In Bryce 3.1, if I wanted to use Bryce to make a picture to use as an overlay, I could select in the list of skies the white background or the black background, and I could guarantee that the background would be all constant {255,255,255) white, or all constant {0,0,0} black. That was useful. If I try this in my Bryce 4, whatever I do, the background is nearly always slightly but definitely graded in color, so in my picture-handling program I can't click one background pixel and tell it that in that overlay the color {255,255,255} or {0,0,0} or whatever is to be the background, easily at once, but I must tediously cut the object out of its background as if I was making clip-art from photographs. Please: in Bryce 4: how can I get an absolutely constant flat background with all the pixels of the background exactly the same color value?

I'm not sure how the presets you're talking about are set up- but if you click on the right-most button in the sky and fog pallette enough times (or drag on the arrow, same difference), you will get a setting with a single color bar across the bottom (or 'atmosphere off). You can then set the sky color from there- and you can set more accurately by option (alt.) clicking the color field. This should produce a uniform background without haze effects, etc. Hope this helps! Gecko

I am sorry to query, but I regret that I can't identify the "right-most button" or "arrow" that Gecko mentioned. I have looked in (a) the row of small thumbnails that appears above the main image when I click the boldface word "Sky&Fog", (b) the "SkyLab" that appears in my Bryce 4 when I click the little cloud, (c) the menu of skies that appears when I click the black triangle just to right of the boldface word "Sky&Fog". If you want to show me a copy of the relevant part of the screen with the "rightmost button" and "arrow" marked, that would be useful. In Windows 95, if you press the "Prt Sc" = "Print Screen" button, that copies the current screen display to the Windows clipboard, and it can be pasted from there into any 2D graphics processing program such as Windows Paint. One thing that I found useful here (or at least, better than nothing) was: Get the menu that switches anti-aliasing etc on or off. In it, switch "32-bit dithering" off. Then render again, and export the image. That makes it much easier to change the background to all the same color in Windows Paint by separately flood-filling each color band of the unwanted color-graded background.

Anthony, choose the 'simple white background' in the sky palette, select the plane and go to 'simple and easy' presets and choose white. Then make the sun be slightly above 'noon' (a bit above the middle of the ball). If it still looks slightly banded to you then choose the cloud cover and cloud height (the 2 thumbnails on the right in the 'simple white background' sky preset), make them both white and 100%. I can take this into Paintshop Pro and select all the white background with the magic wand. I think this is what you want. Diane B

Sorry to be confusing! I think I might be dislexic or something- I meant the left-most 'button' in the 'Sky & Fog' pallette. This should be to the left of the "Shadows- Ambient Color" 'button' (excuse my quotation marks ;). When you pass the mouse over it the lower-right corner of the screen should read 'Sky & Fog- Sky Mode'. This is the 'button' I was talking about. Sorry! Gecko

What I do is go through the sky pallette, turn off atmosphere, set all effects to zero, set all colors to black, turn off all the clouds. I can get a totally black background that way

That how iI do it too Bonestructure.

There is an example of that in the thread above this I think. I didn't turn off 'all effects'. All I did was choose the black bg, choose black for bottom plain. Black works just fine this way-may have turned off atmosphere. Diane

That method is OK as long as the object that you are rendering does not contain any black.

Isn't there a preset sky for this? I think it's called something or other shortcut .

Have you tried it using the mask render option? Check out this tutorial. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Program/3093/tutor/bryce/mask.html Hawkfyr

hawkfyr, I have to admit I had never tried the mask render before. I suspect that this is exactly what Anthony needs. Its great--I tried it with PSP6 and its terrific. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Diane B

Your welcome I think the mask render is a great feature that is all to often overlooked Hawkfyr