Bryce

Who is this book for?
This book is aimed at anyone who wishes to learn how to use Bryce effectively and easily as well as anyone who wishes to use it as a reference.

What is Bryce?
Bryce is a 3D graphics program which specializes in creating and rendering landscapes and terrains. Usually this capability is restricted to high end software packages that tend to be quite expensive. This is not the case with Bryce since DAZ 3D - the company that now own Bryce - have released it for free.

Capabilities
Although it is released free of charge, Bryce is a very powerful package capable of creating some stunning scenes. With practice it is possible to create anything you wish with it. The image opposite was created using Bryce 5.5.

Software
Bryce 5.5 can be downloaded from the DAZ 3D website and while Bryce is the only product required to render the scenes, it is helpful to have an image editing program on the side for some of the more advanced topics. Paint Shop Pro or PhotoImpact are fine. If these aren't available then you can make do perfectly well with MS Paint.

Hardware
Surprisingly for a graphics package Bryce isn't very memory hungry which is good news if you're running an older system. You should be able to run it comfortably with 356MB RAM. On the downside it is very processor intensive whilst rendering and can take over an hour to render complicated scenes and terrains. A dual or quad processor system is definitely an advantage here.

The Bryce Window
The main window is split up into 5 parts:
 * Viewport controls (left hand side)
 * Create and edit controls (top)
 * Main viewing window
 * Selection Tools (bottom)
 * Display controls (bottom right)

Creating a scene
Almost all scenes in Bryce have 3 things in common:
 * A ground plain
 * A water Plain
 * A terrain object