Hello all... I am working on several New and Old scene's and Will be REDOING most of my Better scene's into full 360 degree Navigatible Scenes... Now Most of the Scenes that I have built in the Past I just Pretty much needed what was in the CAMERA'S Views and Left it at that.. Now I am Needing to make my Scenes all 360 degree Navigatible because of the FUTURE OPTIONS of Gaming Export and of course for FULL ANIMATION Projects that I am Planning on doing for Machinima and Unreal Tournament 2K4...With Truespace6.6 and Bryce5+ and MayaPLE I use these Now...BUT I hope to be able to do all of the Modeling and Textureing INSIDE of Bryce then Export out to MayaPLE and have MayaPLE read all of the Shaders/Textures from Bryce's Materrial Editor.... Then it came to me I dont think I ever saw a Poll or Question that even asked this QUESTION.... SO HOW DO YOU SETUP YOUR SCENES.......

setup? we're supposed to set them up now?..;)
Uh..to be Frank (split personality?..;) most of my Brycing involves hiding or covering up the 'infinite plain'..;)
I mainly use camera angles to set the scale, or render inside of Boolean Primitives (if I haven't made a building or room in Wings..;), mountains and trees whenever I can't or haven't..
I usually have an idea of what I want the picture to look like before I get started (I want it to look like Orbital's, or Agent Smith's..what comes out is..uh..well, never mind..;) I go with an idea..(phrase, comment, a picture I think I could 'do something with'..;), get everything positioned, spend forever figuring out which mats to use (I have too many..wait, is that possible?..;), then set skies and lighting. Then start fixing everything..oh, it can go on and on..;) something like that..

easy there pumeco... err.. yeah, in most cases camera angle is what i'm looking for. making a scene 360 degrees-safe would be a hard task. i generally just keep to indoor scenes anyway. it's rare that i make an outdoors one because i never really had teh textures or the knowhow for it. shrug drac

Pencil and Paper...... Once I've made a very bad sketch, I start modelling but still keep it only to what's in the scene/ animation. Quite often I'll use mutliple 'Sets' and stitch the animation together much as a film studio does. (For example a set for outdoors, a set for indoors and so on) To model a complex 3d scene that would cope with a complete animation would have the 'puter wheezzinnnggg...... BTW the final output very rarely looks like the starting idea :)

I quite often will start a scene with one terrain, sculpt and shape it with filters til it looks like something and then give it a satisfying texture. Then I delete the ground plane(I like to work without a net,lol) and keep adding terrains until I completely enclose the camera view and then start adding vegetation and buildings,props etc. I rarely approach a scene with the idea of being able to move the camera anywhere within it. The option of being able to export Bryce models and scenes might cause me to completely change the way I do things. The idea of being able to export game levels(or characters) excites me too!

Attached Link: http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm

It's something you'd get very used to if you've ever used Atmosphere, or 3d Game Studio, since the player has free movement all round the scene. Playing with something like 3d Game Studio is very educational!! the beginner's edition at $49 is the best value anywhere :o) Trial edition available as well. It's easy peasy. lol, once you have to be able to move freely round a scene you start seeing why pc games have so many walls, unscaleable mountains, rivers, cliffs, islands set in the middle of the sea etc. It's a different kind of thing from doing a static render, or an animation that moves only withing prescribed boundaries. But.......great fun!! You can put together a decent-looking shootout game in an hour, and it's a helluva thrill. Most game-making software has the ability to run scripts that automatically fill in landscape in front of the player as he/she moves. I'd recommend having a play with Gamestudio demo, it's very easy to navigate through as you build (just walk around in the 3d window using arrow keys). Textures need to be to the power of 2. You'll get a small wad with it, though. There's a lot of free models supplied as a starter kit when you buy - wizards, knights, swords, animals etc.

I'm in the process of creating a 3:04 animation in Bryce. With on scene coming from poser because I'd like a face to animate. The animation has 8 cuts and I'll probably assemble it in QuickTime Pro. However, the only way I know of making it 360 navigable is using QuickTime VR.

<strong>bandolin</strong><br />
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<p><em>Caution: just a hobbyist</em></p>

Unless I have something specific in mind(subject matter), I start with a DEM file and open the Terrain editor and futz with it a bit(since I mostly do landscapes), then I add the ground texture, then create/copy a second terrain on top of the first(go to the Attributes panel a raise the second terrain by 1/100 over the first terrain) then add a texture with a transparency to that. I might add a third terrain in the same manner. Then I add trees, grass, etc. The terrains are generally very hi-res(2048), and I almost always work and render from the Directors view. Lastly I add the imported meshes(generally someone else's as I don't model). I will sometimes widen the field of view from the default 60 to 70.

Message edited on: 09/27/2004 13:16

Director's view? Wow, Tom, I always thought that view was there just to annoy me when I selected it by accident. :^) I do use all of the other views, orthographic to line up objects and camera view is where I test render, at 4rpp for speed until I'm ready for a final. I always start with the camera pointing directly north (toward the top of the screen in top view), and change the camera view to lessen the distortion effect. Honestly, I really don't "get" director's view. Dopey moi. :^)

@tjohn,....I was using Bryce for a year before I discovered you could get other views,...so it's what I got used to, talk about dopey !!!!! My mama didn't raise no idiot,.....she rasied a moron !

errr...what was that drac?

:^)

I have just gone back to completely re-doing an image I did almost 3 years ago. Its an indoor scene and I did completly build the room, so I could work out which viewpoint looked best. Never done it with an outside scene though. And I have to admit that at the time I wasn't au-fait with moving the camera, so actually rotated the scene around the standard camera setting. But then I am weird.

**easy there pumeco... ** yeah, I nearly said something about that, but decided it wasn't worth encouraging him ;^)

Yep... It definitely is going to be fun...I realised that I need to learn how to think Towards the future when building my scene's from now on... Before when Other Companies had Bryce I would never have thought about full Navigateble scene's,NOW with DAZ taking Over It very well could be a Reality when it comews to designing full blown Levels for Games and Video... Now here is another Question for the MASTERS OF BRYCE...That be youze Guys... When you save a BR5 scene does it save all the Materials/Textures in the file so that I can open up the Scene on another Machine that doesnt have the Textures/Materials/Photographs...?or do I have to put the Files in the same folder as the scene...?For the Life of me I cant remember...To much Partying earlier in Life I guess...I thankee for the Link pogmahone

Message edited on: 09/27/2004 15:39

Pretty sure all the materials/textures are save within the scene file. That is why it can get so big when using massive textures.

It saves everything. And I mean everything - textures and models and lights and so on. I've done several renders just by moving the BR5 file to another machine. You've got everything there and just press Ctrl+R. :-) Anyway, I suggest that you start it my way. I have a pic in my head and then start assembling the scene to resemble the imaginary pic as close as possible. It includes masking or deleting the not-needed bits, masking the floor plane, and so on. OTOH, I'm the guy who makes his models as detailed as possible, on the off chance that a detail might be what I'm really looking for in the finished pic. I probably don't need to tell you that it's a rare picture that looks like the starting idea. Just like Gog's. :-) So, imagine your panorama and start building. When you see there's something that must not be there, either delete it or mask it. Use a panoramic photo sky on a sphere, too.

Unless there has been a further announcement that has escaped my attention, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Bryce primitives will be included in the export options for Bryce5.5. Likewise with Bryce materials. Currently, a much simplified version of materials (texture map) is exported with terrains. It makes sense for anyone getting excited over the prospects for Bryce5.5 to ask a clear question of DAZ as to what the knew export features are capable. Then they'll know what to include in scene design and what not to.

I used to do the full 360 thing (back when I did castles without people), but not anymore - now its what you see is what I make ;) I tend to start off with a ground plane, then place cubes or spheres or cylinders about the scene in the places where major scene components or structures are going to be - just to get a feel for how the POV is going to work out and how objects are going to interact with each other (blocking out my scene). Then I generate the terrains and after that I pretty much set the POV that I will use. Then it just gets down to detailing - start with the biggest objects and work down to the smallest.

I tend to DELETE anything outside of the camera POV...lol...it's just easier on the RAM and the times. Ick. Hats off to you, and your brave little toaster...er...computer.

Flak- That is exactly how I set my scenes up (place primitives where stuff is going to be). I find it helps, especially when it comes to lighting, knowing that that cube (which I will later replace with a building of the same dimensions) will cause shadows over there, etc. Great minds think alike, I guess. ;)

When you save a BR5 scene does it save all the Materials/Textures in the file so that I can open up the Scene on another Machine that doesnt have the Textures/Materials/Photographs...? Although my poor old memory is bad......I defn'y remember coming across something in the manual about this. But it may have been something as simple as "make sure all reference images are in the same folder". Also, I guess if you're using a bought/downloaded material it might use an alpha mask, and that would need to be included in the folder, with correct path?

It saves everything in the br5 file. I'd prefer if it kept texture pics outside the file to keep the br5 file a bit smaller and more managable, but it doesn't :/ Jay - yeap. Its a good method :)

Message edited on: 09/28/2004 04:24

amen...