I'm trying to model a book with a leather cover in bryce (thank you, Cardinal, for your blessing).  I've created a terrain to use as the book cover.  I want gold leaf lettering on the terrain/cover.  Is there not some way to boolean in the letters?  I'm thinking I saw that done with numbrs on pool balls before but I can't recall how it is done.

The pic is the terrain.  Texture is 3d and not a mat.

If anyone is interested the terrain is generated from a 2d pic from a paint program.  I simply added a "leather" texture filter to a plane grey image.  Wah lah. 

Could you paint the letters on the 2d pic for the terrain?
And then have a deriviative of the greyscale height map that could put the colorations on for a diffuse map. You could probably make reflection and specular maps while you're at it.

Yes, I could, and it would indeed be simpler to just apply a photo mat to it that included lettering and use leather image as bump map, but...........   I want to do it the hard way for some reason.  I would like a model that the texture is really there and would alter its appearance with different light angles. (see image above with single radial illuminating the surface)

Could I create a rectangle, bury the lettering into the rectange as a solid, then use the terrain to negative boolean the textured surface.  I must try that tomorrow.  It's late here and they are calling for snow to start in a couple hours. 

Attached Link: http://www.armanisoft.ch/webdesign/elefont/Elefont.html

Elefont  -- your one-stop text shop http://www.armanisoft.ch/webdesign/elefont/Elefont.html Clean, simple, uses any True-type font.  It will give you the 'positive'  model of whatever text you want. 

If you want to -inset- the text into the terrain, make sure your terrain is set to 'solid' (under the Terrain Editor), and 'positive' under the Boolean properties, and that the text model is set to negative before grouping.

If you want raised lettering just set the test model to the height above the terrain needed.

I just had a go at doing a booklean of some .3ds type I imported and it wouldn't boolean out of either  a terrain set solid positive or a cube but I successfully booleaned 2 primatives. So Bryce only booleans primatives ?

Hi skiwillgee, Rosemaryr had the right idea, but she left one very important thing out. Make sure when you import your text object, (which I heretically created in WINGS3D, just to bug TheBryster) that you click the E edit button and select "Solid When Boolean Rendering". Then when you grooup everything it will carve out the letters as seen here. Cheers, Dan

I was just about to say what danamo said - that's how I did letters on a 'krystal' for a company logo - only it looked better without the letters carved out of the crystal in the end, but just *sitting* on the crystal face.

Rosemaryr had the right idea, but she left one very important thing out.

(Hangs head in shame.... goes to sit in corner for a bout of sefl-flagellation, as proscribed by the High Church of Bryce and it's Cardinals.....)

grin  Sorry!

ROFL!

Yup! Elefont is the way to go and it's one of the Blessed Apps, so you get kudos for using it in conjunction with Bryce!

On the other hand, Danamo is going straight to hell in a handbasket .. :lol:

ROFL!

Many thanks for solving that problem for this reformed heretic.....I only use dead apps now which means they've passed heresy and achieved Sainthood.. ...

for text in Bryce, I swear by Peter Sharpe's tutorial: 3D Text in Bryce

Hi Bobbystahr, It's my pleasure to be of assistance. I've remembered and had previously remarked on several of your works that you did in Imagine3D, one of those dead apps you mentioned, and later in Terragen. Sad thing about Imagine. Didn't the Company that owned It take it Private for use as an "in-house" app that would no longer be published for retail?

I used to read 3Dartist, another lamented "dead" thing, and one of the things in that mag were tutorials for Imagine, back in it's heydey. It looked like an interesting interface, and I'd seen its output, both models and stills, which looked pretty good. I never got a chance for any hands-on with it, so I don't know how it was to use. From what I've seen it was closer to Carrara as an all-around 3D ap, than to Bryce.
Take care,
Dan

The problem with IMAGINE , as I recall, was that everything had to be input by numbers AND you had to confirm by hitting the RETURN key; a rather long-winded way of doing things. In fact everything was long-winded!

I did make a rather cool anim of the starship Enterprise zooming into the black at warp, but it took forever to do.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=1947683

If you REALLY want to do it the hard way you'd use an intersect boolean. That way you wind up with two perfect fit models that you can move and scale. Your text would not be cut into the cover, as it is with using positives and negatives, it is actually an inset piece, seperate to the cover but perfectly cut into it. You can then raise or lower the scaling as you see fit. Again, not necessary but if you're looking to go the hard way....

The link is to an old post that contains a quick tut on how it works.

Great tip Claymor...will remember that for future reference. I am planning a Font Render it may just come in handy for. I am using my overly huge font collection to build models with as a lot of the picture type of fonts are really useless for most stuff I do in my commercial art work but are in fact quite handy for modeling with...now there's an idea for a challenge...Font Modeling*,* or Modeling With Fonts to be more precise.. ...