Hi Everybody.

Lets post our WISH LIST FOR BRYCE 6.

1. Plug into 3d MAX.

2. ROADS FEATURES:
   From barely a dirt path, to Norman Bates SCARY back
   roads, to city streets, to freeways, and even
   parking lots, and AIRFIELDS!

3. ( Dream list ) NUDE KEANU - pose him in your
   favorite scenes. Celebrity type, male character your
   female models will love ( Males, too - WINK wink! )

Dreamin......

Kathy

Count me in, especially on points 3 and 2 (in that order).

I dont really need a plugin for 3Ds, but an export function would be greatly appreciated. Hell, if you can export a terrain with several thousand polys, why is it so difficult to export a box with just 6? Booleans that disappear, leaving only the resultant figure. I dont need my scene files clogged with "negatives". And something to link Bryce with Poser animation. Its patently absurd that these two companies havent allowed this to happen.

If you want to link Poser Animation and Bryce I have a plug-in for that: "Susanna Poser Animations to Bryce" Check out www.datamike.com/susu.htm

Vegetation as found in World builder, IE: real looking grass and bushes. And yes the ability to import 3D Studio Max files would be very nice. The road feature would be excellent, as stated above freeways with off ramps, airfields old dirt roads that are EASILY created would be a great selling point along with the vegetation would take this already great program up to a higher level.

Joke, that is PC specific. Both Poser and Bryce began as Mac platform software, and to have something that works for those of us Mac people who made this quirky little program into something far beyond what Kai Krause originally intended would be greatly appreciated. BTW, Brom, unless were talking about two different things, I can import 3DS files. Isnt that what a Studio Max format is?

Hi Virtual site, I'm pretty new to max, but I think 3ds is really the OLD model format. The newest format is MAX ( for me 4 ) This has scene information as well. ( I think camera, etc, ) Now, I really want BRYCE to Plug into Max, not just ordinary import/ export, so I can have the Bryce terrain and animated skies in Max. ( I think this is how World Builder now works. Anybody know? ) Kathy

These are maybe already in v5? [I only have v4] a) Easy way to import all the texture maps from Poser. b) Way to copy all the textures from a group to another group. c) Way to restart a Render to Disk if it crashes. d) Way to import a matrix for a whole collection of objects, (so I can do arithmetic to make beads along a strangely shaped string).

Virtualsite yes kathyb is correct the format Studio Max uses is called a Max file. They can be imported if you use 3d exploration and convert it to something compatible with Bryce. 3ds is a different file altogether, whether it was how Studio Max used to save files before I'm not sure. I know 3ds are more common though. Poser I think can save as a 3ds file along with other apps

I want to see: 1. L-System capabilities 2. Saved (world file) file compression or reduction...96mb for a tree, water, and 2 terrains? 3. Faster rendering 4. Faster rendering 5. Being able to export objects that were just imported 6. "Liquid drawing" capabilities (allows us to draw our own objects such as trees and terrains [much like how KPT Gel works]) 7. Faster rendering Maybe the re-iteration on faster rendering should mean something?

BTW, Kathy: Keanu? No way. Brad? After the spread in Vanity Fair, now were talking!!!!!! (I cant believe that guy is 37. You just know theres a portrait rotting in a closet somewhere!) =)

I want an assortment of brushes in the terrain/lattice editor. Its great right now if you like round. Imagine the power of the TE if there were more brush choices. Brushing in something like Matisse or PS and exporting to the TE in Bryce looses a lot because those programs export in 256 gray scale whereas the TE has far more shades to work with. Yeah, faster renders would be nice. I just upgraded to a 1.4g athelon and found my renders to be three times faster than the old 550 athelon. At least Bryce is true to its word on being processor dependent. How about multi processor capability? Oh, and before I forget, more brushes. Uh, did I mention... MORE BRUSHES? Oh yeah, I did mention more brushes.

Personally, I think Bryce and 3d MAX are TOTALLY incompatible at this point. I don't see how they can interact at all. ( anybody know?) I mean the only posts I see are people modeling in Max, and using Bryce as the renderer. Well forget that - thats old news. Max has many new hot renderers now. The only need for BRYCE is INPUT to max as a terrain / sky generator. But they fail totally at that. As far as Bryce 5, I cant export a "scene" to Max. bryce will export SOME of the primitive objects to 3ds. But not all for some strange reason. So Big deal. Now, that Susanna looks like one of the best ideas yet. Anybody tested that one? Poser is MUCH more production friendly at this point than Bryce. I think Bryce is going to LOSE more market share to Vue, Terragen, and WB, unless they wake up quick. Corel has banner ads all over the 3d sites. But no pro takes Bryce seriously, for these basic reasons. Kathy

I thought Bryce was aimed at non-pros, hence the nice price point. ;) I dunno. Renders in other programs always seem plasticine and flat. Bryce just has a nice quality to it, although Vue is getting to be almost as good, render wise, and their vegetation tools definitely outstrip Bryce any day. 1) Would be nice to have the option to set a global/default ambience setting. If there is one already, I can't find it. 2) Vegetation. Vegetation. Vegetation. 3) Basic in-program painting tools. 4) Wave/Ocean lab. 5) Weather lab.

Anyone who can afford Max can pay someone to write their own plug-in. Here are some basic useful things: 1) Read .pz3 files (should be in 5.1, not 6); 2) Model curvature of the Earth (this is REALLY needed); 3) Render in background facility; batch renders; 4) Non-tree vegetation (as mentioned above); 5) Group texture copy (when groups have same constituent parts). I like the idea of a wave lab and weather lab.

We already can do background and batch renders; thats been around for some time. Same with group texturing, unless I misunderstand what youre asking for. "Model curvature"? I dont quite understand what you want here: an infinite plane that arcs somehow?

Hi kieraw, As far as Price point, Vue and Terragen are both cheaper than Bryce. ( Terragen is FREE! ) Vue has a lightwave plugin and so does Terragen. I guess they feel the life of the product benefits by other uses. WB is more expensive, but does plug into poser, lw , and max. Also Poser is not exactly a high end expensive app, but has increased in popularity with their plug ins ( to everything, but Bryce THE SAME STORY! ) Hi Phantast , well yes, I would pay someone for one. ( reasonable. ) Who? And how would they write it? I think ( anybody know) Bryce prevents this somehow by not releasing code. that Susanna plug in looks to be a clever way around this, more than a "partnership" with Bryce. Just my 2 cents. Kathy virtualsite: I wondered why Brads "grandfathers" picture was in my basement. teehee.

So, Kathy, is there something about you and Mr. Pitt you wish to share?? =)

Well ......... I have felt guilty all these years about this secret.......so you caught me in the RIGHT mood. Okay, Yes.......I will now reveal.....for all the world to see........ That Brad and I are........ ........ [[ TRANSFER INTERRUPTED ]] ............... ......... .... ...... so there you have it all! And I will never repeat it again. Baring my soul, Kathy

For my two cents' worth, Corel should include a user manual in their next release of Bryce. I contacted Corel's Customer Support by telephone yesterday, because I did not receive a user manual with my academic purchased version, and was told by a live customer support rep that Corel does not ship paper-based manuals with Bryce. Period. So, Clay, if you have a spare Bryce 5 manual from your beta-testing days with Corel lying around, I would sure appreciate it! Please contact me at laptop@email.com

I have a paper manual .. Think they just meant with the academic variety.

If Bryce can batch render I've missed that. I've never found a way to get Bryce to render without running in full screen mode. Curvature is simple: bring up Bryce, turn haze off, put in some cumulus clouds. Note the way they go all the way to infinity getting smaller and smaller unless you have haze on? You can stand in Saskatchewan and you won't see that, because the horizon is about 4 miles away. In Bryce the horizon is at infinity, which looks very unrealistic. Vue has been able to model the curvature of the earth since v2 - why not Bryce?

From vers 3 on, batch rendering has been available. You put your "to be rendered" files in a folder, drag the folder to the application to set it off, and away it goes. This may be a Mac-only function, but its been there.

1. A true horizon - it should not be an infinite plane, its suppose to curve slightly, so make it a 'create' option. 2. global radiosity ( is that the term ) so the scene can be made more 'real' - I drool at the Lightscape pics. 3. metaballs that you can convert to other shapes, like we can already do with cubes and spheres etc... 4. wrap-around fog ie a volume that can be moulded around objects.

Bryce 5 has Radiosity. I would like to see Metaballs that can take volumetric textures ..Great smke and all that but ti can't be done now.

Seconding: 1 - Object and mesh exports. The modeling in Bryce is so easy; it is frustrating to have to do things in other programs, yet an easily-made Boolean combo is stuck inside Bryce if I want to render it in another application. 2 - Choice to actually trim objects with a Boolean, rather than having a huge combined object that is much harder to manipulate. At the very least, the negative portions should have an option to be invisible unless ungrouped. Other items I haven't seen here: 1 - Right-click menus 2 - A list of all objects in a scene 3 - In-scene manipulation of texture maps, allowing the user to physically move a TM around on an object with the mouse. Should include rotation (and, of course, right-click access to the texture editor). 4 - Ability to group objects with different materials, and then perform a Boolean subtraction or intersection of the group that doesn't affect the materials along the points of intersection; would make it a LOT easier than having to Boolean each object and then align everything afterwards. 4 - Lathing 5 - Extrusion of primitives or 2D drawings along a path 6 - Edit menu for things like the "spring;" it would be handy to resize its cross section. Would be a quick & easy way to put a railing on those spiral staircases :-) 7 - "Convert to mesh" command for primitives 8 - "flight simulator" for camera/object movements, that allows fly-throughs with a joystick or other controller, and can record the "flight" for playback and motion control compositing (does ANY 3D program have anything like this? It seems it would be an extremely easy and useful way to get natural camera or object motion, as opposed to just being able to create a timeline path or do everything numerically. Odd that we have an entire industry which uses 3D programs to model joystick-controlled games, but no program that allows the user to move through a scene or move an object in the same way ... :O ) Caveat: I'm still fairly new to Bryce (5), so if anyone knows of ways to do the things I've listed, please feel free to tell me; I just haven't seen anything like these abilities, and they have nearly all been sticky issues for me.