff in Bryce, you are forced to use Daz Studio. Much great work has been done in Bryce, but I think that the battery of Wings3D (free modeller), Terragen (free terrain generator), Poser (I'd hoose for 5), evt Vue and then PSP or the Gimp is hard to beat if you don't want to spend a lot of money.

I've used Bryce for a few years. I thought I got a great deal at Christmas time when I purchased Bryce5 from Amazon.com for $99. As someone who has great difficulty going from the 3 flat images in drafting to seeing the 3-D object, Lightwave is almost impossible for me to use. However, using the included primitives and the new metaballs in Bryce, I have been able to make houses, furniture, and about any 3-D object my Poser people might need. I'm really happy to be able to move my Millennium folks to a setting created in Bryce even if it means I have to finally install and learn DAZ Studio.

Someone asking questions about Bryce will probably not spend $4000+ on max, and have a whole battery of puters to set up a render farm. Well, he did actually ask why he should buy Bryce instead of Vue or Max, so he got his answer. ;-)

This may sound dumb....but can someone please explain "Network Rendering"? I don't have a clue what that means.

Basically, network renderings means faster renders. Instead if just your one machine working a render, you can use the power of multiple machines to render and thus render faster. Now about Bryce 5. I just scored it at DAZ for cheaper than I've ever seen it, even used copies on Ebay! PLUS Bryce 5 works on Mac OS9! Finally, the elusive Bryce 5 for the Mac is mine!!!!!!!! Yes! :D So why am I so happy to finally get Bryce5? Simple answer - Better Renders for Cheap! Plus I want to learn about this different form of 3d, it's not models, but math. I played with terragen, but it frustered me because it was so limited. I gave up in disgust. I can't wait to experiment with Bryce 5. Also, just like the Poser Community and Sims Community, Bryce has a big online community and that's big advantage. Not to mention, now that DAZ has bryce, I bet they will have fun support for the program. Anyhoo, check with me in a week or after I've played with Bryce some. I personally would have gone with Vue over Bryce and Poser 5 if it weren't for the price and that Vue and Poser 5 only run on OSX. bB

sandoppe; Technically, it should be called 'distributed network rendering'. Basically, you have the main application installed on your primary computer, then on extra computers you have what is essentially a stripped down version of the application (usually just the render engine, a very simple GUI to access the network port assignment, and some form of TCP/IP interface). The main application detects the renderers installed on your local network, and farms the work out to the renderers, collects the results, and assembles it for you. In Bryce's case, Bryce Lightning can render individual frames of an animation across several computers, or take a very large render, cut it into precise sections, and render -that- across multiple machines (changing what in B4 would have been a 20 hour render on one system into a 5 hour render across 4 systems). Vue d'Esprit does this as well as Truespace (and all of the major apps as well). With the $300 'lunchbox' type computers if you want new, or the cheap systems you can buy secondhand at computer shows, small renderfarms are easily within the hobbyist's reach (I have a 4 node renderfarm myself for use with VuePro...but it can also be used for any other app that can network render).

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/

The slowness of Bryce is exaggerated. There are options you can turn on to make it slow for extreme quality settings, but for most purposes you don't need these. I usually expect final render times of 5-20 minutes for 1024x768 images. Anyone have a problem with that?

Frankly I think it makes all kinds of sense to get Bryce 5, especially if you've used Bryce 4 (which I have)and even if you have Vue 4. Here's the reason: I got Vue because I loved the environments it can create.....still do prefer the look of it to Bryce. But I also wanted a program that I could pose characters in and then import to Vue or Bryce. That's where Poser came in to the picture. So I read all of CL's "hype" and purchased Poser 5 (seemed logical...it's the newest and the cost is better than Poser 4!) So guess what!! I can't import Poser 5 .pz3's into Vue or Bryce!! I discover that a bunch of suits are pointing fingers at each other at CL and Eon. So I wait....for a year....nothing happens. I begin to use Microcosm and other innovations to create my environments in Poser and I pretty much abandon Vue and Bryce 4. Then all of a sudden Eon and CL create a patch and get to be really good buds! Now I can import .pz3's into Vue just fine. But you know what.....I'm not going to put myself at the mercy of any one collaboration ever again. Sure it works fine now. But what if I want to upgrade to Poser 6 at some point. Will I have to pay an extra $200-$300 to also upgrade Vue in order to be sure the importing capability continues to work??? Nuts to that! I just purchased Bryce 5 at DAZ for $42. Seems like a small price to pay to be fairly certain that I won't be left without a way to import my .pz3 characters ever again.

"there is no need to fall for DAZ's 'promotion' of a dying program (Bryce)." Dying program? Lol! Don't get around much, do you Becco_UK? Coldrake

Coldrake - I get around more than you could ever realise. I even went to see some of your Bryce pictures but your gallery has passed away! I repeat - "If someone has Vue d'Esprit and Mover installed then there is no need to fall for DAZ's 'promotion' of a dying program (Bryce)." Tip - quote the full paragraph to keep in context.

It's anything but a dying program, thank you very much.

If you need me to quote your own paragraph to you, next time I'll be happy to. :) By the way, my gallery is still up, it's just not here. If you get around as much as you say you do, you'd know that Bryce isn't a dying program. Coldrake

OK I'll rephrase - Bryce isn't a dying program. The purchace of the dead Bryce by DAZ is a clear admission that DAZ Studio will never get close to producing acceptable renders. So we have an hilarious situation of the dead (Bryce) trying to save the almost dead (D/S). DAZ produce some excellent figures so the sooner it focuses on what it does best, instead of playing silly school yard games with Curious Labs, the better. (Coldrake - Would that be the gallery at DAZ!? You know, the place where you regularly post in the DAZ forums. Nice ethnic lady image but the fat man portrait and man with top hat images display terrible colour banding on the backgrounds. A touch of monochrome noise is sometimes useful for blending in unwanted colour banding.)

Best place for Bryce help.

Thanks for moving this thread into my Forum Shoshanna. Yet, I'm not sure if the original poster truly wants help? We'll see. ;o) AgentSmith Bryce Moderator

"ok- As I understand it Bryce has never played well with others" *I believe you understand incorrectly; -Rendering engine; I own both Bryce and Vue. Truly, they render about the same, timewise. -Terrains - They WILL export out of Bryce in just about any 3D file format you would want. *You can't compare Bryce or Vue to 3DSMax, ridiculous difference in price. Really a totally different market. Just not relevant. AgentSmith

"If someone has Vue d'Esprit and Mover installed then there is no need to fall for DAZ's 'promotion' of a dying program (Bryce)." *Well, True and False; -NOT dying, I'd bet you know that from DAZ's purchasing of the program, and their move to make Bryce 6...? -Yup, if someone already has Vue, and likes it, why buy a whole other program? (other than the fact Bryce 5 is SO inexpensive right now) Go with what works best for you. "VUE d'Esprit and Mover will import Poser files with all the materials and animation info' intact. DAZ's Bryce will not." *Actually, it's DAZ's plugin for Bryce that WILL import Poser content. And, yes, it's just a beta, so no, its not perfected or fully realized, yet. (DAZ produced the plugin in only about a week I believe) "Could be worth saving a little more money and getting VUE 4 or Vue Pro which will give longer term benifits." *Sorry, that last argument can't stick to Bryce anymore. It has a new home with a company that is going to progress it (finally). Yup, its going to take some time, but it will happen. If you like Vue, go with Vue, it IS a great program. If you like Bryce...its a great time money-wise to pick it up. AS

Just another point You DON'T NEED DAZ studio to import Poser figures. We have been importing Poser into Bryce for years. True the Poser 5 dynamic hair and stuff won't work in Bryce and animating figures in Bryce can be a royal pain but sheesh we are talking about a great program for under $100! BTW we have found ways to reproduce almost any effect that you can find in the high-end programs. The following statement is true with just about any program Bryce can do some thing easier and faster than the high-end programs, OTOH the high-end programs can do some things easier and faster than Bryce.

Daz has remarked that Poser 5 Dynamic hair will be a reality in Bryce, at some later point. AS

There's less tweaking to do when you use DAZ Studio. The transparencies import with D/S for example, where they don't if you export an obj from Poser. Sure...you can load them later, but it's a lot of extra fussing around. What the heck....Daz Studio is currently free...why not use it.

Great news about the dynamic hair AS. I know it's EASIER with DAZ studio but I was responding to some posts above that you NEEDED D/S in order to import Poser figures, was just pointing out it wasn't NEEDED but only useful.

Oh, I know. ;o) Probably after the 4th of July weekend, I will have a little extra time, I'm gonna get the turbo plugin myself, do what I can to break it, lol. AS

There's not much to break. It creates a new obj importer for Bryce.

The latest version of Studio now has an obj exporter that puts a copy of the textures with the obj you create so everything is in one place for Bryce to find. It also creates the obj with far fewer parts (similar to Grouper if I understand it correctly).

One known bug with the plug-in is that it loads in the bump maps but doesn't put anything in the bump channel, so no bumps. You have to go into the texture editor and do the copy/paste thing.

Still much easier than before.

TC