You might also try adding a little transparency to get that effect.

Is Corel EVER going to release ANY information on Bryce 5 or do they just expect to release it and have everyone buy it without knowing a damn thing about new features etc. until AFTER they open the box? Every other software package I've ever heard of had some advertising stuff and promos released ahead of the actual software release, to get people's attention and increase their interest in what goodies are to come. NEVER have I seen such secrecy about EVERYTHING relating to it. Why all the paranoia?

rcook: Basically I was agreeing with your first response up above (#2), I just kinda got sidetracked with dealing with someone here in "reality" (NOT my favorite place these days) and then mixed up some additional thoughts into what I was saying. I agree, if you based it on the current ratings system it would be related to what's in the picture, and as TJ said in his last post up there, if they don't turn on ratings, the top 20 is probably a moot point for them anyway. *** Excuse the rambling, it's fried day and my brain is kinda fried after this long week of BS. (I have come to the conclusion that god loves Assholes, because he made so MANY of them [comment relates to my week here, NOT to you]).

I understand your point and I realize that you guys already have a lot of programming and other stuff to over-fill your time, but a lot of people seem to think the top 20 means something OTHER than having an appealing thumbnail, which in reality, it just doesn't. Hence a lot of arguments & discussions in C&D and elsewhere. It seems to me that if the top 20 was based on what you now see in the "best rankings" choice in the galleries it would be the most valid. Maybe, if that would be too much time & trouble, at the top of each Top 20 Gallery there should be a statement making it clear to all that the only thing that gets you in there is the attraction generated by the thumbnail, not the quality of the image. This might be the simplest way to go and still be honest about what's really happening.

I agree about the secrecy. Every other software package upgrade I've ever heard of was advertised well in advance of release by the manufacturer, previews and lists of new features were posted, etc. etc. What gives with Corel? Do they expect everyone to buy the new package sight unseen and with NO information about it available? If that's their plan, they are making a BIG mistake.

Sounds interesting pnevai - good imagination coming up with this one. hmmm....... (brain begins "skullduggerous calculations")

I was away over the weekend and didn't get back in time for my vote to count in the total, but now that I can see all the entries I have to agree, Pnevai's is definitely the best (all were quite good). Congrats on a great pic, Pnevai.

What you need to do is export all those mats as individual mat files and empty at least your USER mat folder in Bryce, or save all your preset files somewhere and reinstall Bryce to get a new empty USER folder if you didn't keep one somewhere (I keep a copy of the empty USER folder so I always have an empty one to work with - in the preset objects as well as in the preset mats). Once you get the files to manageable size, try Wolfie's Bryce Librarian (at wolfiesden.com) for future use. I have dozens of obp & mat libraries that I swap in & out of tutorial & user in both preset menus. They are organized by type of object or mat, and I keep all my libraries to under 50mb. I couldn't live without the librarian. It allows you to save out your various object & mat libraries to another folder, & then swap them back & forth with the libraries that pop up in Bryce at will. When you install the librarian you tell it where you keep those alternate obp and mat files and you can create new ones at will. I have about 20 libraries of objects, classified by type, and nearly as many material libraries, grouped in a way that makes sense to me. (e.g., one obp library for "swords", several for different types of "furniture", a couple for "sci-fi tech stuff", etc. etc.) For mats, I have a several libraries of architectural materials - stones, woods, fabrics, etc. and a number of subclasses of other materials organized for easy access. It takes a while to set this up but once it's done it's easy to add things to and makes working with Bryce much easier. You open the Librarian before opening Bryce & it lives on the taskbar, so you can pop it up on the fly and swap libraries in & out of Bryce as needed. I move them in and out of the tutorial, user, & other spots on the menu as needed. This also allows me to make each library smaller so it doesn't eat as much RAM when loaded. Without this I think I would have just given up and shot myself long ago.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that men are better at 3-d geometry & spatial relationships in general than women (while women, on the other hand, are usually much better than men in language skills). This doesn't mean that either gender is superior to the other, just that their minds perceive & work with things in somewhat different ways. Of course, women can and do learn to work with spatial relationships just as well as any men, but at first it requires them to think in new patterns, which puts some people off. Many people find trying to learn a new language equally daunting at first, until they have stretched their mental framework to become accustomed to new ways of perceiving things. just my $.02

Just select the one whose size you want to change, go into the editor and adjust the size until it's right. Bryce defaults to some multiple of its "unity" size when importing regardless of the size of objects when created elsewhere. I never leave objects the size they are when importing. If I'm doing an indoor scene with people, I use 1 Bryce unit = 1 inch as a scaling guideline, so for example, when a character is imported, and it comes in at 40.96 units (a 'unity' multiple) but I want the dude to be 6' (72") tall, I grab an onscreen calculator and figure out what percentage increase I have to make it 72.00 units, then go into the 3D transformations item on the size-adjust menu and apply that number. Voila - it's sized to what I want. Then I make other items and/or characters the appropriate sizes via the same method, and all the objects in my scene are in accurate scale with each other. Then I can arrange them and don't ever have to worry about proportions seeming odd.

Interesting concept and nicely done. Last I heard, there was no restriction on post-work as long as the main scene rendering was done in Bryce.

*.sit files are mac equivalents of *.zip files. You need the Alladin Expander for Windows to decompress them & extract the *.mat files which you can then import into Bryce. I forget the URL but if you search for "Alladin Expander" on the net you'll find it. That's how I got it a while back.

Great sky indeed. Cool pic! It looks like this topic is gonna generate some real interesting stuff.

Yes, it takes more "pre-work" than "post-work" for me most of the time. I started out with Vistapro quite a while before getting Bryce, and I still like the finer control it gives over fractalizing bitmaps into landscape heightfields. Old Vistapro was pretty good at doing mass vegetation like distant forests, too. I sure hope they have added something like that to Bryce 5.

Danke, gracias, merci, grazie, arigato, hsieh hsieh, spasibo, dhanyavad, "thengkew" & a buncha others - Adamite & Jade. It took a long time to make & involved about a dozen terrains, shaped with Corelpaint & Vistapro before importing to Bryce; and about 8 hours to render.