I was wondering if anyone could answer two Bryce questions that have me stumped. Namely: 1. How do you mix land and water together convincingly (and I don't mean just sticking a mountain on top of a water plane)? 2. Whenever I put objects in a scene or on a terrain, they look "flat" where they meet the terrain. How do you get the look and feel of real Nature--the subtle "growing out of the ground" type of effect--in Bryce scenes? Thanks in advance for any and all assistance.

I'm far from any expert or 'guru', but I did play around trying to make a 'cove' tonight after Rita's question (I usually like to do 'interiors'). I found that creating a number of terrains and altering them in the editor and then layering them, resizing them, etc.--gave me a really nice uneven shore line and changing the water material to one that reflected 'depth' showed the changes in the terrains near the water's edge. I did the same for my one and only 'sea' scene and there I used a number of small terrains for a distant shore and tilted them, rotated them, made small and large ones and moved some back some forward, gave me a rocky shore. Just a thought. Diane B

Hey there .. The was a tutorial link on R.S.O.B (can be found on the links to the right) that covered that pretty well ... Includes beaches and everything else and it is fairly easy and descriptive ..

I rarely use the infinite planes. Earth and water are not perfectly flat, so infinite planes will not give you the look you desire. For water/land images, I use a terrain (quite flat, but irregular) for water, and at least two terrains for land - often more. Since there is usually a buffer of sand or rock beach between water and grass or mountain, I use a terrain for the beach, and another on top of it for the mountain terrain. Texture each individually. Add more terrains or lattices or vegetation models for the vegetation buffer. Usually, in the real world, you have water -> sand/rock -> vegetation buffer -> land mass. This just can't be simulated with a water plane and a mountain terrain. The key is adding more terrains. -sk