Forum: Bryce


Subject: Grayscale pixel levels to heightmap interpretation in TE

Quest opened this issue on Mar 13, 2006 ยท 23 posts


Quest posted Wed, 15 March 2006 at 11:45 PM

Sorry Skiwillgee, I couldnt get here sooner but looks like Miden has filled you in on the proper technique. Hey Miden, how you doing? Its been awhile, nice to see you around again hope all is well. To take it a step further, once in PS and youre done doing your refinements, make sure you change your color mode from grayscale to RGB, otherwise you might get a format problem, then select all copy to clipboard (Ctrl+C) and switch back to the Bryce TE and paste, Ctrl+V and youre ready to display your changes. Further yet, It surprises me how even among old Bryce veterans how they dont realize the power of the TE when it comes to the Paint Effect option in the Brush behavior panel. By simply holding down the spacebar while clicking any of the Editing Tools panel options and letting go of the spacebar (the option clicked on stays lit and youre placed automatically in Paint Effect mode), such paint features as Eroded, Spikes, Mounds, Dampen, Smoothing, Gaussian Edges, any of these options including any of the Fractal sub-choices and even the Picture feature can be used to paint directly on the terrain in the editor. You can further control the size of the brush and the amount of brush flow so that you can add a mound or two here, several spikes there then add a little erosion along one side of the terrain: One edge too sharp? No problem, spacebar+click on smooth, a little brush resizing and flow control, the problem is gone. Got to get in tight in a tiny area, use your zoom option. Got that terrain all set but want to combine it with another, Ctrl+C, send it over to PS and save it to disk. Create your new terrain, piddle around with the Editing Tool options to your hearts content and click on the Pictures tab. Click directly on the first window, poof present terrain is there (may be there already when you open the tab. Click load on the second window and load your saved terrain and blend, click and hold in the third window and you can view your results in the preview display, hit Apply and you have one terrain composed from two. Two isnt enough, do the whole thing again and now you have one terrain composed from three prior terrains. With a little patience you can really go to town on this. Further stuff you can do in outside editing packages: Zhanns Art-Werx waterfall tut Calyxas simple road Calyxas swooping road Enjoy!