Here Jackson, this is what it looks like straight from poser, no light tricks, just a white sky, no post. If yours looks worse, then somethings wrong. If yours looks like this and your not happy with that, then bryce is not for you.

Yes, Bryce does bring in Poser items without their transparency automatically applied. You have to spend about thirty seconds in the materials lab sorting them out. If that's enough to make you head to another program with another learning curve and its own set of problems and limitations, then I guess you're not getting much else out of Bryce. Jackson wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>>> With regular P4 figures, all facial features turn the same color as the skin, no matter what I do with the lighting. <<<<<<<<<<<<<< I'm not sure I understand this. Can you explain or show us a pic?

To Prizm Break: Mine look much worse. Something's wrong. To PJF: 30 seconds is not enough to make me want to switch. See Prizm Break's pic? If that were mine, the skin would be about 50% darker and, after applying adequate lighting, the facial features (lips, eyebrows, tongue, teeth, eyelashes) would all be the same color as the skin. You would see their shape but not their correct colors. PS: No one has address the other subject in my first post... Is there any liason between Corel & Curious Labs? Is there going to be any improvement in communications between the two programs? If not, why not?

Jackson, Perhaps nobody has addressed your question about Poser/Bryce liason because you're asking the wrong people- try Corel and/or Curious Labs. Personally I think if increased compatibility was an easy thing to incorporate it would already exist. Why isn't there better communications between the two? Who knows? Certainly we didn't have it when both programs were owned by the same company and cooperation between the 2 programmer teams would have been easier to accomplish. Maybe somebody had a bad hair day or maybe it's because the moon is or is not made of green cheese. Again, you'll have to ask Curious Labs or Corel. I doubt you will find the answer here. Sorry.

When the two programs were with the same parent company, Steve Cooper mentioned moves toward integrating Poser files (including animation) with Bryce, and said it was mostly only a matter of time. Then the MC breakup happened. As users, we're not privvy to the state of relations between Curious Labs and Corel. Only the beta testers here know if there is any better import arrangement for Poser exports, and they can't tell us whether it's yay or nay.

I read over his interfiew with renderosity and he said that they're working on it...or at least I remember seeing that...

Jackson .. That is possibly because you are relying on the color in poser to color your figures. I set my entire figure to white in poser to get the truest color anyway. but to make your lips purple in both you can use the diffission lighting to add it and be set. Though I would suggest using the texture if possible. Normally it takes under 5 minutes total to get a clothed michael figure fully up and running in Bryce.

ya know...you could always edit the tiff in photoshop too. Ive made some serious lips like that :)Just dont move anything when editing the tiff. Also, maybe I imagined it, but it seemed once the tiff was open and re-saved in PS, it looked way better once brought to bryce, even where I didnt edit it. Also jackson. i turn the diffusion all the way up on the models texture. it loads into bryce with very low diffusion.That might be why yours look so gray.

Attached Link: http://bsmmoth.de/Bsolutions

Hi folks, gosh, don't start to eat you out there! As another beta tester all I can say is: Look at the pictures that are available at brye5.net, or at my site: http://bsmooth.de/bryce5 Be careful though, not everything is exactly what is may seem at the first glance. However, you should clearly get an idea if you take the time to *study* the pictures - we can also speak to you through our pictures. IMO Bryce 5 is absolutely worth the upgrade. Vue may be a nice program, but personally I don't like to pay for each plant I get and mess around with keys and stuff.

Jackson - you might want to try this : when in Poser, go to Render -> Materials, and make a note of the tex files used. Export your Poser figure, and go to Bryce. Create a few spheres, and give each one of the textures you made a note of. Then import your Poser figure. That's all I did for the pics shown above. Only tex change needed was to set the eyeballs tex to Glass Bubble #1, and tweak the parms to the settings shown. You might also want to fiddle with lighting to see the (often quite dramatic) change it can make in the textures' appearance. As to B5, I think it looks positively tantalizing (thanx to Cuddlejacket for posting the info). IMO Corel still has to understand the very special user base Bryce has. In the absence of info from the source, guesswork, hearsay and unconfirmed info takes over. Just compare the preview info about V4 published by e-on with Corel's "top secret" attitude. Off the soapbox - have fun, all, whether with B or V ;-)

This is Daz's Mike as imported straight into Bryce, along with a hair prop. The white eyes, eyebrows and lashes can be seen, and I've not put any maps on the hair.

This is the same file, but with transparency maps applied (and texture map to the hair, too). As Catharina's 'Tomy' texture has the eyebrows painted on the main head map, I simply deleted the eyebrow prop in Bryce. This uses a fairly complex light arrangement (same as image in previous post), and I've done some very minor touchups because the hair doesn't fit the head quite right (previous image is untouched). Bryce can deal with Poser figures very well, it just needs a little work. :-)

This was done with Poser and Bryce, I see no problems, just a few tweaks still needed on the lashes.

Thip, you said "Create a few spheres, and give each one of the textures you made a note of." Whats that part for? Just to get the textures in there?

Prizm - yes, the spheres just get the tex's in there. I forget who posted the idea, but it works fine. If one wants to tweak the tex's, that can be done in the "sphere phase" as well, before loading the figures. If there's a quicker way, do share. I agree with the lazy creatives above - I use Bryce to have fun and make pix, not to tweak and shriek ;-)

Hmm, no I dont know a better way. I dont know anyway except through the 4 armed guy for image textures. Are you adding it to your library after you tweak it?

Thanks to everyone for all the tips and techniques, many I already knew about, some are new; I'll try 'em. Thanks also for proving my point.

You don't need the spheres for getting textures on imported Poser figures. While in the process of importing the figure model, Bryce(4) should ask for the texture maps that are supposed to be applied. You can then use the regular file open dialogs to locate them (usually located in the Poser directories). The quickest and easiest way of all is to export your figure (in OBJ format) from Poser into a special folder you have created. Copy (not move) all relevant texture maps into that folder. Now when you import the figure into Bryce, the program will apply the various texture maps automatically. This is because the .mat materials file (which is created by Poser alongside the OBJ) and the textures are in the same location. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to bump maps and transparency maps. You have to apply these manually as alpha channels via the materials lab. If you've copied them into that special folder too, they will be very easy to find. Keeping exported OBJ Poser figures and their textures in their own special folder keeps thing very organised. This is especially helpful if you use a figure again later, when otherwise you might have forgotten what and where its textures are. The only downside is that it uses more disk space. * * * The thing with the spheres is really about handling lots of textures within a Bryce scene. If you create a texture that might be needed elsewhere at different occasions, or want to keep lots of variations handy for tests, then it helps to create some spheres (or any Bryce primitive) outside of the camera view and copy and paste materials to and from those. Using the 'edit' menu, you can get a material or texture off of a 'holding sphere' and onto the desired object with four mouse clicks. This is quicker than using the materials lab copy and paste function, and much quicker than using the materials library to store stuff.

Jackson, I think the way Vue4 will import Poser items with everything set automatically is that it will import a .PZ3 file (Poser's own file format) rather than a model that has been exported from Poser. A .PZ3 file contains all the textures and their settings within itself, so you or Vue don't have to go hunting all over the place for them. This is fine (and hopefully will be adopted by Corel in addition to the current method) but I can see it leading to some potential hassle of its own. If the .PZ3 file contains the figure by itself, then all is well. But if the figure you want is within a complex Poser scene, all that other stuff will import too - and deleting any extraneous items in Vue or Bryce might be very difficult. To avoid that, in Poser you will have to delete all other items in the scene, and save the lone figure as a new Poser file, or save the figure to the libary, close the old scene, open a new one and add the figure to it. This in itself might be more hassle than just exporting the one figure. I don't use Poser for scenes, so this won't be a problem for me; and I'd welcome .PZ3 import. But it is something to consider.

Thanks for the tip, PJF. But I don't use Poser for scenes, either so PZ3 import is fine for me.

dont know where you found the bryce 5 screenshots on the computer art site, anyway i just hope that bryce 5 will be a real update of the app not like the bryce 4 app ... it'sa pitty folks that you have to explain again how to import poser fig in bryce, sorry...

The screen shots came from the magazine. My earlier comment about improved animation in bryce. Some form of limited particle effects, water dynamics. I know you can achieve lots by using terrains/spheres/volume materials in a creative manner but the effects can take a LONG time to get "right". I know this takes it into the lightwave/Max arena, how about an extensible set up? Compatible with MAX/LW plugins? Perchance to dream!!! Lots of free plugins for these programs which give these kind of functions -e.g sprays, deflectors or when applied to bryce fountains and avalanches. I am not knocking the animation lab, which I actually find OK to use. Sums up bryce nicely - VERY easy to use.

Just as a footnote to this ever-more interesting thread, I tried out Prizm's suggestion that you save tex's to library after applying them to spheres. Very good idea - you can give thos e tex's a meaningful name and just quick-load them onto a sphere as a prelude to loading the figure next time. Might not be worth doing for all Poser-related tex's, but for your favorite ones it seems a neat trick for us lazy guys who keep forgetting our file paths ;-) Thanx Prizm. Might I add that you can also make your own light sets by grouping all your lights with a sphere where all the lights' beams intersect. Save to user object lib, and next time you need it, load and place the sphere where your figure is, then delete the sphere. A little light can make a lot of difference - even good ol' Posette can look almost human, as I hope to have hinted at above. And Jackson : while I use (and like) both Vue and Bryce, Bryce always makes me think of what someone once said of Monet (quoting from memory) : "The air in his pictures is the air that one lives and breathes". That's why lazy guys such as yours truly sticks with Bryce despite the hassle and tweaking ;-)