I don't know what DAZ is planning for Bryce, but unless it's some major improvements, unlike v5 (Corel) and v6 (DAZ), I honestly think the program should be made OpenSource, in fact, that is what SHOULD have happened long ago! :)

Bryce, to me is more about the USER than some damned company owning and abusing it. I recall the way Metacreations dumped it and Poser with great bitterness.

Look at how Blender has massively evolved due ot being OpenSource, it is incredibly powerful, the much needed changes to it's UI could one day see it as a major force in the amateur AND professional spheres (hey, pros don't like grossly expensive bloatware if they can find cheaper, decent alternatives hehe)

So, I don't know if the Bryce community has the mass and cohesion it once enjoyed so richly, but, if Bryce 7 isn't a really good improvement, or turns into vapourware, I seriously suggest the community try and push for it to be made Open Source! :)

DAZ makes it money from content...so if it doens't have to spend money on developer's for Bryce, but can sell more content...?

I may use another app, but the field must have competition for it to be healthy and I still care about Bryce.
I've also seen Mojoworld fade, Terragen doesn't have much use bar pure landscapes (sorry, it's not good enough for general scene creation), and Carrara doesn't have enough users to really "push" things, and none of this does any of us any good.
IMHO, DAZ really screwed the pooch by pushing Carrara instead of Bryce!

I think Bryce users should really up the heat on DAZ! make them know there's enough interest for major developments on Bryce 7, now, not vapourware maybes, or to go Open Source :)

In order for Bryce to become open source, certain parts of it need to be freed from limited editing copyrights as far as I know.

I know what you mean, silverblade. I think so. But dhama has right. The Question is, have DAZ the rights for the complete Sourcecode or are copyrights of parts holding by othe companys. On othersides when DAZ the code gives free without parts by holding other company rights. These parts reimplented quickly by the opensource community.

A word to blender. The Release of the first beta of the complete rebuild 2.5 Vesion is planning for October. One of the new rebuilds is a complete rebuild UI. Other features are i.e. NGons, Volumetric Materials, Smoke Generator, Macro-Recorder.
And mabye, in one of the next releases: Voxelsculpting.

During Siggraph 2008 I got some DAZ high-up's to at least say the word "Bryce SDK". Unfortunately, it looks like it hasn't yet been moved upon. Yup, it would take some developer time and money, yet that would be less resources than making a whole new version. I hope it is still something they will one day consider.

I am VERY doubtful DAZ would turn Bryce into open source, I mean they did pay good money to own it and there is no giant market for them for Bryce content as there is for Studio and Poser, so they really would be financially just throwing it away.

I would love to see open source happen though. I just am starting to have my doubts that DAZ will ever give Bryce another major update.

But, hey I've been wrong before. I remember saying "I doubt Corel will ever sell Bryce"...

AS

You also said Neo was finished. :lol:

 Eric Wenger owns the core code to Bryce and it's also the core code for his Artmatic app.

Remember that Bryce originally was Eric's D4 stand alone app that Kia & company slapped a slick, new interface on it  and that's about all they did for Bryce1.

When Eric and Kia decided to go their  separate ways, Eric licensed his work to the Bryce franchise (not MetaCreationsor nor later Corel or DAZ).

So Open Source would require Eric's permission, which is doubtful that Eric would give since Atrmatic is one of his primary apps.

While there's no doubt that this arrangement has often hurt Bryce, it also kept it on the market (or lose the  license) and it also prevented Dan Farr from merging Bryce into Carrara, which is one if the many things he's suggested for Bryce.

Quote -  
While there's no doubt that this arrangement has often hurt Bryce, it also kept it on the market (or lose the  license) and it also prevented Dan Farr from merging Bryce into Carrara, which is one if the many things he's suggested for Bryce.

As long as Carrara stays a long way from Bryce I would still use it, albeit not so much these days. I have Carrara, and i've extensively tried to use it, but it is so unatural to use, merging Bryce with it would only end up alienating Bryce users from it.... although I guess it would help Carrara users no end LOL!

I have Carrara and it doesn't need Bryce, imo.
I think the only thing that would be attempted to be merged is Bryce users into Carrara.

Fact is, the most 3d suites can do the same think as Bryce. Ones with Inbuild tools others needs plugins. Bryce is for Peoples great they new in 3d. Its simple (exept the material editor :rolleyes: ) and easy to learn. But ambionists hobbiest goes after a while too Vue or one of the bigplayer like maxon and so on. In Moment I think that DAZ must comes with a very big Update, or its better thats goes to OpenSource.

*       Quote:
       Eric Wenger owns the core code to Bryce and it's also the core code for his Artmatic app.

Does this mean opening Bryce's code to the public will jeopardize Artmatic app???

" Does this mean opening Bryce's code to the public will jeopardize Artmatic app???"

I can't answer that. Eric doesn't talk at all about Bryce anymore, last time I recall he made any public mention was when Corel threatened to pull Bryce off the market.

Hmmm...bryce can do abstracts the way I like them ...and MANY others too ...that no one other app can do ...i've never ssen so bright reflections and colours as in bryce ...i will NEVER abandon Bryce ...although i ocasionally do work in other apps ...don't know if it should go open source or not ...but at least DAZ could tell us what their plans is

...and in fact i thought Kai Krause was the inventor of Bryce?

Nazul
I don't do abstracts much any more 'cause I think more about "scene" creation and IMHO, good abstracts are much harder to make than a scene, as they are often the result of accidents when messing aorund then coming up with good ways to use them ;)

this is my abstract page on my site:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/artofadreamer/htm/3dfantasy3.htm

"Chain Glass" was done with Vue, rest with Bryce. Chain Glass I coudl redo I guess as that was done on old machine a few years ago and the amount of reflections/refractions was simply crazy, hehe.

Dhama,
yeah Carrara is..oh....amateurish UI, it's just not really nice. UI's though are terribly personal choices!

Bryce History as per Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)

"The original Bryce software arose from work with fractal geometry to create realistic computer images of mountain ranges and coastlines. An initial set of fractal based programs were developed by Ken Musgrave (who later created MojoWorld) a student of Benoît Mandelbrot, and extended by Eric Wenger. Wenger later met and worked with software artist Kai Krause to design a basic user interface. The first commercial version, Bryce 1.0, appeared in 1994 for the Macintosh.

Bryce 2.0, shipped in 1996, included much beyond the original notion of creating a realistic mountain range. These included independent light sources, complex atmospheric effects,  The addition of primitive forms with Boolean methods to combine them, and a revamped Texture Editor. Bryce 2.0 was also ported to the Windows platform, although the first stable version, 2.1, was not released until 1997.

The ability to animate a scene was added (in a stable form) with the cross-platform Bryce 3D (version 3.1) in 1997. A "camera object" unseen in the final image acted as the observer. The camera can be held in one place for a single image, or sent on a trajectory with images being rendered at many locations. The collection of images created along the camera's trajectory are combined to create a realistic animation simulating a journey through a dynamic world.

In 1999 Bryce 4.0 was released with major improvements in the handling of atmospheres and skies, textures and also in the import/export of objects.  In 2000 Bryce was purchased by Corel Corporation. Corel released version 5 of Bryce in 2001, which included several new features, like Tree Lab and metaballs.  Soon followed a patch to version 5.01, which fixed some bugs and added a few undocumented features. Unfortunately, that was all Corel did with Bryce, leaving it on shelves and ignoring the requests for new features. To the growing consternation of its users, Bryce was apparently dead.

However, in 2004 the software was sold again, to DAZ 3D.

In 2005, DAZ finally released Bryce 5.5 which included the DAZ|Studio Character plugin. This integration between DAZ's application for the manipulation of 3D models, DAZ|Studio, and Bryce allowed users to import content from Studio and Poser, complete with all materials including transparencies, directly into Bryce thus making it easier to have human figures in Bryce scenes.

In October 2006, DAZ released Bryce 6.0 and has released an update (6.1) this includes a Mac Intel compatible update. New features include animation import, support for dual-processor systems as well as hyper-threading, random replicate tool, advanced terrain editing, HDRI support and other tweaks. The interface remained largely the same, but with a green tint to it, and different buttons in the create palette.

In June 2007, DAZ re-released Bryce 5.5 as a freeware.

In Summer 2009, DAZ released version 3 of DAZ Studio. This version seems to break Bryce 6.1."

Kai Kruase:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Krause

Krause significantly broadened conventional notions of the graphical user interface by applying innovative design principles and providing realtime interaction for the user, neither of which were widely deployed in the 1980s because most users found them too oblique to learn and remember. User interface elements like soft shadows, rounded corners, and translucency, which are today common in Mac OS X, Windows XP and Linux, appeared already in products of his companies.

The company which he co-founded, MetaCreations Corp., began as HSC Software, which released the first version of Kai's breakthrough product, Kai's Power Tools (a.k.a "KPT"), in 1992. HSC went on to release a second version of KPT, and the first version of KPT Bryce, and several other titles before changing their name to Metatools in 1995. This name remained until 1997, when a rapid series of mergers with Fractal Design, RayDream, Specular, and RTG (Real-Time Geometry) necessitated a new identity for the growing organization: MetaCreations.

For the rest of the 1990s, MetaCreations continued to develop a wide variety of successful graphical software titles. Application and interfaces for which Krause was most directly responsible include Kai's Power Tools, Live Picture, KPT Bryce, Kai's Power Show, Kai's Power Goo, KPT Convolver, and Kai's Photo Soap and Poser.

If I can add my two cents to this conversation. I understand from the DAZ forum that a Bryce 7 is in beta right now. I'll look for the link and post it here. 

So let's keep our fingers crossed that they don't screw us over. 

I went through the DAZ forum posts and I can't find it now. I do see that they are working on the bugs. So an up-date of some kind will be out sometime soon. But I'll keep checking. I may be wrong about B7.

I think you might be wrong about B7.

There will be a bug fix update for B6.1

The only thing they have stated so far was to look into B7. So, they are considering it. (There is no B7 in beta, unfortunately).

AS

Like many programs of its era, Bryce has some very, very old underpinings. Unless they basically scrapped a lot of source code, they have to deal with layer upon layer of workarounds for long dead OOP frameworks. I know that didn't happen during Metas or Corel's ownership.

A lot of people keep comparing Bryce with Carrara - I dont get it. Ive seen some amazing work with Bryce doing non-natural scenery, but its market position has always been natural scenery. Carrara is an all purpose modeling/rendering/animation product.

The real comparision has been with Vue, which I believe caught up with Bryce around Vue 4. Bryce languishing at Corel didn't help that.

There's something else here.  Whatever the licensing issues are, millions of Bryce customers are now being harmed due to neglect of Bryce.  So how about this: whoever owns this Bryce license, just keep it, but return all the money that every Bryce user ever paid, with interest, and let the poor customers get on with their lives and find another 3D app.

Its unfortunate that Bryce is where it is today. It had a history of ownership that just wanted to squeeze every dime they can out of it and put as little in as possible. The end result was Daz acquiring it after these companies felt they achieve that end. Daz has put their effort into it and has released a few new versions. The bad news is that development has ceased and very possibly forever. The good news is that Daz is still committed to providing at least one more bug fix to make this last version as close to bug free as possible. I think that there is something to be said of a company that is willing to do this for their customers. Maybe not provide them with future versions but at least make the last version as best as possible for them.

Oh, yeah. DAZ is the best thing that has happened to Bryce, imho.

AS

a fear i have is that bryce will get too tied into daz or carrara. daz and carrara will get too expensive and bryce's improvements won't be significant without daz or carrara. why not terragen? sell it cheap and sell the little terragen dependent programs cheaper, make it poser friendly and then u have a competitor to bring down the price of vue.

IMO if you start taking out the features that make Bryce BRYCE, then you might as well call it something else. I would like to think that they will add new features to Bryce to expand upon it not extinguish it by disguising it and making it fade into some unknown program.

I hear a lot of complaining at what DAZ is or isn't doing to keep Bryce up to date. What I want to know is what features would you like to see added to Bryce that would make it a better program?

I'll start. I would love to see a Vector Shape Lab. (Vector may not be the right word to use.) But it would be something like the Tree, Lighting and Sky Labs. Only you would be able to build more complex shapes in this Lab. I don't think it would be too difficult  to add this to the program, as it would be a sub program within Bryce. I also think that this would give it back some of the edge it seem to be missing.

What else?

Well…for starters:

 The terrain editor can be expanded upon with more tools to provide better definition and sculpting of the terrains. Optional auto-terrain river and stream slope detection. 16bit grayscale import and export capability.

The material editor can certainly use some revamping to make it user friendly, intuitive and easier to compose complex and procedural textures. The ability to selectively “paint” your textures on… Perhaps add shader capability and 3rd party compatibility.

The tree lab can use some sprucing up too. It should allow for better tree manipulation perhaps allow for user spline control where the tree trunk can be given to follow the curvature of a manipulative spline curve for curvier trees. It should allow for object instancing and perhaps a feature to rival Vue’s Ecosystem (EcoBryce) with allowance to selectively paint your “EcoBryce” selections in desired locations.

The Sky lab can allow for atmospheric control and better ambient 3D cloud manipulation.

All import and export modules be brought up to date with easier predefined 3rd party import and export capability.

Faster render engine with options for either Vray or Mental Ray render ability.

Allow for object vector, edge and polygon selection and manipulation (push, pull, bend, twist etc.).

Almost forgot...user SDK. For user modular programing (plugins) and exchange capability.

Just to add a few.

It is not difficult to see which features would be needed in Bryce 7.
 

A while ago, I wrote a Bryce 6.1 vs Vue 7 Infinite article with a rather complete feature comparison. The features highlighted in red are the most interesting ones. Some of the things I noted as missing for Vue 7 have been addressed in Vue 8 (for instance the view flickering).