I was searching the forum for better terrain modeling techniques in Bryce. I came across the following quote from AS in one of the threads.
"How I myself get around this; I use Photoshop to create a 16-bit greyscale image, that is saved as a .tif, and I use a utility made by bikermouse to convert it to a .pgm, which Bryce WILL import that as a 16-bit Terrain."
My question is, are there other freeware, shareware programs out there that can do this( export 16 bit greyscales to .pgm that is) or is this little utility fm Bikermouse available anywhere.

While PGM has worked quite well since Bryce 4, Bryce 6.1 reads 16-bit TIF and PNG grayscales directly through the Picture button in the TE.
There's some bugs (especially on the Mac side) but most of the time this gives the same result as PGM.

This is definately nice to know Dan and will be useful knowledge if and when I ever upgrade to 6.1, but unfortunately I am still using 5.5.

the program (if I'm right), was called 'tiffer'. It was tiny, but useful. You might be able to search the forum for it.

Tks pakled, after some further searching I've found a  plug in that will export 16 bit .pgm's directly out of Photoshop. Now to go off and play and test it out.

Yeah, the plugin by Richard Rosenman works well. But...there is one instance in which only Bikiermouses utility works better than his plugin or Bryce 6's ability to 16-bit tiff/png...

...and, that is when I am in the situation of having a group of tiled terrains, and want to take one (or more) out to take into Photoshop for more precise editing, and then want to insert that terrain back into the tiled group, perfectly.

Meaning, Bikermouses utility will keep the height of the terrain locked down, so I won't have to try and eyeball the height of the terrain that is coming back in from Photoshop.

In case I explained that strangely....I took the middle terrain out of a group of 9 that were tiled together....I took it into photoshop, added a large crater in the middle, then took it back into Bryce, and once it came in, it was automatically the same exact height as it had been before, which made aligning it back up in the middle a snap. Bikermouses utility did that for me, the plugin by Richard Rosenman would not.

Just adjusting the height doesn't sound hard...but it's fairly freaking annoying.

So, thats something to keep in mind.

AS

World-Machine has a Totally Free Version that is limited to some fuctions and to 512x512 terrains max size, but you can stretch that to almost anything else and it saves as a 16bit .pgm or some other formats if you wish. You can then import it as a picture as dan whiteside said and erode it more or add other features that you want to it in Bryce. Works with Bryce 5.5, 6 and 6.1. I don't know about earlier versions and if you decide to purchase it, it is only $40 USD and really as terrain generators go that is a Good Price.
World-Machine Link

Ah yes, tiffer - that's four months of my life I'll never get back !  you should be able to get it here:
http://www.angelfire.com/droid/bikermouse/page2.html

Four months TRULY appreciated!

Yeah, it was fun to do. I think there was something about  32 bit geotiff  in it too, but the computer that had all the references to what programs to use with geotiff (Hal_02) is temporarily down until I get another  HD to ghost the old one to.  The drive isn't down yet but  seek times are getting long and I don't know how many more  boots it's got in it before it goes, so I'm not taking any chances.