Hello, I've just started to use Bryce. Wow! What a program. My first project is to completly draft a 19th century schooner sailing vessel in perfect detail and construction. I cannot figure out how to draft the complicated shape of the ship's hull. Attached are 3 jpegs of what I've learned so far. As you can see, I've figured out how to use the primitives, pos & Neg functions and placement of objects, etc. Using the egg shape primitive, turning the thing on its side and cutting the top off isn't going to work for me. I work on a Mac G4 Dual Processor. I'm a professional graphic designer and extensivly use A. Illustrator and Photoshop. The guys in my offices' production department are experts in using Strata Studio Pro. So they are a source for picking up Strata if need be. What I think I need to do is draft 20 to 30 sections of the hull off a center line and apply a skin to the shapes or extrude?? the shapes in some way to form the hull.Do I need to use a different software program to draft the hull and import the file into Bryce? Or can Bryce do the same thing? How do I get the hull to look like it is planked with a weathered wood texture rather than a smooth modern racing type hull with wood texture applied to its surface? How can I get the ratlines (rope ladders on deck to allow deckhands to climb up into the rigging - see attached images) to look like thick 3 strand rope that is curved or organic in shape and not so straight like a steel rod? I have a bazillion questions and I'm willing to place a call to anyone who wants to listen. I'm in Dallas, Texas and I know of no one who uses Bryce. I've just found this site that has all kinds of information and tutorials. I realize I've taken on a extremely complicated project, but what better way to solve all the problems to master the program. I think I can only attach one file at a time, so disregard that 3 jpegs are attached. HELP! Bruce

Hi, Bruce! I had the same sort of idea a couple of days ago and started to make this. Maybe it will help. I'll send the .BR5 if you like. The Bryster

Attached Link: http://uk.geocities.com/bryster3d

If you hunt through 'FREE STUFF' (Top green bar hyperlink)for Bryce materials you may find a rope texture(.mat)or two. You could do worse than elongate a torus, blank out part of it with a negative and apply a rope .mat for your ratlines.......... There are thousands of .mat files out there with anything from rusty metal to plastic mountains....you just have to hunt for them. The Bryster (Chris)

Maybe you can try using lattices to make the hull. They've been used for just about everything else and they will stay symmetrical, something yo uneed for a ships hull. If you don't find a rope .mat, give a heads up. I have onet hat works great for rope.

Which version of Bryce are you using? The hull could be done with terrains probably.

In my boat above I took a cylinder elongated along one axis and plced on it's side and using negative booleans and intersects created the hull. The curve lines are done with metaballs constrained to a path (metaballs are in Bryce 5 which is why I asked which version). The sail, quarterdeck and front platform are made from terrains, the height maps made in photopaint. The curved yardarms were created by taking 2 cones and with a top down view did a height mask render. Then took that into photopaint and skewed then taken back into the terrain editor and loaded as a lattice. Something similar was done with the sail. Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to proceed.

www.brycetech.com has the rope objects/textures. I think there's a limit to bryce primitives, though you seem to be pushing the envelope. The hull is easier to model in a regular modeling program like www.dvgarage.com or the like. By the way, if you're interested in the dvgarage, you can get amorphium pro thrown in for free on the popup at www.universe3d.com Ok, good work so far. Hope to see more.

I put a small rope tut on this forum some time ago (search rope tut)using muti-rep torus but its very expensive to render so I would go with a bump map.The hull may be possible in terrain but I would model it in another program

If you can use strata, just make a simple spline network. Then join, increase segments, and champher. (I have no idea if you can do this in strata but i'm guessing the answer is yes) To do it, Start in top view. Build the splines for only the left or right side...don;t try to get the spline around the whole thing. Then, after you've drawn the very bottom section, draw the next one slightly larger and raise it up. You should repeat the process until you have finished the top of the hull, probably around 30 splines total for best look. Then slect the splines and mirror them. Then do whatever you need to do to get them solid. (skin, surface, add faces, whatever.) Then increase the number of segments and do a smooth or a champher. You should have a nice smooth hull. To get the weathered plank look, open up photoshop and make a grey canvas 700x700. Then paint a few white splotches, and a whole bunch of white lines across it to act as planks. Add some light monochrome noise, and i think a light watercolor filter to roughen things up. Then increase the brightness so ALMOST everything is white. You should barely be able to define the planks and the splotches. Save this as a jpeg. In Strata, load this as a displacement map for the hull. Do any neccessary tweaks to it and tada!. Then export to bryce.

I am downloading the strata demo to see if what i said has any relevance...