I haven't used Bryce in ages, but I want to work in it again. I have some empty objest and materials presets, but I can't remember how to use them. Is there a tutorial somewhere to help me refresh my memory plz?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Moonbow

Attached Link: bryce tutes

 Go here for anything you need to know

There is some very nice things there, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything on using empty presets.

Thank you though:-)

Moonbow

Attached Link: freestuff bryce mats

 O K...first off you need some presets to import. Go to freestuff here and find some you like and put them in a folder anywhere you like. Now go into bryce and click the arrow next to the edit label which opens the materials library and find  a dir you want to populate further, click import and navigate to where to stored the file{s} and double click something/anything to remember how it's done. Whatever you clicked should automatically appear in the open library so click on a new item and click yes. I don't know if that last bit is necessary but I always do. then click the chek mark to exit. Works the same in the objects libraries.. ...

 I'm just wondering - do you have all empty presets? i.e all black?
Could it be that you didn't install them (they were  separate install with 6.x)?

I'm just not exactly sure what you are experiencing.

 now that's something i didn't consider

Like Dan says, If all your directories are black the presets haven't been installed. If that's the problem check your install disk or if you are using the free 5.5 version click here. http://download.cnet.com/Bryce-Presets/3000-6677_4-10575123.html?tag=mncol

You can add materials to any bryce directory. When you delete a material the name and prieview are disconnected but the material is still in the presets directory. Do this a few times and you can have enormous file sizes, slow loads, etc. 

Bryce gives you one empty directory called user. It has one empty file inside also called user.mat. You should always leave these empty so you can use them later. Likewise you should leave the original bryce presets alone.

Let's say you get a bunch of presets and want to import them. I have Adamites Irridescent, xray mats and sem mats, Tony Lynch woods etc. I have an adamite folder with Irridescent SEM 1, SEM 2, and xray mat sub libraries in them.

To create the adamite material tab to show up with my Architectural, clouds, metals, etc. I just went into my program directory C:Program FilesDAZBryce 5.5PresetsMaterials And made a new folder called adamites. I dropped the Irridescent.mat, SEM 1.mat, SEM 2.mat, and XRay.mat files I downloaded from the web into the folder and vola! I had those material directories the next time I opened Bryce.

Tony Lynch woods are a slightly bigger problem. Each wood is a separate material file and these files are all zipped. They have to be downloaded and uncompressed into mat files. Unless you want 192 different sub tabs you will want to import these files into a custom sub tab.

First get the files from the website and get the mats unzipped into a directory you can find.

In explorer go to the materials directory right click on your user directory and select copy.
Right Click in an open space in the materials directory and select paste.
A directory called Copy of User should appear.
Right click on the copy and select rename. Call it Tony Lynch Woods.

Look inside the newly created Tony Lynch Woods directory. There should be a single user.mat file.
Right click on user.mat. copy and paste it into the same directory.
Rename the new copy tony1, woods1, or whatever makes sense to you.

Open Bryce and open the material window.The easiest way to do this is create an object then press the M.
Pull down the materials tab and you now have a Tony Lynch Woods tab. Open it and you will see one sub tab called woods1 with all black boxes. Click on the Import button, Its the third word over on the bottom of the window.

The Import dialog box opens up. Navagate to the folder where you unzipped all the presets. Click on the first name.You now have a single material in woods1. Click import again and select the second name. Keep going till you have all the individual mats imported. Note if you click on the first name again or fifty times there is nothing to stop you from creating one or fifty copies of identical materials so keep track of your names. If you delete the duplicate the directory stays as big as it was. Delete just hides the name.

After you import and fill 30 material boxes a scroll bar appears. You can use this to drag the previews up or down but you can't see more than 30 at a time. You may want to just import 30 then create another copy of user.mat and name it woods2 and start importing into that tab. When you are done delete the empty original user.mat file from the directory.

 Well said :-)

Thank you all for your help. I was able to creat new empty prests and am slowly filling them with mats and objs from my earlier Bryce.

I appreciate the time you took to explain it to me:-)

Moonbow

 that's what the forum is for...happy to see at least one forum is functioning the way it should...way t go Brycers All .. ...