Just wondering what is the best method to go about making greebles? Ideally an all Bryce solution.

Reason I'm asking is it seems I shall need a spaceship for the Old Stuff challenge, and nothing looks older on a spaceship than one that's all greebled. Gives that manufactured look when it's new, and aged look when it's crashed on barren sand dunes.

I seem to recall that one of the Gurus made a ton of greebles recently...............

oh...was gonna suggest Blender (one of the few things I can actually do with it..;) free, and I have a greeble (discombobulator) tutorial in Tutorials.

Somehow with an all-Bryce solution, the word 'replicate' is likely to come into the conversation..;)

Yeah, but none fit what I need to do. Sometimes, believe it or not, one has to start from scratch to make something original.

Well, far be it from me to correct or undermine His Eminence's advice,(being a heretic and all) but if I wanted to make spaceship greebles using an all Bryce solution I would consider using many of the shapes in Bryce's Imported objects library.      You could arrange cubes, cylinders, octagons etc. and do a top view altitude render in a square document. Then you could apply the altitude render to a terrain/lattice of the same resolution. You could also apply any materials you wanted to the various shapes and do a regular top view render which you could apply to the terrain/lattice as a texture bitmap. The advantages to using a terrain are that you can easily add damage to your greebles, or ship's skin, and the edges are already naturally beveled. Then you could finish it off by adding some of MadMax's "smartpipes" for conduits and piping. This is a topview render of a greeble terrain I made using only native Bryce objects. Hey Bryster ;-P

Hrm, well, time to roll up my sleeve, put away the scythe, and just plunge right in with the terrain editor.....

Yep the TE can be used to create good greebles - especially if you edit a grey scale in apackage that lets you graph the grey scale fills (if you know what I mean!)

I'd go with blender though it's free, and I'm convert! (waits for Bryster's cry of Herecy!)

Or.... do a random scatter/resize of cubes, etc. in the air, then 'drop to ground level", then take a piccie of the resulting mess from the overhead camera....Should be sufficiently greebled thusly.

The best way to get greebles in bryce is to paint them using Black and white .. and apply that pic as an elevation map in the terrain editor.. you can create amazing stuff using that method.

Take a look at my gallery.. 

Of course it's a lot simpler to use PS, or some other image editor to paint greyscale heightmaps! I was merely responding to the request of "an all Bryce solution" showing an example of how you could possibly make heightmap greebles using only Bryce, plus it's more fun to tweak TheBrysters nose. ;-P

jesus, all-bryce solution? i'd suggest making some out of terrains and textures.. there used to be a free texture site with lots of scifi stuff in it, including 2d greebles.

m

I like TE->Render->Save Image, then use the saved image as the elevation map for the terrain approach. Mainly because I suck at digital painting. I also use photographic textures in this way.
Works particularily well when you use the same image for both the elevation map and the texture of the terrain. Sometimes editing the texture part with a image editor is advisable. You can also optimize a reflection, specular, or whatever else map you want off of the base image.

I still prefer to paint heightmaps :-p.. what is the most important, the method or the result ?

Hey Danamo my old friend how R U?

Really take a look at pidjy's galleries. He has doen soem impressive work using that technique. Original moron has a number of nice greebles and at sci fi meshes Ozylot has a bunch made in wings. A number of approaches you can use. The terrain one is works well but is a bit different from normal modeling. Otherwise you can make small greebles in another app and import them use a modular system like Ozylot or original morons work. then you can get a lto of milage out of it. There is also the pure texture route too.

Lol, no question Pidjy, it is usually easier to paint a heightmap. I'm doing well, and it's very nice to see you around here again my friend! :biggrin: I'm not really a Bryce purist. Like you, I care more about the result and not the method. Besides, you are one of the all-time Gurus at Bryce terrain/lattice modeling.
@Dann-O, You're "Preaching to the Choir" when it comes to Pidjy's gallery. I've long been a fan. :thumbupboth:

i want his babies...

Okay, after much consideration of all the feedback ya'll gave on this, I think I shall go with the terrain method. The goal is to make a hollowed cylindar with all sides greebled. Picture a huge spaceship. My angle of attack shall be to make an arc in a paint program (white on black) then import into the TE. There I shall elongate the terrain to have this long arc. Then greeble it with different cubes and other objects Rosemaryr suggested. Then copy it several times to make a cylindar with all sides greebled. I think I'll use a terrain instead of a cylindar object b/c there's a lot of additional effects the TE can do to the terrain. In the freebie section there was a spaceship texture mat which might work with the greebles too, to add finer details. Anyway, if this doesn't work then I'll try other methods mentioned here.

Thanks all! Very helpful. It's really fun/useful to see lots of ideas getting tossed around.

really the easiest solution to all of this is to beg and plead with a friend who has greeble to make you a simple greebled cylinder.. imo.

:)

I dunno about that. Sometimes begging and pleading are among the most difficult things for someone to do.

I tested AC3D and its greeble function works very well...a bit pricey though making only greebles; an interesting thing is that you can define your own greebles/nurnies in AC3D and apply them to a surface...unfortunately I can't figure out why it doesn't work for me. :-(