title says it all. found killer bryce stuff. got bryce 4 and bryce 5. wanna turn the .obp into .obj or whatever is necessary to use the items in poser. Bryce seems to only allow exporting in .obp. Any solutions? Thanks for reading, Logan

Quote from a similar thread: "If the .obp was created from primitives, metaballs and other things native to Bryce, it cannot be exported as an .obj or anything else. But if the mesh was originally imported to Bryce, it can be exported too." - linda357

Message edited on: 02/16/2006 03:35

Actually extracting data from Bryce files is fairly easy, the problem however is that it gives youi very little to actually work with. To understand this, its important to understand that Bryce is primarily a raytracer rendering engine, similar to PovRay except with a GUI rather than a SDL. Although Bryce and PovRay have facilities to import mesh objects, most Bryce models are constructed from boolean operations on primitive parametric shapes. Bryce never actually creates or stores the final constructed object in memory, what you see in the render is effectively an illusion that's created during the rendering process by calculating the points at the which the rays enter and leave various positive and negative objects. Therefore what you get from obp files and other Bryce formats is just a list of the primitive cubes, squares, cones etc. and their locations, boolean polarity, grouping etc. In order to create a physical mesh object from this information you would then have to effectively create the core of a full CSG modelling application, which is maybe 100 times more work that the simple file data extraction. The question then is why would you want constrain this code solely to the fairly small and static Bryce market when you could instead slap your own simple interface on it and sell it as an application independent modeller. Another major disadvantages about developing a Bryce (or any application)-only exporter is that you are constrained by the functionlity of Bryce itself. Even if there are more things that your modelling core can do, theres no point in implementing them as the Bryce exports will never support them and, if there are things that Bryce exports that are difficult to implement or pointless, omitting them still creates an apparent weakness in the product. Also important for Bryce modelling and export is the procedural texturing. Although its possible, to a degree, to emulate the procedurals from the information in the files in practical terms you would really need direct access to the sampling procedures in the raytracer itself in order to satisfy the requirements for a well featured export. For an application independent modeller, this isn't really an issue. Texturing can simply be left as an area that's not covered in the spec. Sometime last year my company approached DAZ with a view to possibly implementing our existing code as an exporter for Bryce, we had most of the elements for the CSG and isosurface operations and a solution for mapping onto an arbitrary CSG constructed topological surface without the problems associated with standard projections, so long as we could access the raytracer sampling. At the time we were told that the exporter work was nearly completed anyway. So maybe the next version will have a more advanced export options. Bill

Thanks for the clarification, Bill. It makes sense that the best (and probably only) exporter of Bryce objects is going to be Bryce itself.

Ah, but it is also the case that the best quality Bryce stuff that you can find was not modeled in Bryce, it was modeled elsewhere and imported into Bryce. And contrary to linda357, you CANNOT export such meshes in other formats. Bryce terrains and lattices can be exported, but if you find a cool helicopter or something that someone has released in obp format, you cannot get it out of Bryce.

well drat!!! bandolin has three absolutely beautiful versions of a trebuchet here in RO freestuff, in three different stages of launching its shot, and they are all .obp and I would really love to render them in poser :(

The only thing you can do is contact bandolin and ask, but my experience of people who release in obp format only is that they have a reason for doing so (perhaps misplaced, but anyway ...).

Actually in Bryce 5 (and 4 possibly) it should be possible to export mesh objects if you load the file into bryce and use the E button/Ctrl-D. This should apply to all mesh objects. ... at least according to the manual ;-) I think I have verified this before, but I'd need to check to be sure. Nevertheless if the object won't export, it's still likely to be connstructed from primitives in Bryce. Quite a few complex models actually are. Bill

I imported the trebuchet, and clicked E + Ctrl + D and it just made a second trebuchet in the scene. Im assuming now the E-button doesnt mean the E on my keyboard, can you please point me to the proper widget?

bandoln has responded to me already. He has gotten so many PMs requesting a poser version of this model that he is considerng going for it! His concern is it will be so high poly that it will be worthless to render in a scene including any figure at 1GB of RAM or less. Im standing by with 1.5 gigs ram and a buncha half sized char texture maps and waiting to see what I can get away with ;)

The 'E' button being one of the little icons in the column ('E' stands for 'Edit'?) next to the object when it is selected in the Bryce display window (along with the 'M' material editor. As far as I remember this brings a dialog with smoothing options, but at that point the Ctrl-D should initiate export for meshes as well. I suspect that models that are constructed for groups of meshes would need to be ungrouped and exported in parts. Still a million miles from a machine with Bryce installed so I still can't verify, this is just off the top of my head. Bill

Ive only an A and M buttons im afraid :(

huh? The E button (at least in Bryce lights) controls shadows, intensity, color, ranged or otherwise, etc. In objects it controls smoothing (or unsmoothing), degree of (that's angle, not intensity), etc.
A is attitude (orientation, distance, size, etc), M is Material (choose, go into the Deep Texture Editor [if you dare..;]), etc. Not sure where your other buttons went. There's also G (group), and U (ungroup) if you have more than one object selected.
If my trebuchet model was good enough, I'd send it along. I have it in either .3ds or .obj, if I can find it (I'm starting to have too many models..;)

According to the manual the E button is visible with lights heightfields, lattices, stones and imported meshes, i.e. it brings up the edit menu for any objects that have a general 'Editable' characteristics. Where this differs from the 'A'ttributes menu option seems fairly arbitrary. As I said though its possible that mesh objects may need to be ungrouped before they can be exported. It may be that the "imported mesh" status is somehow lost if the objects are saved then reloaded, although that would seem a bit peculiar. Bill

that's...odd. Are you using an earlier version? (doesn't really look like it, I seem to remember Bryce 4 had a 'warm color' background, or maybe it's just me. Stop over at the Bryce forum, and we'll look under the hood..;)

Rock on pakled :) This is a shot of my Bryce 5 which I dont think ive ever updated or service released. Ive been so into poser Im not even AWARE if theres been an update or service release...... BTW can anyone that does have bryce accessable grab that trebuchet from freestuff here (search for "trebuchet" and all three of bandolins models will show, its the same model with the firing beam or arm or whatever ya call it in three diff progressive stages of launch. Ive been working with trebuchet1 in this experiment.) and see if that pesky E button appears when anyone that isnt me selects any part of the trebuchet?

actually, there was a minor update not long after I got it..Bryce 5.01. Corel may still have it for download, but I haven't been to the site in some time.. hang on..

Hey thats a fine looking seige engine, and I appreciate your generosity :) I believe that it should be relatively easy with the grouping tool to create mat zones to apply wood textures on in poser! Need me to PM my email to you or should I stand by for a link?

Just to avoid confusion, I opened a blank scene in Bryce 5 after doing the 5.01 upgrade, and imported just the Super Bucky sphere. The E button appeared right along with it. For some reason, this .obp trebuchet imports without the E button and ive no idea how to enable it.

AFAICS, you cannot because the trebuchet is mainly made of Bryce primitives.

Some of the beam parts certainly look like Bryce primitive cubes, judging by the wireframes. It's possible that even if it was modelled in an external program, that primitives may been exported in a file format that supports parametrics (e.g. 3DS) and then converted directly into Bryce primitives on import, without ever going through a mesh conversion operation. Bill

Imported mesh cannot be converted to Bryce primitves, unless you use the mesh as a guideline for the placement and scale of primitives. Which doesn't have much sense.

No but the 3DS format can contain parametric objects as well as meshes. If these were exported from another application, Bryce may have translated them directly without them ever being represented as meshes in either program. Converting parametrics between programs is relatively simple, as is converting parametrics to meshes, so long as boolean operations are not involved. Bill

Attached Link: http://ogle.eyebeamresearch.org/