User Guide for Macintosh® and Windows® Trademarks Special thanks to Susan Kitchens for technical inspiration on textures and the Deep Texture Bryce is a trademark of MetaCreations Editor. Corporation. QuickDraw and QuickTime are trademarks, and Apple, Macintosh and Box Design by Magdelana Bassett and Darin Power Macintosh are registered trademarks of Sullivan. Apple Computers, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark and Video for Windows is a Quality Assurance testing by Meredith Keiser, trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other Fernando Corrado, Kevin Prendergast, and product and brand names mentioned in this Stephen Watts. user guide are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The Bryce User Guide was written by Erick Vera; updated by Lynn Flink and Donna Copyright Ford;edited by Valarie Sanford; project management by Erick Vera; art directed by This manual, as well as the software described Garvin Soutar; illustrated by Garvin Soutar and in it is furnished under license and may only be Heather Chargin; production by Erick Vera; used or copied in accordance with the terms of prepress production by Rich O’Rielly and Erick such license. Program copyright ©1990-1999 Vera; review and validation by Brian Wagner MetaCreations Corporation, including the look and Ales Holecek; tutorials written and and feel of the product. Bryce User Guide illustrated by Peter Sharpe (http:// copyright ©1999 MetaCreations Corporation. www.petersharpe.com), and Susan Kitchens No part of this guide may be reproduced in any (http://www.auntialias.com). form or by any means without the prior written permission of MetaCreations Corporation. Chapter openers by Garvin Soutar. Section dividers illustrated by Bill Munns. Notice Cover artwork by Robert Bailey and Before using this software or reading this user Jackson Ting. guide, make sure you have read, understood and agreed to the license contained in the back of the Bryce 4 User Guide. Credits Bryce™ was originally created by Phil Clevenger, Kai Krause, Sree Kotay and Eric Wenger. Bryce 4™ was created by Ken Musgrave, Sam Coroniti, Ian Gilman, Paul Cattrone, Michael Herf, and Maria Giannakouros. UI Design by Robert Bailey and Jackson Ting. Product Management by John Feld. 1 Welcome to Bryce 4 Welcome to Bryce™4, the leading 3D program for desktop artists and animators, web design- ers, and multimedia producers. Bryce is ideal for creating 3D graphics for magazines, ads, or virtually any illustration that would benefit from the powerful 3D impact of realistic per- spective and shading. Bryce’s easy animation features let you create great animations for video and multimedia. Bryce’s key-event and timeline-based anima- tion lets you create incredibly realistic, fully- animated, 3D worlds where rivers rush through gorges, the sun sets over the ocean, or mist evaporates to reveal flocks of birds soar- ing between mountain peaks. Bryce can also be an invaluable tool for inter- active multimedia. Your Bryce package includes: In addition, you can perform textured terrain exports through the new real-time, multi-reso- • The Bryce CD-ROM lution, Export Lab which converts Bryce ter- • The Bryce User Guide rains into mesh objects for export in all popular 3D file formats. Terrain mesh density is fully • The Bryce Quick Reference Card user adjustable and you can have instant visual • Your Bryce serial number feedback with real-time textured preview. Refer • A Software Registration Card to “Terrains” on page 157 for more information. If you are missing any of these items, please Using Bryce on the Web contact your Bryce dealer, distributor, or Meta- Creations Customer Service at (831) 430-4063. Use Bryce to export both still or motion images to the web with embedded object links. You can also communicate with other Bryce users via What’s New in Bryce BryceTalk, or go directly to Bryce-related web links from within Bryce. Refer to “Using Bryce The new Bryce 4 has new tools, features, and on the Web” on page 423 for more information. improvements from Bryce 3D. For those of you who are upgrading, the overview in the follow- Interactive Movie Previewing ing paragraphs provides a head start on locat- ing, learning about, and taking advantage of Now, you can immediately see your Bryce ani- new features in Bryce, that include: mation in a preview window without having to render it, then play it using an external viewer. New Sky Lab You can quickly generate thumbnail previews of your animations, preview animations directly The Sky Lab provides new and improved tools within Bryce, or navigate through your anima- for creating stunning skies. It provides one-stop tion using a storyboard style interface. Refer to access to Cloud, Atmosphere, and Sun and “Animating” on page 353 for more information. Moon controls. Refer to “Creating Skies” on page 123 for more information. Enhanced Rendering New Import/Export You can enhance render quality using gamma correction and 48 bit dithering. Lights have a Many additional image formats and object types new falloff mode for more control over how far are supported for import and export including light travels. US Geological Survey maps,(.DEM) files, and USGS SDTS files. Refer to “Using Bryce with Bryce 4 provides new and improved texture Other Applications” on page 417 for more mapping modes, along with a new material information. shading mode to control self-shadowing of objects. Refer to “Rendering” on page 403 for Terrain Enhancements more information. Bryce 4 provides over 20 new fractal terrain cre- ation models. Welcome to Bryce 4 4 Enhanced Screen Resolution Preset Enhancements Since monitors do not always display a full You can create your own preset categories, and range of colors, Bryce has compensated by add- easily organize your presets. Refer to zot for ing gamma correction so that colors are truer, more information. terrains more natural, and earth tones more real. Bryce also now has an automatic process called About Your User Guide 48 bit dithering that allows for a better display This user guide provides all the information of gradients. Instead of distinct color bands, you need to get the most out of Bryce. It will you now see a smoother transition from one help you learn the application as well as serve color to the next. as a reference as you attempt more sophisti- Light Editor Enhancements cated procedures and effects. We assume you are already familiar with basic Bryce 4 now provides more control over the Macintosh and Windows concepts such as way light falls. The Light Editor contains menus, dialogs, and mouse operations. If you options for a falloff method and distance. In need more information on these subjects, or on addition to gradual dimming, you can now the Macintosh Finder or the Windows Desktop, choose to stop light abruptly. Refer to “The refer to the Macintosh User’s Manual or the Camera and Lights” on page 325 for more Microsoft Windows User’s Guide, respectively. information. The best way to learn Bryce is to read “Bryce New Material Lab features Basics” on page 15 and then complete the “Tutorial” on page 47. The tutorial leads you through the process of creating illustrations Many new options in the Materials Lab let you and animations in Bryce and also explains some apply pictures in new ways that include tiling of the important concepts you’ll need to know and mirroring. Bryce also allows you to export in order to model and animate in 3D. textured terrains as Metastream files. Refer to “Materials” on page 189 for more information. After you complete the tutorial, you are ready to open a new file and start building your own Picture Editor Enhancements scene. You can launch Photoshop plug-ins to enhance Computer graphics and three-dimensional or edit your 2D image map textures. In addition modeling use special terms that are usually you can import more image formats than ever. explained where they are introduced. In addi- Refer to “Working with Pictures” on page 108 tion, “Glossary” on page 433 provides concise for more information. definitions of a number of terms. 5 Bryce 4 Conventions reserves the right to change this support policy at any time. The Bryce User Guide is for both Macintosh You will find the answers to most of your ques- and Windows. By convention, Macintosh com- tions within the pages of this User Guide. If mands precede Windows commands in the you need further assistance, you may contact text. For example, Command/Ctrl+I, is equiva- MetaCreations Technical Support in one of the lent to the Macintosh Command-I and the following ways: Windows Ctrl+I. For simplicity, the term folder refers to directories as well as folders. Screen- shots may alternate between the Macintosh and Web Support Windows versions. The Bryce interface for both platforms is identical, unless otherwise speci- Many of the answers to your questions are avail- fied. able 24 hours a day on our website: There are also several conventions used to http://www.metacreations.com/support. identify paths to certain tools and controls. The convention to a menu follows the rule of the In addition to frequently asked questions menu name> menu item. The convention to a (FAQs), the website provides troubleshooting palette follows the rule of the palette name: techniques, late breaking product news, and subpalette name or palette item. The conven- other resources to help you get the most out of tion to a palette menu follows the rule of pal- Bryce. ette name: palette menu> menu item. Phone Support Modifier Keys Phone support hours are Monday–Friday, 8:00 When a modifier key differs between the Mac- AM–5:00 PM, Pacific Standard Time, excluding intosh and Windows platform, the Macintosh holidays.