I figured that one out (finally), but thx for the clarification.

Okie, pm the link to me (or attach it here), and we'll see if we can't overcome those issues as well. I've managed to "get around" most of mine (but sometimes with considerable effort...maybe I can save someone from reinventing the wheel).

grrrrr...accidentally hit Ctrl+Q while reaching for the copy-and-paste...can we say "POOF! No more eloquently worded post."? Oh, well...here goes...again. No offense taken. I'd have to agree that Bryce has rather limiting features. It does not do accurate caustics, has no support for HDRI (or any GI format), does not properly handle bounced light, etc., etc.; the list is pretty long (at least my list of gripes is). However, Bryce does some things remarkably well. Bryce has very nice procedural texture engine (gotta love that DTE), it handles landscapes wth great aplomb (gotta love that interactive terrain editor), almost any of the aforementioned effects (caustics, radiosty, etc.) can be faked with a bit of elbow grease and finesse, and it's got a pretty intuitive interface (and thus a prety shallow leraning curve). For serious work, you'll want to stick with the "big boys" (LW, XSI, Maya, Houdini, MAX, etc.); but they packages also carry "big boy prices" and have "big boy learning curves". Bryce is a pretty decent package for the price (comapre it to Flamingo and Bongo, for instance). I think that Bryce is very useful, particularly in one respect. It is an easy "quick renderer". Scene setup is fast and rendering is not-too-pokey (not blisteringly fast either...but not bad). It's got a pretty short training period; almost anyone can produce fairly good images after a bit of "fiddling around" (we've all made our "glass-balls-floating-on-endless-water images"...anyone who says otherwise is a liar), and it's got an okay animation engine once you learn the quirks and are willing to put some time and effort into manually keyframing/pathing your objects. All-in-all, I think Bryce does what it claims (user-friendly rendering), and a bit more (animation and "faked effects"). It may not have the best customer service (but I understnad they're being "acquired" again?...maybe it will clear up after the takeover). There are admittedly some shortcomings (some of which are workaround-able). Some features are poor (or completely lacking), but what app is perfect? Everyone wants something changed about their favorite program, why should Bryce be any different? It's not the best package out there, but it's certainly not the worst; and the price doesn't hurt either.

From the Bryce 5.5 Site: "Add wildlife, people, props and more to your Bryce scenes, in addition to the terrains, waters, skies, rocks, clouds, fog, vegetation, and architecture for which Bryce has long been the standard." "Bryce 5.5: Powerful 3D Landscaping and Animation" Plus the box has a giant, sweeping landscape on it...I'd say the focus is still on landscapes (and other solid bodies). Maybe the Daz|Studio plugin will finally grant us the ability to have dynamically-updated deforming meshes (changes in Studio would be reflected in Bryce). I know such a Poser scene plugin exists for another renderer (LW perhaps?) which allows you to import even animated Poser files, but something similar for Bryce would definitely be a welcome addition.

I believe Bryce was initially aimed at landscape and still life rendering (as evidenced by the still landscape-based splash screen). One more cool thing about the Ctrl+Left-click selection method is that it allows you to select items without accidentally dragging them (something which all-too-often occurs when using a traditional Left-click in Bryce).

All I did to set up those joints was ungroup the import and parent stuff to each other. (In the advanced file I did alter the orgin values of the pistons, but that is due to the quirks of the "targeting".

Normally, I leave the origins in the "wrong places" for parented objects. This gives me a quick, visual warning that I've selected a child instead of parent when I see something rotating in an unexpected manner, and it means less work for me in bryce...bonus!

OOH, OOH, I just thought of something!!!! Perhaps it is possible to lock the child objects to completely prevent them from being accidentally selected and dragged about. I wonder if a locked child will still follow its parent? Be right back. Yup, it works...I've got a new joint setup method. Thanks for bringing up this topic, I probably never would have thought of locking the children without explaining the process step-by-step to someone else. I've attached an updated version of the advanced Bryce4 file using the new "locked child method".

Attached: "Digger_Arm_Advanced_Updated.zip" 16KB Message edited on: 08/28/2005 10:35

For those of you who care, this conversation is going on in two places...here and in a thread in the Rhino Forum. If you're not following something I said or it seems out of context, I've probably referenced soemthing in the other thread...sorry, but I'm just bad like that.

The way I was telling you earlier to set up the scene (copying "origin sphere" locations and whatnot) is wrong. Like I said above..."It's been a while since I've been in Bryce...I'm a little rusty."

The way you should do it is to parent the objects you want to rotate and translate to the "origin objects" (be they spheres, pins, bushings, etc.). Any rotation or translation is then accomplished by rotating or translating the "origin objects"; their children will follow accordingly. This method makes it easier to adjust your rotation points also. If your joint is in the wrong place, just un-parent it's children, drag it to wherever it goes, and re-parent.
What you are doing is essentially building a skeletal structure. The "origin objects" define the joints and moving them forces the bones (their children) to go where they are supposed to be.

Take a look at the file (Bryce4 and Rhino2 files are both included in the archive) and notice how the parenting is done.
You could go even more crazy with this and do some more advanced stuff. I've included a more advanced joint setup (one with a piston) in the "Advanced" folder of the archive. That one did require me to adjust the origin Z values for the arm_piston_lower and arm_piston_upper; I used the Z-values from the origin_arm_piston_lower and origin_arm_piston_upper, respectively. Make sure to click the lock icon to "unlocked" before changing origin values; otherwise you'll end up moving your object in addition to changing it's origin.

Rename the attached file (only 80KB) to "Digger_Arm.zip" to open it (the forum only takes images or text files).

Note: In the advanced file I've deleted the redundant origins and haven't bothered to hide the piston origins.

Yeah there was another post coming, but I just had to reboot...making a zip archive froze my box for some reason....re-composing now...

uh...I was just setting up a simple animation of a basic scooper in Bryce and realized that it's Ctrl+Left-click not Ctrl+Right-click to bring up the menu. It's been a while since I've been in Bryce...I'm a little rusty.

By the way, Nick and Dan, you can right click to accurately select a given object...just hold down Ctrl while you're doing it. A menu will pop up showing all the available things to select that are under your pointer.

Message edited on: 08/28/2005 00:14

As per UVDan's request, I've copied my response from the Rhino post over to the Bryce forum for the benefit of all you Bryce-ers.
I have included other people's parts of the conversation in "quote boxes" to present this in some sort of coherent manner. My own words are left in regular type.

Ok, I've tried to write a reply 3 times. Various crashes and system hangs have prevented me.
In any case I went into the technical explanation (as I usually do), and no one cares anyway. Besides I can't justify spending another 45 minutes typing.

So here's the bottom line.

Personally I use 3DS to go from Rhino to Bryce. It more accurately stores material info than OBJ (at least it seems to for me). Only real advantage to OBJ (as far as I can see) is that it has no max polygon limit (3DS limits you to 65535 polys per mesh and will break up a more bigger mesh into smaller meshes with that max number).

VRML doesn't store smoothing info. Go to the object attributes ("Ctrl+E") and click the "Smooth" sphere. Adjusting the angle slider determines what angles are preserved as hard edges; anything below the value of the slider is smoothed when shading.

Rotating an object about another is pretty easy too. Just set the base object as the parent of the orbiting object. Accomplish this from the "Linking" tab in the "Object Attributes" dialog box ("Ctrl+Alt+E"). You can make parent-child chains many layers deep for very complex motions.

REALOldNick: on 8/27/05 18:37 - - - - - -

dukduk. Sorry about your woes and thanks for your efforts.

I have not gone far enough down the track to pick up on the finer points. I will take your word for it, tech explanation or no....

My problem with rotating is not the actual doing of it, but the accurate placement of the rotation point. As far as I can see , there is none. no snap except a rudimentary grid etc. It's in tyhe nature of the beast, I think. An object is an object, rather than a lot of placeable bits etc.

UVDAN. We moved across to the Bryce forum. Sorry I did not reply to your post above. Sometimes I get emails warning me, others not....
you can easily manipulate the origin. A quick way to do it is to set it up in Rhino. Make a small sphere (or box) with a center where you want your rotation center to be mesh this with very low settings (to save on filesize) as we will be deleting it later anyway. Export this "reference point" mesh along with your other meshes. When you import into Bryce, you can view the origin of the reference point and set the origin of the object you want to rotate about that point to the same location as the reference point. (Did that make sense?) Simply delete or hide the reference mesh and you've no got accurate origin placement.

Of course you're doing all of this by entering values manually in the Object Attributes dialog box rather than trying to drag stuff around.

Another nice feature is the "Align" (All; Y-Top, -Center, -Bottom; X-Left, -Center, -Right; Z-Front, -Center, -Back) button in the edit palette. This snaps your meshes to have the same point as the align option you selected.

Oh, I forgot my main reason for using 3DS in Bryce, it imports way faster than OBJ. I mean...we're talking orders of magnitude here...

Don't believe me...try importing a complex mesh (something with more than 20k polys) in both formats.

REALOldNick: on 8/27/05 22:18 - - - - - -

dukduk

Thanks for the pointers. Very useful. I tried importing a Point, and it did not show, and even if it exists, there is no snap. So a small circle sphere is the way to go.

I had got halfway there as I made sure I placed a small bushing hole in each item so I could line them up.

I was just starting to look at using coordinates in Attributes box (only had the programme 3 days! ) although I had already started to use the coordinates to move stuff around and rotate from the Edit ribbon / toolbar. ..thingy

Only trouble is, I just tried setting the Absolute Coordinates of the Origin of two cubes to the exact same values, and they match neither each other nor their relationship to their objects!

As far as 3ds vs obj, I will have to try this out. I have now had two opposing views! You do seem to have a done a bit of thinking about this.
I actually came to Rhino from Bryce (a frustration with the lack of available models that were excatly what I needed drove me to modelling). So I feel pretty comfortable with Bryce's rendering and animation engine and thus never really bothered with Flamingo or Bongo. I am however starting to get into POV; it's just amazingly feature-rich.

UVDan: on 8/27/05 22:32 - - - - - -

Go with dukduk's observations on the 3ds files. I am partial to obj because I map everything in UV Mapper.
Yeah...UVMapper is a great tool, I'm just usually too lazy to bother mapping most of my stuff unless I have to. You know, you could map and texture in OBJ and then convert to 3DS using something like DeepExploration (or another converting app).

I managed to dig up the specific article on dead pixels. The numbers I quoted were from memory (which was a bit fuzzy), but if you so desire, you can take a look at the article for yourself.

Perhaps I am too late with this info, but I'll give you my $0.02 anyway.

On a personal note...

I am an engineer by trade (and programmer/CG artist by hobby) so I spend inordinate amounts of time in front of a monitor. I find the flat panel displays to be friendlier on the eyes than a CRT.

Also, as far as the (1)motion blur, (2)sharpness, (3)color representation, and (4)dead pixel issues go:

(1)blur used to be a BIG issue for LCDs, newer materials and manufacturing methods have seriously levelled the playing field over the last few years. (It used to be that a hard-core gamer wouldn't be caught dead with anything but CRT...now many--if not most--use LCDs.)

(2)an LCD should be razor-sharp when run in its native resolution (interpolating can get a bit messy sometimes, but is usually not a real problem)...however, pay attention to dot pitch when selecting your "dream screen" (sometimes the LCD matrix can be a bit distracting...although newer monitors are pretty good in this area)

(3)as with blur, color representation used to be up in the air, but should not be much of an issue anymore with a quality screen from a reputable company (do your homework on independent sites like Tom's Hardware for color gamut tests...don't take a manufacturer's/distributor's word for it). For the most part, if you find a monitor with good brightness and contrast, you should be able to calibrate it to fit your needs without incident. As for calibration programs, I have use a combination of a gamers utilities (can't remember what my favorite was called offhand but most are quite good for putting you in the ballpark), video-card settings (for more fussy fine-tuning), and Photoshop gamma tool and color profiles (for matching colors in specific situations...like your magenta printing issues).

(4)dead pixels remain an issue with some screen makers, but most are not very serious. Again, some homework on independent sites like Tom's Hardware about a manufacturer's dead-pixel policy are quite helpful. I remember reading a comparison a few years back on tom's hardware that specifically listed one manufacturer who had a Zero-Dead-Pixel policy (if one existed a screen was not shipped). Some manfuacturer's (at that time...not sure if this is still the case) actually allowed screens to be sold so long as the number of dead pixels was under .001% (7 pixels on a 1024x768 screen and 13 @ 1280x1024).

As with any purchase, doing your research is important; but I see no reason (as long as it's financially feasible) why you shouldn't go with a quality LCD display.

PHEW!!! That got quite a bit longer than I had planned.

~~Duk

P.S. To get the PSD to look like the flattened GIF, just run a "Fill Path" on the "New Path" using the darker color sample (the layer effects should take care of the rest). Also, the path I'm working with is "New Path". (The "a" in "Old Path" was a bit too heavy-handed for my tastes.