new and dumb questions

TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
edited December 1969 in Bryce Discussion

Ok wonderful people here is the library it won't open in Bryce even as an empty building (see enclosed files and size) I know there is a 2 gig limit......

also please tell me what the difference is between studio and Bryce and why studio can work with all of this and Bryce can't it seams like a programmer could remove this limit with hardly any problem so ( who out there can make Bryce behave and accept larger items??)
I went to the new users forum and asked how much stuff studio could hold before it kicks the bucket and one answer was I have 20gigs of stuff installed and it still works fine....There is probably a lot I don't understand about this ......

also where do we send these bug reports....This one ask me to insert my disc for Bryce.............yea right Thanks to all in advance I appreciate any and all feedback it just seams that with all we have been doing with this program lately the basic stuff needs to be fixed who are we supposed to call ghost busters????

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Comments

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,111
    edited June 2013

    Oh dear, I have that library as well but haven't had time to use it.

    The 2 GB limit can be stretched a bit with making Bryce large address aware provided your computer sports at least 4 GB. That's how I brought in the cars from Parkside train. Two cars was all I could get in one go - and my Bryce has the LAA flag set and can go up to about 3.2 GB.

    The difference between Bryce and Studio is that Bryce does everything in memory and never clears out what is not needed anymore - or you've deleted from the scene. It is still in memory until you quit and restart Bryce. Studio can also use virtual memory on the HD, which takes longer than memory chips but but waiting is better than crashing.

    Studio content (like the Library) have very large UV maps. One possibility is to export the model as OBJ. Then look for the maps, usually JPG pictures. They may look small but are compressed and Bryce decompresses them into memory and they get huge and are very memory hungry. You can open the UV-maps in a graphics program and reduce their size - say 4000 x 4000 pixels to 2000 x 2000 pixels will use only a fourth of memory (goes square). Tedious undertaking, though.

    What I did with the Parkside train was changing all maps with procedural colours from Bryce and save the result as OBP in the objects library. I did that for all cars and the engine, having had to restart Bryce after each model. Took me the better part of a day. But now there is no crash when loading the 3rd car, I could assemble a whole train and still room was left to put a Micheal in the engine. use an HDRI and all such. When I have some spare time, I'll go about The Library and the Aslan Court as well.

    Good luck, time consuming but usually worth the while.

    Post edited by Horo on
  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    Horo ; thank you for explaining that to me I didn't even think about making the texture maps a smaller size (great idea!!) I do have LAA but maybe I should download it again since moving and losing the internet for awhile.....It will give me something to work on.....So do you think there is a chance of a new version of Bryce being able to handle larger items???? Thanks again Trish

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    I had the same problem when I tried to import Aslan Court complete with thextures, and the problem is mostly with the way Jack makes textures.

    I don't have the library, but I would imagine you are having the same problems as I had. The library says it has 113 hi res texture maps, up to 4086 pixels in size.

    Bryce doesn't read these as jpg, it decompresses them, so you are asking Bryce to import 113 images which will read the same kb size as a 4086 x 4086 tiff or BMP.

    I seem to remember, some time ago, that Horo did a comparison chart.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,111
    edited December 1969

    I just feared that Aslan Court is going to be heavy on maps. I've got to put a day aside to handle that one.

    Trish, just start the task manager and watch how memory usage increases when you start Brycer and start adding The Library. You'll see immediately if LAA work or not.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited June 2013

    I have 634mb of textures in my texture folder for it, but that does include a 513mb PSD where I was altering some

    So about 120mb of textures, normally

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited December 1969

    Horo said:
    You can open the UV-maps in a graphics program and reduce their size - say 4000 x 4000 pixels to 2000 x 2000 pixels will use only a fourth of memory (goes square). Tedious undertaking, though.

    Something that may help you with this aspect is Texture Atlas, a DAZ Studio plugin. When I transfer a figure and clothing from DS to Bryce, I first run it through Texture Atlas, which automatically collects the large number of individual textures for everything and converts them into a single texture set.
    This has several benefits. Most obviously, it does all the hard grunt work for you. You can specify the final image size. You can adjust the sizes of each of the images that get combined relative to each other if you want. And of course if you need to delete or change the images from the Bryce image library, it's a lot easier.

    It does also have potential downsides though; for example, because every part of the figure and clothing now references the same texture, you can't just copy the texture of, say, one article of clothing that originally had an unbroken even 512x512 leather texture and paste it to a different object to apply that texture, because that texture is now buried in the middle of your merged image. Of course most of the time things aren't mapped as a single solid rectangle anyway, and of course you can still go get the original texture if you want.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Would that work with s JT product. Hes has textures for all different parts of the product. As shown

    Aslan_tex_screenshot.jpg
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  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited June 2013

    @bullit35744, Bryce is not actively being developed at the moment, so while there used to be (and technically still is) a database to report Bryce bugs (if they turn out to be bugs and not exceeding of the memory limitation of the PC the program is being run on) they will not be addressed right now. Hopefully you will be able to get up and running without crashes with one of the above-suggested workarounds though.

    @chohole
    I don't have The Library, but it should. Here are some before/after example screenshots from a randomly-selected item that had 25 different materials:
    Top screenshot pair is Bryce image library on left, DAZ Studio Surfaces tab on the right. Before using Texture Atlas.
    Bottom screenshot pair is the Bryce image library after using Texture Atlas (note condensed images), and one of the Texture Atlas windows showing the list of materials that you can modify.

    screenshot,_after_texture_atlas.png
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    screenshot,_before_texture_atlas.png
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    Post edited by sriesch on
  • Dino GrampsDino Gramps Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Sean. Always wondered what that good Texture Atlas would do me. I'm new to Bryce also and was probably about to hit that wall also.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Still won't help people like me much though, as I don't use DS. Is one reason why I like it when people give a clay render of the product in their promo's, so you can see how much of the detail is texture driven and how mush is modeled in.

    Polys import easier that pixels.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited June 2013

    Sean; If I am following what you are saying......Texture atlas will make the textures smaller but then how do I get them in Bryce ? over the bridge or will it let me save to desktop on put them in from leo (new things are so hard for me sorry if this is being dumb) now I am dumb it came with daz studio and I didn't even know it

    Post edited by Trish on
  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited December 1969

    @chohole, forgot you don't use DS, so yeah, Texture Atlas won't be of help in that case.
    @bullit35744, whatever method you currently use to get them to Bryce you will keep using, whether that be using the bridge, exporting/importing, etc. I usually try the bridge first because it's easiest, and use export/import if it fails. Other people always just use the export/import method for some very good reason I have forgotten offhand. You could save the textures to the desktop in DS, set them none in the various parameters and transfer the item to Bryce, then reapply the textures in Bryce from leo if the transfer of textures but not the objects is causing problems I suppose, I never thought of doing that.
    What Texture Atlas will do is combine multiple images used by an object into a single image (which you can save wherever you want). (To be clear, that's a single image per parameter, so if you have diffuse and bumps and transparency and ... etc. and choose to keep them all you'll still have multiple images, just a lot fewer than before). The selected object(s) are then modified to use the new image created by Texture Atlas.
    In the case of the diffuse image parameter or whatever parameter you choose, you can access it in DAZ Studio by clicking on the thumbnail to the left of the Diffuse parameter in the "Surfaces (color)" pane (or the dropdown arrow if there is no image yet). It will show you the filename used (if any) and a thumbnail of that file. You will have to record or remember the filename. You can then click Browse to take you to that folder. If you wanted to open that file in photoshop to change it you can, or you can also browse to a different image, for example if you have already opened it and resized and resaved it somewhere and want to change the Diffuse parameter to use your new changed file. (There's also a photoshop bridge plugin but I don't actually have photoshop, so I don't remember how to use it.)
    You don't NEED to use Texture Atlas, it will simply help speed up the work. For example, let's say I have a figure with multiple articles of clothing, or an environment with 25 different textures, and it's going to be in the background in Bryce so I don't need the full 2000x2000 image resolution on every single detail and I think 256x256 for each part is fine. I could simply select each of 25 surfaces one at a time, click on their diffuse textures in DAZ studio, browse to each and open it and resize it and resave it into a new location in photoshop, select the new file location in the diffuse parameter, repeat for all diffuse, then repeat for 25 bump maps and maybe some opacity maps, but that would take me all day. Instead, I select the figure or building and run Texture Atlas, see that it perhaps lines those 25 images up in a 5-image x 5-image grid, select a final image size of 1280x1280 (five 256 pixel images wide and five 256 pixel images tall) and say ok. Texture Atlas then changes my selected item(s) so now instead of having 25 diffuse images tied to separate pieces, all pieces reference the same single diffuse image that is just all 25 original pieces stuck together into a single giant image.
    There might be a small bit of extra work in Texture Atlas beyond just accepting the defaults, or you might want to make use of additional features. For example when I transfer a human figure, the default might be to make the head texture the same size as the entire body texture, which clearly is pointless, so I'll adjust the options to make the head part of the image smaller relative the body part of the image. It also may not make efficient use of the space and might leave a lot of the final image blank, so I might fiddle with the final image size height vs. width instead of just making it square until it rearranges each part better. In the example above it might not put the 25 images in a 5x5 grid, so I might have to try one or two different sizes before saying it's ok. And I'll probably uncheck a few things I don't need, for example if the figure is clothed I don't need the pubic hair texture, and if the mouth is closed I won't need teeth textures, etc. so I'll uncheck those in Texture Atlas so it uses less space.

    Which reminds me, and maybe it was already said, but when appropriate it may be of value to trash the DS textures completely and transfer the untextured object and then apply Bryce materials to that object. I do that occasionally, for example I didn't want a set of textured objects and just wanted a uniform rusty metal material applied to all. That of course won't work if you want to keep the original material.
    I'm probably rambling here, let me know if I need to clarify any points.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    Sean; Thank You sooooooo much!!!! I saved this so I can follow the instructions....Really appreciate the help

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,111
    edited December 1969

    @Sean Riesch - thanks for the heads-up. Good to know.

  • LordHardDrivenLordHardDriven Posts: 937
    edited June 2013

    I went to the new users forum and asked how much stuff studio could hold before it kicks the bucket and one answer was I have 20gigs of stuff installed and it still works fine....There is probably a lot I don't understand about this ......

    It looks like all of your other questions were addressed except this one and so I thought I'd make an attempt to cover this. Basically the person in the Studio Forum that answered you this way did not understand what you were asking. You weren't asking how much stuff you could install before Studio breaks you were asking how much stuff you could load into one scene before it breaks which is two very different things. Right now I have roughly 40GB's of stuff installed in Bryce and it still works but I can still only load 2GB's for one scene. Now like Horo said Studio can also use virtual memory from your hard drive and it undoubtedly does a better job of clearing things from memory that is not needed. Additionally the more recent versions of Studio have both a 32 bit version and a 64 bit version. The 2GB limit is a legacy issue from the pre 64 Bit days where even though a motherboard might be able to physically hold more then 4GB's no program could make use of more then 4 which was a limitation of 32 bit, it was just not possible to address more then 4GB's. 64Bit changed that so running the 64 Bit version of Studio would also allow you to do much more in memory. A similar thing being made for Bryce would solve a lot of these memory issues and should Bryce ever get back into development making it 64 bit is likely a top priority. Sadly the market for Bryce is too small and as such it may be a long time if ever before Bryce goes back into development.

    Also a good thing to keep in mind. Bryce wasn't really meant for importing highly detailed sets like the library but rather it was meant for creating those highly detailed sets natively in Bryce and then maybe import some character to complete the scene.

    Post edited by LordHardDriven on
  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    There is no problem importing the sets, how ever highly detailed, the problem is with the amount of large size hi-res jpg textures which people like JT use.

    I got the whole of Aslan court in in one go, minus the textures, and then added Aslan Court 2 without crashing Bryce. But I used mostly Bryce mats to texture it.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    So who are the powers that be at Daz to ask about development of Bryce??? I feel like its the wizard of oz or something like that "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" Do they just need us as a community to voice this more often.....Is there not something we can do about our wants and needs to have a better Bryce???

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Not a lot we can do that we are not already doing. At least I got DAZ 3D to sponsor the render challenge, so they are aware that the Bryce Community is still alive and kicking.

  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited December 1969

    @bullit35744, I suspect, but do not know, that an insanely huge and sustained increase in Bryce product sales would be the most effective way of increasing the odds of additional Bryce development.

    On the topic of getting DS products into Bryce, there are also a very small number products that have been set up for use with Bryce already that should allow you to avoid some of those transfer issues; those products with Bryce companion files (BCF). I keep forgetting which products have them and which don't; I should run a search and flag these in my DS content library somehow so I don't forget to use them.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited June 2013

    I agree with you Sean, but at the same time DAZ 3D has also got to realise that many Brycers use a terrific amount of content that is not Bryce specific.

    Look at Trish, she has just joined the PC to get some more of this sort of content.

    And I would hate to add up the amount of money I have spent here in the last 10 years or more.

    That is why I was, for a while, putting Bryce images into all sorts of challenges and contests, making sure that there was obvious Daz store content in the images. Before they changed the PC render challenge I had Bryce images featured on the PC newsletters 4 times.

    Plus we had a concerted effort to get quite a few Bryce images into the big Stonemason Contest, and both Dave Savage and Jay won prizes.

    People need to see what Bryce can do .

    Another good reason why we need Galleries on the site.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited December 1969

    chohole said:
    I agree with you Sean, but at the same time DAZ 3D has also got to realise that many Brycers use a terrific amount of content that is not Bryce specific.

    Good point. In fact, I'd like to retract my previous statement, I clearly didn't think it all the way through.
  • LordHardDrivenLordHardDriven Posts: 937
    edited December 1969

    So who are the powers that be at Daz to ask about development of Bryce??? I feel like its the wizard of oz or something like that "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" Do they just need us as a community to voice this more often.....Is there not something we can do about our wants and needs to have a better Bryce???

    Unfortunately we are too small a force and not only that but there are certain people who Daz uses for development, that work on contract so it's also a matter of their availability. It will hopefully happen, eventually. In the mean time the best thing we can do is what many of us have been doing, yourself included, which is to take advantage of all the wonderful new things Bryce and Horo are showing people how to do and thru that attract more interest that translates into new customers.

  • LordHardDrivenLordHardDriven Posts: 937
    edited December 1969

    @bullit35744, I suspect, but do not know, that an insanely huge and sustained increase in Bryce product sales would be the most effective way of increasing the odds of additional Bryce development.

    On the topic of getting DS products into Bryce, there are also a very small number products that have been set up for use with Bryce already that should allow you to avoid some of those transfer issues; those products with Bryce companion files (BCF). I keep forgetting which products have them and which don't; I should run a search and flag these in my DS content library somehow so I don't forget to use them.

    This is either the full list or close to it but I'm pretty sure I got them all:

    00381 - ps_ac437 - Gothic Ruins
    01528 - ps_ac661 - The Tomb
    02093 - ps_ac759 - The Courtyard
    02418 - ps_ac874 - The Tower Remains
    02567 - ps_ac922 - Tribal Village Huts
    02606 - ps_ac939b - Staci HiTech!
    02699 - ps_ac973 - Haunted Mansion
    02717 - ps_ac990 - The Graveyard
    02931 - ps_ac1074 - The Ballroom
    03092 - ps_ac1135 - Fairytale Collection Cottage
    03117 - ps_ac1144 - Shadow Class Space Fighter
    03118 - ps_ac1145 - Fairytale Collection Fantasy Castle
    03167 - ps_ac1165 - Fairytale Collection Knights Keep
    03176 - ps_ac1168 - Fairytale Collection Palace Entrance
    03291 - ps_ac1213 - BRC The Cloister
    03302 - ps_ac1214 - BRC Serenity
    03499 - ps_ac1289 - Spanish Rose Chalet de Sevilla
    03678 - ps_ac1371 - Steam Flying Machine
    03819 - ps_ch128 - Steam-Mech
    03876 - ps_ac1435 - I.S.S. Omega
    03958 - ps_ac1486 - The Core
    04484 - ps_ac1719 - A.M.S. RT-05 Mech
    04544 - ps_ac1736 - Temple of the Pharaohs
    04561 - ps_ac1743 - Trinity Atrium
    04593 - ps_ac1272 - Olympus Mons
    04825 - ps_ac1845 - Dream Home - Great Room
    04867 - ps_ac1863 - Drakkar

    Although I'm not sure if all of them are still available.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,111
    edited December 1969

    It's a vicious circle. Bryce development stalled, people don't go for (what they wrongly perceive in this case) outdated software, so less users, less interest, less money to develop ... ad infinitum.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    LordHardDriven; Thanks for posting the list and answering about powers that be question......

    Horo; I feel like the things you and David make for Bryce and sell at Daz really helps to promote Bryce also!!!

    Pam; It is wonderful that they are forking out prize money for our contest and you did that, I think even though we are a small community that if we keep it going maybe things will happen....

    I mean really where else can you get a program for 19.95 that does what Bryce can do......or like most of us got it for free. I own other 3d programs but just use them for Bryce as an end result.

  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    edited December 1969

    @LordHardDriven, thanks for that list, I've saved it.

  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    Here is part 1of LordHardDrivens list that's still there I am still working on the part2

    sst.jpg
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  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    page2

    p2.jpg
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  • TrishTrish Posts: 2,625
    edited December 1969

    I could not find shadow class space fighter everything else is here

    pg3.png
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  • LordHardDrivenLordHardDriven Posts: 937
    edited December 1969

    @LordHardDriven, thanks for that list, I've saved it.

    No problem.

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