Attached Link: http://www.strata.com/

Well, not quite. But I found the news release on the front of this website quite interesting. DAZ and Strata are Connected partners now.... very interesting, especially the bit about - "efforts are underway to further improve the inter-connectivity between Strata 3D CX and these Connected Partner products"

very interesting.. what is strata again? are they just gonna offer free models?

Do I smell strata becomming bryce's modelling brother?

Or rendering brother perhaps.....

hmmm.... maybe that too lol

drac - strata looks like a mid level "everything" package by the looks of it, i.e. it does a bit of everything. I've left a post over at daz in their bryce announcements forum to see if there's anything that they can share with us.

A new 'Evil Empire' is forming ...

AHA!

how does it compare with wings?

Galleries -> Strata3D. Only 12 pics, but check those by LCGuy. Quite good. HDRI, radiosity... (sigh)

Some great features, a tad bit pricey by itself. Although in comparison to other bundles for comparable tasks it's not bad. Be interesting to see where this goes.

I tried strata 3D a whle back and if my memory serves me well it was actually not a bad experience. Decent modeling and materials, decent lighting. I think I managed to model or render a cell phone.

The adobe end of it looks cool.

I used Strata back in the old days. Modeling was ok. There were some good math fuctions for repeating geometries rendering is quite good. It was used to make the first Myst game. Texturing needs to be improved I have not had it in years so I really don't know what it is like now.

Shit.... NO NO NO..... Bummer... Not the way I would have wanted DAZ to go... Strata has too hard of learning curve and most folks getting used to Bryce will freak out if Strata is used as a Plugin for modeling or Rendering...:( Me..I have been pushing for Wings or Blender... I would too in a heartbeat...

SILO should be choice of modeler for Bryce 6, but again, thats just me, blubbering , lol :P

DAZ also had connections to Newtek (Lightwave), btw.....;o) AS

If I recall properly, Strata is one of the few programs that actually loads .wings files directly. So what does that tell you? Maybe there will be some kind of mishmash between Bryce/Strata/Wings/Blender that'll create a new generation of graphics programs that'll shake up the bigger names in the industry. Of course only time will tell...

Do you really think they'll put a modeler in Bryce 6? In Pendulum's concept version, they had all kinds of goodies. Do you think they can do that? Really? Well, they better. I'll stick to my good ole Bryce 5 if Noomber 6 isn't totally amazing. I don't really give a whit about Strata or it's rendering engine, Rhino and mental ray are tools enough for all the realism I need. But alas, sometimes reality isn't very artistic, at all. And when it comes to making posters and pictures, I'll probably just keep on using Bryce 5 until something horrible happens to me.

Heh. LDS, Rhino 4 will have Brazil as a renderer plugin. Combined with Penguin, you will be able to create all kinds of things in it.

Aye, Erlik, I'm still using Rhino 2, and don't see myself upgrading until I sell some damned Jewelry molds made in that program... I'm using mental ray inside Maya, and haven't ever used Brazil. But I'll be sure to check it out! Perhaps I'll skip Rhino 3 altogether and just wait for number 4?

My first Modeler was Strata back in '97 (I switched to Ray Dream when MC bought out Fractal) and while it was never a great modeler it had one of the fastest Ray Tracers on the market (important when rendering on a 133MHz system!). Strangely enough, in the March Mac Addict magazine was the demo for CX, which I've been playing around with. I wouldn't give up FormZ or Modo for it but it certainly seems to have a large chunk of what is on the Bryce wishlist. The image cap below shows some of the CX demo index and shows some of the features that might be of interest to Brycers. The SDS is not nearly as good as Wings (much less Modo or Silo) but it does offer "old school" fixed polygon modeling which is pretty good. Getting just the render and image effects stuff into Bryce would certainly bring it into the 21st century.

I am off to download the DEMO... When I used Strata it was still.... FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I understand DAZ is also out to gain a nuclear weapon.

I had an old version of Strata off the British mags, prior to Wings..that was the direction to go. It was easier than Amapi, but harder than Wings. It taught me a certain style of modeling that influences how I use Wings..
Maybe they could put Blender and winds together..they could call it bling..or maybe wender..scary thought, someones' setting up a 'wings-like' interface for Blender..;)

they are also going to include zbrush like drawing on objects in blender so i say make a bryce blender match