Attached Link: Why Bryce?

I hope this doesn't p*** off too many of you, but I figured this was the place to get honest answers. The question: Why use Bryce? I'm reviewing Bryce5 for a Canadian publication and suddenly, after the second all-night render of a simple (I thought) landscape, it suddenly hit me...The emperor has no clothes!!! Why would you want to use Bryce? Is it because it's cheaper than other landscape programs? Is the lighting better? Is it because there wasn't a slower rendering program on the planet? Was it because you spent so much time figuring out those stupid Kai tools (to move up and down, move your mouse left to right)? Sorry, but I don't get it. Everyone seems to import objects from other programs (Poser in particular) because it's so hard to make anything in Bryce unless you happen to be Wappen or Munns. So what's the deal with Bryce?

The lighting controls are infinitely superior to any other program out there, IMHO. If you look at some of the recent images in my gallery, youll see that lighting is very important to my work, and Bryces lighting capabilities are sine qua non when it comes to the kind of subtlety I need. Beyond that, theres just a certain feel, for lack of a better word, to a Bryce render that I cant get in any other 3D software. I use perhaps ten to 12 packages, depending on what I need, but I always come back to Bryce for the final presentation render. Yes, its an inexpensive program, but it has enormous capability, and the fact that I create my raw models (sometimes) in other (far more costly) programs doesnt deter from the fact that you simply cannot beat the look of a Bryce render.

Hi Giddings, I can't speak for other people but I use Bryce because it's fun and intuative. It's the only software package I was able to use right from the box and get reasonable results. I work a lot on greyscales and Bryce ( I use bryce 2 btw ) handles everything very well with the minimum amount of fuss. I'm by no means a bryce master but with the exception of 1 image, I've made all my own models. I'm sure Bryce isn't the ideal package for everone but I think it is for me. Cheers GG PS in my opinion, the emperer is over dressed. :)

Bryce is not a modeling program like for instance 3DMAX or Rhinoceros. Therefor you are forced to use other models (like poser models) if you go beyond creating landscapes. That's why Bryce is so much cheaper.... I use Bryce because 1: it's realy,realy easy to use. 2: It gives me complete control over the materials I use in a scene. I do agree that Bryce is not superior in rendering time. But that I take for granted and there are ways to bypass that also...

I model in Rhino and need a renderer that I can afford. Bryce does the job. I have issues with it too, particularly with the interface, but Im gradually getting used to it. Its not half as irritating now as it was when I began. And the renderer is not bad, IMHO, and the material and texture editors are actually very good. Also, Ive seen some really first-rate images produced with Bryce (as well as a large amount of really awful ones, but thats true of any program), so its quite possible...
Its not the fastest renderer on the planet, thats obvious, but Im not in that much of a hurry, anyway :)
/JuanAntonio

" it suddenly hit me...The emperor has no clothes!!!'

??????!!!
DID YOU READ THE BRYCE 5 FEATURE LIST??
please tell us what was on that list that you did not find
in the program.
Many people here use it asa high qualtiy renderer for
imported models.

I will be using it for quick easy space backgrounds textures for my short film i will be rendering in cinema
4 DXL.
it makes a great addition to any 3d artis's toolset .
thats "Why Bryce"

Giddings : re-read the statement above : "Beyond that, theres just a certain FEEL, for lack of a better word, to a Bryce render that I cant get in any other 3D software." There's a seductive jewel-like quality to a Bryce render that you won't find in any other app (any that I've seen renders from, anyway, and I've seen a few!). I own and like and use quite a few other apps, but I never get quite the same magical gut feeling from their renders as I do from Bryce - and yes, it does make me feel silly, as Bryce has many irritating shortcomings and peewees, but that's the way it is;-) This feel, or quality, is hard to describe, but try looking at an oil painting, and then at a a stained glass window picture, or a vintage Rembrandt and then a vintage Vermeer. One is great, the other is magic. That's "why Bryce" 8-)

Thanks for replying everyone. It's what I suspected...Bryce has a quality that has nothing to do with 'production/work flow' considerations. Once again, thanx for the input.

More 2-cents: I at least started with Bryce back with version 1 on the Macintosh, and had a love/hate relationship with it ever since. I've needed to buy every edition of Susan Kitchens books in order to figure out the features, and I'm still not getting close. However it is the ONLY application I've been able to pick up where I can easily create a whole world. If I need to model complex objects, I suppose other applications are better, but I curse everytime I need to do something in TrueSpace (please, no flames). I import back into Bryce as soon as possible. The rendering engine takes a long time because it does a good job of it. I'd like to learn (from this forum) if there are now better alternatives, (maybe Vue or Terragen?). I'd drool for a chance to play with Maya or Lightwave, just to see if I've really been missing something. If this was my job I'd maybe have different views about "production tools." But my #1 reason for using Bryce is because it is FUN.

Attached Link: http://www.annsartgallery.com/eric.htm

This is all I have to say. I spend hours in the evening after work making Bryce images. There is a cult following of tutorials out there, and a world class of Bryce artists that share their work. If you look at all that is produced in Bryce and have to ask "Why Bryce" then may I suggest you take up needle point for a hobby.

I use Bryce 4. Quite honestly, its rendering capabilities are superior to many high end programs. The only two that I feel are comparative are Lightscape and Cinema 4dXL, and even then they have a different "look" to their renders. I tend to shoot for a "painted in acrylic" look to a lot of imagery, and Bryce does a good job at that with the right materials and lighting.

giddings wrote: "It's what I suspected...Bryce has a quality that has nothing to do with 'production/work flow' considerations." I think you are getting mixed up between your subjective impressions and the requirements of an objective assessment. It would be more accurate to say that Bryce doesn't conform to your preconceptions of 'production/workflow considerations'. Most Bryce users find the production and workflow capacity of Bryce to be exceptionally good, simply because they are able to produce a flow of work without a learning curve akin to a university degree course. Those 'stupid Kai tools' you mentioned are particularly suited to non-computer/tech 'geeks' who in the real world are 'freehand' artists rather than technical drawing draftspersons. The Bryce interface enables 'normal' people to quickly become adept at operating in virtual 3D space. Nearly all the other tools are equally well thought out, providing a route to fast results with lots of accessibility for ease of creative input. A review of Bryce should at least have a perspective of how it might suit a '3D beginner', as in a non-computer savvy person. For regular people, there is probably no faster way to getting results on screen, and hardly no better way for their creativity to shine through. The worst type of Bryce review is one conducted by a Bryce newbie who happens to be a long standing skilled user of one of the advanced CAD type 3D programs such as 3DSMax, Lightwave, formZ, etc. They'll simply dismiss Bryce as a toy, having completely missed the point of it. Unfortunately for the 'professional credibility' of Bryce, it is so easy to use that a lot of casual users produce a plethora of images that have not seen much input beyond the 'default' level of the program. This is the most frequently seen output from Bryce, and many people think this is all it is capable of producing. The reality is that Bryce is capable of output that is on a par with all but the most advanced features of mega-expensive programs. Skilled users are able to produce just about any type of image, ranging from photorealism through abstract to 'painterly'. Artists like gevidal often manage to make pictures featuring all those aspects! (to move up and down, move your mouse left to right)? That's news to me. Which control is providing you with that confusion?

The "move object" tool on the Edit menu, PJF. If youre using it to move an object up, you highlight the vertical arrow, then move your mouse to the right. If this guy thinks the Bryce interface is weird, wait till he sees Amapi.

IMHO Bryce is a niche tool. Geared to a specific middle tier market. A professional production tool it is not. And the inability to export to other professional packages relegates it into this niche. It's cheap, fairly powerful and relatively easy to use. No you will not make any industry class feature films with it but that is not it's intent. Not many for profit outfits needing SW that can work in a collaborative environment will ever touch it for anything but pre-visualization purposes. A Maya, Electric Image, Softimage, Lightwave this is not. But for one off work and as a plaything it fits the bill. It is hard to find another product that does what Bryce does overall for the price. Bryce is notorious for it's snails pace renders. But if you are doing only one frame. Or fairly simple animations this is not that critical. Corel is not trying to compete with the pro packages. It has it's niche and is happy with that.

Thanks for the more detailed response PJF. I actually have a CAD background [which I find helps a lot in modeling in Rhino and TurboCad], to me Bryce is an entirely different animal. Bryces strengths for me is that it does illustration style renders better than any other app I'm familiar with. That alone makes up for any minor foibles it has: quirky interface, no export, slow rendering times, whatever. When I need a fantasy, sci-fi or architectural illustration, it's the best tool on my harddrive.

"The "move object" tool on the Edit menu..." Thanks VirtualSite. Since I very rarely use the edit menu, that explains why I hadn't come across that one. Mind you, thinking about it, the 'hold down y key and move mouse' method operates in the same way to move an object on the y axis - you move the mouse left and right. To be honest it never struck me as strange because that's the same way things work when moving objects on the x and z axes. Because pressing the appropriate key limits movement to a single axis, which may lay in any direction depending on the position and orientation of the camera, it makes sense to me to keep the operation the same for all three axes. There isn't really 'up and down' or 'left and right' in 3D space, just the three axes x, y and z.

Many folks have provided some very insightful answers to the poster's original questions. My assumption is that giddings came to this forum in an honest attempt to get a balanced perspective from folks who know the tool the best. ["I figured this was the place to get honest answers"] Is there anything else needed to round out the review? Could we help in any way with examples of what Bryce is best at? [Good place to start is the gallery.] Or show how our best practitioners organize their workflow? [The tutorials!] I'd also like to know, what was that first "simple landscape" that took so long to render? Was it appropriate for the Bryce tool? Could the experts here provide assistance on how to improve it or make the workflow better? Could the artistic concept of the scene be better handled, quicker, with another tool? This is a difficult question, as all our expertise is different on different tools. [I'd like to buy Maya someday, but I'm sure my first renders would be dissapointing, particularly after checking the bank balance.] The absolute best "feature" of Bryce is this Renderosity community. Until seeing the efforts being posted here, my renders were pretty pathetic. [Some may say they still are, but everything is relative. Actually I post mostly in Poser or Mixed Media.] I plan on using this Renderosity "feature" of Byrce for continuous improvement.

I'll agree on that. I've spent literally weeks in the Bryce gallery here dissecting images for techniques and "how they did that" analysis. Another byproduct of this has been friendships with Pinhead, Lestat and FastTraxx for picking up a wealth of "how to" info that's not found in the various books.

Pnevai: Bryce may be a "niche tool", but its become my standard for design presentations. And I have tried the others. As I stated before, nothing beats the look of as Bryce render: not even the much-ballyhooed Maya. With Maya, you are almost always conscious of it being computer-generated, but I have had clients look at my Bryce presentations and swear theyre seeing a photograph, not a model. And for my money, that is arguably the highest compliment (outside of "Wow, great design!") one can receive.

Why not? As far as yoru long render goes one thing you have to think of in Bryce is to render efficiantly. Only have the amout of antialiasing that you need. Don't use volumetrics unles you need them. Sort of like gaming graphics but thinking of rendering effects instead of polygons. I have used Bryce since Bryce 1. It is nto a do everything package. It is really too slow to do animation and the tools for animation are weak. It does rendering well and terrain well.Some modelling tools are there and can be used effectively if you lean them. Working with the lattice is an art and you should learn. The lighting effects is good the control over textures is really great. I get a lot of milage out of diffusion and specularity maps it takes away some of the computer look. Many other programs dont have mapping abilities in those channels. Also another thins is the Blended trasparency funtion that can be used to great effect. To get the most ot of it you will still need a modeller.