Hi, there are times when that bump in the middle of the trees generated by Bryce 5 makes them unusuable for certain scenes, and trying to get it out is a lot of work, you can model a new tree in the time it takes to edit out the trunk... so, has anybody figured out a less time consuming way to edit this???

Just thinking out loud here, but would rendering a mask for the tree work? Then in your paint program, you could paint out the bump with black, then apply the mask to the image? -darlisa

You can just bury the tree deeper in the ground - maybe so the upper half of the bump is visible so it looks like the swelling above the roots.

When I got home this evening, I created a tree, rendered, it, then rendered a mask. I opened the mask in Paint Shop Pro, and smoothed out the bump. Next, I opened the tree render, duplicated the layer and applied the mask to the tree. Then I selected the original layer, applied the mask, inverted it, did a bit of smudge where the bump still showed, made sure both layers were visible, and voila, a straightened trunk. Just did this quickly, so there's probably a quicker way to do this, but it didn't do too badly. -darlisa

I wonder when Corel is going to fix this - the tree bulge was supposed to be fixed by 5.0.1. Probably the fastest way to fix it in post would be with the good old rubber stamp in Photoshop. Make a selection where you want the trunk to be straight and use the cloning tool to dab in the parts of the background where you don't want the tree bulge.

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Hi there thanks folks, thanks Jelisa... That definitely is a good way around it, but I'm really interested in using the 3d trees in bryce... :) I've used trees as alpha planes for years... What I do right now is create trees in Painter as 2d/3d forms, using the materials from digarts (some of which work with psp)... In that way, I can create any tree I want... But sometimes I like to use he 3d trees from Bryce, and so far, that bump in the middle is a problem.... For the 3D, one way around it, is by using metaballs to cover up the trunk and model it till it looks nice.. But this takes up too much time... I just figured maybe somebody had come up with a quick way to smoth out the bump... By the way Jelisa, you may want to check out the stuff from Digarts, I'm including a link for a tree I created with their materials in Painter...

Tradivoro, it's funny you should mention that way to fix it - I came up with the same fix myself. I was originally about to ship my b5 trees and then I noticed this problem. My eye for quality told me I wouldn't ship my trees in the store until I found a fix and I did. Enclosed are before and after images showing the fix on one of my pine trees - the Giant Sequoia. The trees should be available for purchase in the Renderosity store within the week. I've been working on these 10 trees for weeks now and they contain custom DTE textures that match the real tree bark. Unlike the 'presets' that ship with b5, these trees match the real ones for bark, colors, scale, shape, and texture. Let me know what you think.

btw - I also like and use Digarts trees for Painter. They make excellent background trees. B5 trees make excellent trees you can put right up to the camera.

Yeah, I agree with you that B5 trees in the foreground and the Digarts trees in the background, althogh some Digarts trees can look pretty impressive... As I look at your work, I think you got a great thing there, but you're also running into the same problem I ran into which is, creating taper... Right now, the tree on the right looks a tad elliptical, whereas if you put the metaballs right after the bulge you'll get more of a natural taper, but the roots will look funny.. But you don't have to show the roots, at least the tree won't have that funny bulge... Also, how are you going to export the trees, just out of curiosity??? Unless you're thinking of just selling the textures??? Anyway, I think you got a great idea there if you can export the trees, which I don't think you can, cause that's one of the limitations of the program... Maybe you're going to sell them as alpha planes?? Also, I've found that the shorter the trunk, the easier it is to get around that problem... Some trees don't exhibit that at all, like this one...

Thanks tradivoro. You're right - getting the taper right is what is taking so long. Also - the stupid true metaballs don't play well with the ones generated on the tree - if the old trunk touches the new one the two textures don't smooth with each other. Leave it to Corel to create some kind of hybrid metaball for the trees - LOL. This forces me to make a kind of metaball tube (condom - LOL) around the original trunk and it is even more work to do this, but it blends seamlessly. Also, I'm keeping the roots, because it is nice to have them slightly exposed for older gnarlier trees and you can always bury them if you want. The trees I sell will only be for Bryce5 users and they will be in .obp format - which forces me to sell them one tree at a time, because the set is too large to be downloaded at Renderosity. Again - if Corel would have made the parameter files exportable (DUH) I could have sold them as a pack as I originally intended. Yeah- I've been noticing that the shorter trunk trees get around the bulge problem - I think it has to do with the length and girth of the trunk. Oh well back to the getting the tapers right - they are getting close now. Nice tree.

Ok, right, as obp's... I totally forget that format of bryce, cause I'm always dealing with obj, and 3ds... Another thing I was thinking is modeling a trunk in Rhino, which can then just be fit to any tree so that it covers the trunk... I gotta see how that works... and you're right about the metaballs.. It's so much work just to get one tree right, that's why i kind of forgot about it for a while... And posted cause I figured, somebody out there has got to have the same problems... Well, I wish you luck with your project and hope that people respond... On the good side though, this tree generator of Bryce's is very cool, and it's almost there, except for this bump in the tree business... but other than that, you can definitely get some great trees out of it... Hopefully, before the end of the year, corel will have an update that eliminates that... The problem is corel just has so many fingers in so many pies that they never came up with.. I mean, they have painter, they have Wordperfect, the have Kai's stuff, they have Bryce... I imagine Photopaint, which I own, works well cause they came out with it from the git go... Or maybe I'm wrong there... Let's hope they come out wiht a fix soon... :)