Forum: Bryce


Subject: Use Bryce to make CUBIC VRs!

clyde236 opened this issue on Nov 07, 2002 ยท 8 posts


clyde236 posted Thu, 07 November 2002 at 10:43 PM

Hi All, Some of you have visited my ClydeGalleryVR (at http://www.clydesight.com/galvr ) and sent in kind comments. Thanks! I have done some reasearch into the subjuct of VR and Bryce, and as you might have guessed, once again our dearly beloved Bryce can do a LOT more than we get from the manual (it is a powerful program, isn't it?) Bryce can make CUBIC VRS! Cubic VR: QuickTime 5 and above can render Cubic VRs. Cubic VRs are the panoramic movies where you can look 360 degrees horizontal and 180 degrees vertical (full up and down). Bryce's VR panorama feature can currently make a cylindrical VR, which does the 360 horizontal bit, but has limited up and down view which is more or less controlled by the zoom feature in the VR player. But some folks have tricks to get Bryce to make Cubic VRs and it is very easy to do. Harland's New Media Web site. ( http://www.harlands.com/QTVR/cubic.html ). David C. has come up with a solution to making CUBIC VRs! The trick to getting this to work in Bryce is to get the camera FOV to just the right setting (David shows you what that is in his tutorial). To do a cubic VR in Bryce, you need three things: 1) The correct camera FOV settings. Harland's has that, and I don't want to steal their thunder, so drop by and see what David C, has done! There are samples. You will need QuickTime 5 to view them. 2) A set of six "flat" images rendered from Bryce. The document set-up should be set to a square ratio (1:1) and the camera should be in perspective view, not panorama view. The Harland tutorial tells you what to do to make and number these images in the correct order. 3) A program or utility that allows you to assemble the six images into the faces of the cube that a Cubic VR needs. Apple has a utility: MakeCubic, but I am not sure if it can be used in Windows. (I use a MAC). There is a better solution (I think, anyway) for MAC users. ClickHere Design ( http://www.clickheredesign.com.au/ ) has a very inexpensive ($35) program that will assemble your Bryce images into a CUBIC VR. While Apple has the free utility MakeCubic, the CubicConverter program seems to me to be more intuitive and offers additional features for a reasonable price. And there are free downloads to take it for a test drive. One big advantage of making Cubic VRs from Bryce is that you have better control of your final image quality. Since the images you render from Bryce start out flat, you can take them into an image editing program and sharpen them or make corrections without having to worry about the severe distortion you run into in a pano render. You can even add text and use some other features your image editing program offers, as long as you are careful with your lighting. The images will be properly warped when you convert them, and this is a very fast process on faster computers. As long as you save your "master images", if you don't like the results, you just go back and change them, then re-convert. If you are interested in this technology, try these links, I think you'll find them helpful. They had me up and running Cubic VR in a short period of time!