Is Bryce 7 Pro still worth it to make Daz landscapes?
Evenios
Posts: 119
in The Commons
i know that bryce 7 pro hasnt been updated in years and prob wont be.....but theres still a bit of addons for it and such and i was curious i know there is intigration between it and Daz Studio but for 4.8 and Iray is it possible to easily transfer created landscapes with Bryce 7 into Daz Studio 4.8 with the textures and all and then use it i know the materials wont quite be the same for using with iray but would be nice to have options to make landscapes that easily import into Daz Studio....thanks!
Comments
Well, TBH the bridge was really designed to work the other way, that you set your figures up in DS and send them to Bryce to make the environement. Some people do use it the other way round, but as you say Bryce mats will not translate well as Bryce uses prcedural mats for terrains etc. The beauty of the bridge is that if your figure is not quite right in Bryce, you can then send it back to DS to tweak and then try again in Bryce.
Having said that, I have been using Bryce for more than 15 years, and it is still my fave program. I never render in anything else, when making images.
Check this thread to see what Brycers can do with Bryce Bryce Render Challenge
Good glory the landscapes look amazing! But the human figures look pretty cartoonish. Can human figures be done photo real in Bryce?
Not quite certain why you say Cartoonish, however How photoreal do you want.
I REALLY wish Daz would bring over some of the procedural stuff from Bryce and Carrara into Daz. I was very disappointed that all the terrain stuff and cool shaders I remembered with Carrara couldn't migrate at all. Or particles. sigh.
You can't have it, we Brycers still need it. And Carrararists till need what they have as well. (hmmph, some people want it all, they get an unbiased render engine and they are still not satisfied)
I'd be happy if you could just 'freeze' the shaders, or convert them, or something, so you could pipe stuff out of Bryce and Carrara. That would still leave them relevant, but let people use the engine of choice.
But noooo.
Well...it's sort of in Studio...except that very few have done much with it...and most of what has been done is just a small fraction of what could be done. It's called ShaderMixer.
And yes, a particle system would be nice...but a it's sort of in Studio, too...just no way of doing anything with the native particle capabilities of 3Delight (it took a long time to get curves...LAMH and Garibaldi)...but a full physics interface would be better. Without gravity, wind and whatnot, the particles, strands, curves and everything else are less than half of what they should be.
People don't realise just how ahead of it's time Bryce was, and it still holds it's own even now. There are people still experimenting and finding different ways to use what we have got under the hood.
The problem with trying to get one program to do it all is the probability that you would actually end up with a JOATMON type of program.
Leave each program to do what it is good at doing is what I say.
Yesssssss
For Carrara
inagoni Baker
Bryce can be as photoreal or surreal as the user choses. Flexibility has been one of it's mainstays all these years. Despite access to Vue Xtreme, I often find myself returning to Bryce because I know it well and can get the work done faster. I have yet to have a client complain about the results. Several have even chosen the finished product using Bryce over the one using Vue. I would be nice if DAZ created a 64bit version of Bryce.
Yes...the only reason I don't use Bryce more often...it doesn't work, very well, without a lot of 'beating it into submission' in WINE. It is quite remarkable, that even now, it hasn't been wiped out by newer toys. Updating it to 64 bit and giving it full 32 bit floating point image support would be beyond awesome.
(By "landscape" I assume you mean "terrain", rather than entire scene complete with atmosphere, trees, water, etc. Each of those elements has their own separate ability (or lack of ability) to transfer across, and their own issues. For this post I'm referring to terrains only:)
An important thing to keep in mind when transferring a terrain from DAZ Studio is to not use the defaults, as they are no good. I haven't done this much yet, so there may be a better way, or a problem with this method I'm overlooking, but here are the notes I wrote to myself for how to do it. I've also attached a screenshot showing a randomly chosen example. I made no attempt at good lighting/shadows, nor matching the lighting from the skydome/light set that made it redder, so please ignore the color difference, which actually isn't like that. What I'm trying to illustrate is that the pattern on the terrain appears to be slightly different after it gets baked in Bryce. Perhaps others with experience can identify if I missed a step and it really should match, or if this is just a limitation one must accept?
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INSTRUCTIONS FOR Exporting a terrain: Don't use the bridge, nor default settings, as they are unacceptably low quality. Instead: Select the terrain, then from the menu bar select File > "Export Object". Change the filename to have no spaces, or it won't work. Change the "Save as type" dropdown to "Wavefront OBJ Files (*.obj)(Mesh Export)" and press the Save button. Drag the slider at the bottom of the next window all the way to the right to increase the resolution to the desired level (the default is far too low), uncheck "Ambient Color", possibly uncheck Bump if desired, change the Size dropdown to whatever is appropriate (max 4096x4096), change the Format dropdown to JPEG(*.JPG) > "Max Quality", and press the checkmark.
I exported this terrain over from Bryce using bridge and used one of the grass shaders on it. I remember I had to increase the tiling on it, or something, to get it smaller so that it didn't look like a thatched roof The original Bryce texture just didn't come across in a usable fashion.
Click on image for larger size.
Years ago one of the Bryce developers translated some of the Bryce 'shaders' to studio--probably around version 1. It may have been only the waters IIRC. The problem was, though beautiful, they were glacially slow to render. Nothing came of it and I haven't a clue how well they sold. They were here at DAZ but haven't been around for years.
This render really has a great feel to it. Almost eastern.
You can export terrains from carrara as.obj and turn it's procedural shaders into textures, I do it all the time. The mountains in the background on this image are from carrara
They were broken by an update to Dazstudio ...
Our Bryce workflow involves a stable release of DS 4.6 or lower. DS is used for clothing and posing only. Once they are imported through the bridge, we let Bryce do the rest of the work. The 32bit can make for some long renders but it's been worth the wait. We also found that using a 32bit version of DS in combination (pain I know) works very well.
If they were actual compiled RSL shaders...then at that time, without manually recompiling them, there wasn't an easy way of updating them. If the sourcecode still exists, then they could probably, fairly easily be brought back.
Agreed! Bryce is still simply the best I know for landscape renders. I tried Terragen but didn't get along with the user surface. Until now I saw nothing matching the depth of the Bryce views. The day Daz makes Bryce Mac OS X/64 bit compatible will be a glorious day - if it ever comes.
Eilir Works, "ShaderShop for DAZ Studio Bundle" which included "Water Shaders for DAZ Studio Vol I", "Water Shaders for DAZ Studio Vol II", "Architectural Shaders for DAZ Studio", "Marble Shaders for DAZ Studio", "Metal Shaders for DAZ Studio", "Terrain Shaders for DAZ Studio Vol I", and "Terrain Shaders for DAZ Studio Vol II". I purchased the bundle for about $70 (after discount, it was about $100), then probably one month later they became unusable due to a DAZ Studio upgrade. I was not a happy camper. A lot of effort went into those, and then vanished in a puff of smoke. If there was any way to convince somebody to get them working again somehow, that would be fan-freekin-tastic.
Did you submit a ticket as soon as the issue occured? Best thing to do is you encounter an issue with a product after an update is to submit a ticket. Especially if it is an issue you can replicate. Unless the file contains non-DAZ products, it doesn't hurt to attach it to a ticket to tech support.
If the products don't work even now, submit a ticket through Zen Desk. It's the only way they know that there are issues. Have you checked and/or re-downloaded the products since the problem occurred? Vendors may not have the updates ready to go at the time of an update's release.
...I agree. that is why I still would like to see a "Daz 3D suite" with Bryce, Hexagon and Studio as they already bridge together to a limited extent. Each has their special focus and goes much more into detail for the specific task itwas designed for than what I call a single "Swiss Army Knife" type graphics app. Bring both Bryce and Hexagon into the 64 bit arena and it would make a powerful 3d combo. Bryce for landscapes, Daz for figure morphing and posing, Hexagon for modelling.
Yeah, way back in 2009 or something, but unfortunately the products would have had to have been rewritten or recompiled or something to work with the next version of DS. Apparently it was decided it wasn't worthwhile to do that, so they are no longer supported nor in the store. I keep hoping one day Eilir Works will re-examine the market and give them another try, or give them away to another knowledgeable person who can do the recompile/rewrite, but don't expect that day to arrive. That's just the way it is I guess.
Not a human figure, but I saw this post today, and I thought was a good demo of Photo real
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/898937/#Comment_898937
In what way cartoonish?
Two of mine done in Bryce.
Click on image for full size.
Click on image for full size.