Bryce is a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program specializing in fractal landscapes. The name is taken from Bryce Canyon — a rugged region with many of the same landscapes that were first simulated with the software. The original Bryce software arose from working with fractal geometry to create realistic computer images of mountain ranges and coastlines. An initial set of fractal-based programs were developed by Ken Musgrave (who later created MojoWorld) a student of Benoît Mandelbrot, and extended by Eric Wenger. Wenger later met and worked with software artist Kai Krause to design a basic user interface. The first commercial version, Bryce 1.0, appeared in 1994
What’s Included and Features
- New and Improved Light Lab
- New Lights:
- New Distant – (New in Bryce 7) Easily apply additional sunlight sources to your outdoor landscapes. Distant Lights interact with the Sky Lab effects of Clouds and Sky Color for a fully integrated second sun. Enjoy nearly unlimited brightness potential as well as the ability to apply gels. Use Distant Lights in combination with the default Sun or as a replacement, with Bryce 7, there are always options.
- Spotlight
- Parallel – (New in Bryce 7) Technology which profices users the ability to produce truly parallel lights like never before. Easily apply underwater caustic effects and other simulations using the True Parallel Lights.
- Cluster
- Dome – (New in Bryce 7) Light Domes are light cluster configurations that provide an excellent source of Indirect Lighting and Ambient Occlusion. These lights are very good at representing the light output of the sky for outdoor landscapes, and can provide nice special effect lighting for that “other worldly” render you’ve been considering. Domes are also useful for Interiors and Architectural Designs. Bryce 7 Light Domes are optimized for faster rendering than traditional domes constructed of individual radial lights.
- 3D Fill Lights – (New in Bryce 7) Light Domes are light cluster configurations that provide an excellent source of Indirect Lighting and Ambient Occlusion. These lights are very good at representing the light output of the sky for outdoor landscapes, and can provide nice special effect lighting for that “other worldly” render you’ve been considering. Domes are also useful for Interiors and Architectural Designs. Bryce 7 Light Domes are optimized for faster rendering than traditional domes constructed of individual radial lights.
- Distant
- Round Parallel
- Square Parallel
- Sphere Dome
- Cube Dome
- Sphere Fill
- Cube Fill
- Specular and Diffuse Intensity settings – Specularity is an important aspect of CG lighting interaction, providing that sense of shine on plastic and that sense of moisture on human skin. Bryce 7 gives the user an unprecedented level of control over the Specular interaction via Specular lights, enabling users to create fantasy materials and real world materials that we could only dream of in previous releases. By decoupling the Diffuse Intensity from the Specular Intensity the user can now apply different intensity values to each of these channels, allowing one light source to do the work of two, which saves render time.
- True Ambience Optimization
- New To Bryce 7 is the powerful True Ambience feature, which has been redesigned for a new generation.
- True Ambience Optimized Light sources are designed to keep True Ambience render times as fast as possible. Unlike standard point based light sources, True Ambience Optimized Light sources are physically accurate light sources allowing a new level of control over True Ambience renders. Did I mention that these lights are fast?
- Cast Shadow intensity control has been added – Adjust the depth of the shadows cast by the light probe independent of the shadow depth set for the other lights.
- Lens Flare – Often, powerful light sources such as the sun will interact with the camera lens or human cornea resulting in a Flaring Effect. Bryce 7 provides an elegant means of producing Lens Flares that will make your distant sunlight and other light effects look better than ever.
- Newly Designed True Ambience – Bryce 7 has a newly designed True Ambience feature, which is often treated as a radiosity simulation. Bryce 7 has improved the shading threshold, as well as included the ability to produce bump. Further, True Ambience is now much easier to use as the implementation has been greatly simplified. A new Boosted Light Feature has been added, allowing a user to adjust the number of ray bounces that occur during the True Ambience process, resulting in a new level of accuracy and beauty to the render output.
- New Lights:
- Sky Lab Improvements
- Added control over cloud settings
- IBL – Image Based Lighting (IBL) is the process of illuminating your scene or objects in the scene, with images of light from the real world. It is a byproduct of reflection mapping techniques.
- Use rendered skies as IBL light probe – Create IBL light probes from your favorite skies in almost any size and save them to the sky library. The light probes can be exported as LDRI or HDRI in different file formats and projections. The skies can even be exported as QT movies.
- Added capability for HDRI images
- Saturation Control – Adjust the color saturation of the light generated by the light probe loaded to balance the light cast onto your scene. A light probe can even cast monochrome light, without any color, thus lighting your scene with color neutral ligt.
- Transparency
- Save full-range image in HDRI formats (OpenEXR) – The finished render can be exported as HDRI in the OpenEXR file format. A plethora of new post production options becomes available through tone-mapping in an HDRI enabled graphics application.
- HDRI from inside – The light probe usually shines from far away to the center of your scene. HDRI from Inside inverts this and sets the light probe in the world center. It shines from the world center outwards. At the same time, the HDRI can still be used as background to create reflections on objects.
- HDRI and Bryce Clouds can co-exist – Use a light probe with a cloudless sky and add the clouds from the Sky Lab to make the sky more interesting.
- Cast shadow settings
- Soft Shadows – IBL features a soft shadows control that works completely independant of other soft shadow settings. No matter how soft shadows are set for the sun or conventional light sources, this new control affects only the light cast by the light probe.
- Specular map settings – Create a specular map from any light probe loaded directly in the Bryce IBL Lab and use it to control reflections on objects that need to be blurred and thus emulate specularity.
- Background Depth of Field (DOF)
- Saturation Control for Image Based Light
- Powerful Sun – The sun light can be boosted to make it really bright and can be dimmed down directly without the need to change the sun color to gray. The effect of specularity from the sun on an object can be directly controlled.
- Added intensity settings
- Control over specularity from the sun
- Control over shadow softness
- New Instancing Lab
- True Instancing
- Create copies of objects using a single object’s geometry.
- Create larger scenes than every before
- Use less memory and system resources
- Add more objects than ever in your scenes
- Create instances with:
- Adjust size
- Determine Density
- Set Divergence angle
- Change distribution
- Change the objects randomness setting
- Adjust the seed setting
- Brush Editor Parameters
- Scale
- Rotation
- Random Seed
- Proportion
- True Instancing
- Material Lab Improvements
- Displacement values have been added – Bryce 7 now has the ability to assign displacement on materials. This will add the ability to create even more realistic materials, by adding details through displacement.
- Render Option Improvements
- Light Settings
- TA rays per hit
- TA Legacy Mode
- Boost Light
- New Import & Export Options
- FBX import/export( primitives, meshes, lights, picture objects )
- COLLADA import/export (primitives, meshes, lights, picture objects)
- Updated Studio bridge (can detect DAZ Studio installations on user’s machine)
- Tree and metaball export dialogs
- Updates:
- Updated Photoshop Plug-in host to conform the newer specifications – 5.0/6.0.
- Updated JPEG library to the latest version (7.0)
- New PhotoShop-like color picker widget
- Updated LWOBJ exporter
- New “convert metaballs” icon for in-place conversion, i.e. without exporting them…
- Render speed improvements Show the render time in the lower left corner of the window
- Shift+Delete objects leaves children un-touched
- Alt+Click directly selects the object being clicked on
- Do not center the origin if the group contains parent-linked objects
- Change metaball type( positive or negative) form Object Attributes window
- Redesigned DAZ Studio Bridge
- Particle Animation
- Create a particle animated object using spheres.
- Instructions:
- To create particle animation: Ctrl-click to create the “2D Face Vertical” object. Move the animation slider and you will see the particles flying around.
- To change particle properties: Go to Edit palette and choose one of the items from the drop down “Randomize Options” menu:
- “2D Disperse” corresponds to “Gravity”
- “2D Disperse Rotate” corresponds to “Max Particles”
- “2D Disperse Size” corresponds to “Velocity Scaler”
- Now hold down Ctrl and move the Randomize slider to set the parameter.
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