Hi All, Some of you have visited my ClydeGalleryVR (at http://www.clydesight.com/galvr ) and sent in kind comments. Thanks! I have done some reasearch into the subjuct of VR and Bryce, and as you might have guessed, once again our dearly beloved Bryce can do a LOT more than we get from the manual (it is a powerful program, isn't it?) Bryce can make CUBIC VRS! Cubic VR: QuickTime 5 and above can render Cubic VRs. Cubic VRs are the panoramic movies where you can look 360 degrees horizontal and 180 degrees vertical (full up and down). Bryce's VR panorama feature can currently make a cylindrical VR, which does the 360 horizontal bit, but has limited up and down view which is more or less controlled by the zoom feature in the VR player. But some folks have tricks to get Bryce to make Cubic VRs and it is very easy to do. Harland's New Media Web site. ( http://www.harlands.com/QTVR/cubic.html ). David C. has come up with a solution to making CUBIC VRs! The trick to getting this to work in Bryce is to get the camera FOV to just the right setting (David shows you what that is in his tutorial). To do a cubic VR in Bryce, you need three things: 1) The correct camera FOV settings. Harland's has that, and I don't want to steal their thunder, so drop by and see what David C, has done! There are samples. You will need QuickTime 5 to view them. 2) A set of six "flat" images rendered from Bryce. The document set-up should be set to a square ratio (1:1) and the camera should be in perspective view, not panorama view. The Harland tutorial tells you what to do to make and number these images in the correct order. 3) A program or utility that allows you to assemble the six images into the faces of the cube that a Cubic VR needs. Apple has a utility: MakeCubic, but I am not sure if it can be used in Windows. (I use a MAC). There is a better solution (I think, anyway) for MAC users. ClickHere Design ( http://www.clickheredesign.com.au/ ) has a very inexpensive ($35) program that will assemble your Bryce images into a CUBIC VR. While Apple has the free utility MakeCubic, the CubicConverter program seems to me to be more intuitive and offers additional features for a reasonable price. And there are free downloads to take it for a test drive. One big advantage of making Cubic VRs from Bryce is that you have better control of your final image quality. Since the images you render from Bryce start out flat, you can take them into an image editing program and sharpen them or make corrections without having to worry about the severe distortion you run into in a pano render. You can even add text and use some other features your image editing program offers, as long as you are careful with your lighting. The images will be properly warped when you convert them, and this is a very fast process on faster computers. As long as you save your "master images", if you don't like the results, you just go back and change them, then re-convert. If you are interested in this technology, try these links, I think you'll find them helpful. They had me up and running Cubic VR in a short period of time!

Attached Link: http://members.cox.net/cga

Great site man very helpful and interesting :)The ClydeGalleryVR great job.

Attached Link: http://www.clickheredesign.com.au/products/cubicconnector/

Here's a tutorial by florence: http://fartur.free.fr/galerie/tutorial/index.html The windows version of apple's makecubic is called gocubic. It's free as well. I have cubic converter, and it doesn't work as well as the free makecubic utility (the cube faces have to be manually inputed unlike makecubic) However, by the same company, I also have cubic connector, which allows you to add hotspots and connect your cubic movies, and it also has controls for movie FOV, resolution, blah..blah... very easy to use and very good deal: http://www.clickheredesign.com.au/products/cubicconnector/ I also reccomend downloading apples other free program called "make object movie." I made this using bryce and that program: http://www.renderring.com/hdri/bloblinks.html here's a few example movies i made, most under 350k: http://renderring.com/comcomovie.mov (hotspots!, low resolution) http://renderring.com/green2000.mov http://renderring.com/skytest3.mov

Hi Again,

Madmax: Great images!

CubicConverter 1.0.4 can bring in multiple files as easily as MakeCubic. There is a trick to it:

1. put your cube face files in their own folder (makes things easier) and number them sequentially in the proper order for the four faces, top and bottom. i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6

2. In CubicConverter, pick the Cube Faces ICON, not the Cube Faces TAB.
   The program will provide a dialog box to find the files. Navigate to the folder with the images and open it. Then do a Select All (command + A is the easiest) and click on the word: Choose.

Viola, the images are all imported at once, ready for conversion.

MakeCubic is a good utility, but I feel a bit more comfortable with CubicConverter. And, it also allows a more flexible adjustment of the output compression than MakeCubic.

Also, don't forget the Preferences in CubicConverter. That's where you adjust the compression for the VR when it is in motion. Again, it has a lot of flexibility.

In either case, it's whatever one is most comfortable with.

These are a couple of tests I did back when we were beta testing Bryce 5: http://www.phase2.net/claygraphics/cubicqtvrexamples.html There are various ways to do Cubic QTVR, but it looks like yall got it covered quite nicely:-)

Hi All, Well, I think it's time for "Stupid Bryce QTVR Tricks" Are you ready to play? ( I hope I don't get thrown out of Renderosity for this one!) Here we go. Let's face it, at one time or another, haven't we all wondered about the burning question "What would it be like to ride inside a corroded water pipe?" Of course, we all have. It's only natural. Well, thanks to "Stupid Bryce QTVR Tricks", our wonderment is over. This is an easy file to create, almost a no brainer, based on the QTVR cubic stuff we have been discussing. Itm takes longer to read how to do it than to actually do it! 1) Launch Bryce and make a big cube. Depth doesn't matter, height and width does. (You could also use a 2-D plane if you like) Set your camera to the magic 112.5 FOV. 2) Set the document dimesnions to square (1:1). Pick a small size for the moment, maybe 300 pixels. 3) Point the camera directly at the big cube so the cube occupies the entire camera space. The camera should be centered on the cube face, and pulled away from it some distance (the farther away, the larger the diameter of your final pipe). You don't need the ground terrain, so you can delete it, and you don't need the sky, so you can turn it off. Be sure fog and haze are off, so you get a really clear image. 4) Apply the most disgusting materal to the cube you can find. I chose "freshly dug grave" for my image. Fuss with it until it is sufficiently gross yet has sharp detail. Maybe put some specularity in so it appears wet (this is a water pipe after all). 5) If you want to make the pipe look rusty, you can color the sun. Adjust the sun sphere so there is a pretty sufficient amount of light on the cube in your camera view. 6) Now for the tricky part. Go to document set up and change the dimensions to 1200 pixels square. The image has to be huge for this to work. 7) Render the image (this may take a few minutes). Once the image is rendered, use the FILE menu to choose "Save image As". You get a lot of file format choices. I used PCT, but you can use anything as long as it is NOT compressed. You're done with Bryce. Wasn't that easy? You only need one image for this stupid trick. Now for the VR part. I did this with CubicConverter, but it may be possible to do it with MakeCubic as well. I have to tell you what to do with CubicConverter because with that program, you can take apart the cube. 1) In CubicConverter, pick either the "Photosphere" or "QTVR Cylinder" ICON. It will give you a dialog box to locate your image. 2) When you locate your image it will appear in the preview screen and the CONVERT button will be available. 3) Click CONVERT and the program will attempt to make a cubic VR from your single image. 4) You now have a preview of the image in cubicVR. The top and bottom will have a black hole (there was no image to put there) 5) Click on the CUBE Faces TAB and you'll see the faces of the cube it made. 6) Pick the top face and click the EXPORT image. Do the same with the bottom face. 7) In your image editing program, do something with the black hole (I made it look like a pipe joint with repetitions of the pipe by putting scaled images behind the first one.) Save the image as a flat pict again with no compression. 8) Go back to CubicConverter. 9) In the Cube Faces TAB, pick the top face, and pick CHOOSE IMAGE. Pick your changed image. Do the same with the bottom one. (in fact, you could use the same image for both.) 10) Convert the image to a QTVR once more and it is done. I have attached (I think) a jpeg of one scene of the final QTVR I created. The QTVR is only 180k, but I can't post it here as it is not allowed. But I'd be happy to send it to you via e-mail if you request a copy. Just write to me from ClydeSight2.0! (http://www. clydesight.com) Just a stupid trick, but kind of fun. Please don't be mad. Think of all the creative things you can do! If I am still allowed in renderosity after this one, I'd be interested with what you all come up with.

Addendum: Darn, the jpeg didn't go through. Sorry!

Attached Link: http://www.planethalflife.com/wadfather/index-new.htm

Cubic environment maps like the ones described above are used in most first-person shooter games that are around today, including Quake, Half-Life, and Unreal. The areas that the players can reach (buildings, streets, whatever) are defined in the game engine, and the environment map is used to represent those areas off in the distance that the players can not reach.

I have a web site called the Wadfather where I have collected hundreds of cubic env. maps, and these are used by people who create their own add-on levels for games. Most of them were created in Bryce or similar programs. I recently purchased a copy of Bryce myself so that I could add my own contributions to the collection, rather than just helping publish other folks' work (all in the public domain, all published with permission, BTW.)

If you are interested in seeing some examples, check out the site at the URL above. I should point out that this is a redesign of the site which is almost but not quite ready for prime time -- in particular, it only works with IE at this time.

The images at the site are currently displayed using VRML, not QuickTime. I've considered changing to QT some time in the future, but haven't gotten around to it yet. The format of the six images for the cube is identical.

You will also find some links to tutorials for preparing cubic environment maps once you get into that section of the site.

Finally, if anyone here has some cubic images which they would like to add to the collection, drop me a line at mr-gibs@columbus.rr.com. I'm always on the lookout for more great stuff! :)

Mr-Gibs