How well does Bryce pro work with Hexagon and DAZ?
drcharbonneau
Posts: 0
Basically that. I'm window shopping at the moment, but I'm wondering, since I'm finding I like DAZ, would I be able to use both of those with Bryce, both bridged independently, or would I need to create in Hexagon, export to DAZ and fool with the object, then export to Bryce?
I guess I'm looking for solutions to work around the Blender learning curve that won't leave me in tears or end up a waste of time.
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yes you can use both with Bryce - send from DS or save as obj
Hex save as obj or other format - then import into Bryce
So if I buy both of those, I'll be up and running faster than with Blender?
O ya for sure - no contest :-)
Essentially, if I decide to lean on my artist skills to make a living,instead of knuckling under to become part of the academic food chain in the sciences as a professor (yuck!), I could generate HDTV quality work for the local TV stations or at least their advertizers?
(Pardon me for being slow to decide. I'm a physicist or more accurately a "physarticist," so not a rich dude as most think Ph.D's are. I've read some posts by those who are too strapped to get the higher priced software. I empathize with that. If I had become an MD we probably wwouldn't be having this discussion right now...) ;-)
It would depend on your skill level, or learning rate, with whichever program you used. To see what's possible with Bryce, since this is the Bryce part of the DAZ site, go to the show us your render threads, there are three so far, and look through what others have done. Since you're thinking of trying to make a living using Bryce, or whichever program, look for posts from Dave Savage, who does contract work. Without a doubt, you'll get a very good idea what's possible using Bryce, especially if it's commercial/contract work.
And if you're thinking of rendering HDTV animation in Bryce, be prepared for very long render times and maybe a few burned out processors. :-)
GN,
I'll puruse till I get the blues... ;-P
TS64,
You mean like CPU's on fire? Cool! :lol:
There should be a bridge from Studio to Hexagon (though I don't know how well it works) and from Studio to Bryce, which does work though due to the different schemes used for shaders, some adaptions have to be made in Bryce. Bryce can also be used as modeller, if your brain works for boolean. Hex is more of a subdivision type of modeler like Wings3D. Animations may take a while though Bryce supports up to 8 processor cores and has a network render option, if you have several computers in your network. If you work with Macs, you can't use Bryce on a OS higher than 10.6. Then, Bryce is still a 32-bit application and does everything in memory - which means it caps at 2 GB unless you make it large address aware, which brings the total to around 3.5 GB.
Hi Horo,
Thank you. Tell me more. There's no 64 bit version?
Another issue would then be portability. The 32bit XP machine is a desktop with 2GB RAM. I try not to go online with it if possible because it has poor virus protection. Can I download it on one machine, but intall it to the other? I have a USB device that can unite them for file transfer, but I doubt if it will allow an installation. How big is the file?
Bryce 7 259,850kb
Bryce 7 content 58,394kb
Bryce 7 pro content 686,116kb
When I make the purchase, I'm getting all that?
Yes indeed. Bryce rocks, big time.
Rocks like a Fender Strat held close to a stack of Marshall's during a dive bombing riff?:-)
Any input on that portability issue? Without it mushrooming, of course. Would I need to buy a separate license for each machine, assuming I can download once, port the file to the other machine, then hook up to the net come license time?
I have Vue9 on that machine which renders wonderfully in reasonable time. It has 2Gb RAM. @ 2.5Ghz, 32 bit XP. I plan to upgrade to 4Gb RAM. It's a Dual Core Celeron. As a rendering machine, I'm gathering, the XP machine is likely the better choice. I can pick up those same boards pretty cheap. I imagine if you are the Bryce demon of the bunch, you might be best to recommend the perfect system. Personally, IMO, as software goes one developer's product goes best with his products instead of a kid from every block.
DAZ 3D EULA is dependant on one User, for however many machines that user may have. The New EULA even allows for that license to cover a laptop. Bryce can run from an external drive, so no problems downloading on one and installing on another.
I can understand having a render machine that is not connected to the interweb. Had I the room my older machine would be connected and this one would be used as a working machine, but we live in a small cottage so I don't have the room to set up 2 workstations.
I understand the space issue. I live in a house that was dilapidated (still is but much less) but I bought it for $4800 + $1200 in interest. Space is not a terrible premium but I'm of the mind that to run out of x & z, doesn't mean running out of y space. You would be correct to imagine the physicist with A LOT of books, notebooks, a decent whiteboard, glassware, transformers, shop tools and even a wife. Somehow I manage to work between 2 or 3 machines serving different purposes. Someday, when I sell this house, the new owner will find 3 areas that can be used as offices, but it's being laid out now to be 2 apartments, so a lot of architectural/building skills (probably a couple murals too...) and plain old fashioned hard work is progressively pulling it together... in addition to my art & scientific research.
On top of that I'm a good engineer, so a lazy bum... ;-)
I'm certain I'll get those two packages. I have to wait a week or so to transfer funds to PayPal and be certain no emergencies happen in the meantime.
What I'm initially wanting to do is use computer generated characters and scenes to illustrate my novels before I start doing handbound hardbounds of them. Progressively I'd like to break into doing work for TV commercials. That may be a few years and I imagine I'll be looking at some different software and serious system upgrades by then.
Thank you very much for your input. That last comment especially sold me on Bryce, assuming it is covered in that same EULA. That really is what most people look for. Vue's top product is $1500. As of now, I don't see that much difference in capability to DAZ products.
Have fun in that cottage. I'd imagine the scenery makes up for cramped living space...
Once you make a purchase, you will need to review and then agree to the EULA before you can download, so you can glance through it and see that it does say what I have said, and one EULA covers all content sold at the DAZ 3D store.
Okee dokee
I was using Bryce and poser in the early 90's to do tradeshow kiosks and more. It really is pretty much a matter of gear and skill, but the programs you're talking about will do it.
No 64-bit version in sight, I'm afraid (this annoys me most of all). I run several Bryce versions from 4 up to 7.1 on Win 2000 SP4, XP Home and XP Pro SP3 and two Win 7 64-bit SP1 (also used it on Win 7 32-bit a short while). I even have it installed on an USB stick. Up to Bryce 6, I had run it on Win 98 SE.
You ran it from a thumb drive? (I take t that's what USB stick is referring to...) I didn't know that could be done. That's really cool!
As I mentioned somewhere, it takes a bit to transfer funds from my bank to PayPal or vice versum. (PaqyPal works for DAZ?...) I keep very little there for protection. I'm actually patiently anxious, but that will let me delve into Blender in the meantime.
By handling up to 8 cores, do you mean per machine or collectively between 8 machines or perhaps 4 dual core machines? By 2Gb or 3.5Gb, potentially, are we, once again, speaking per machine or collectively? Per installed copy, or one copy needs to run all? It's not beyond me to build a server machine capable of being expaanded to 100 MoBo's as pre-processors, sort of like the old RISK setup, and have 10 main processors/video cards/monitors for output. (Sounds like I need an "Isildur's Bane" to rule them all... :lol:)
In 2000 Dr. James Kent, if I recall correctly, networked 1000 machines, state-of-the-art for 2000, using all that to decypher 1/3 of a mouse's DNA.
from what you have said - learn Blender if you want to make money
for fun you are good to go
I guess the machinery issue is not being presented to you folks properly? I realize I sometimes speak a different language...
bigh,
How might I make money using Blender? So far I see it is limited to 20 layers, not that such would be a grave issue. What are the benefits? Is there any reason I couldn't use Bryce to create illustrations that are reasonably complex, then export a scene to Vue or Blender later for serious animation?
illustrations would be fine for a book or some thing like that
Export a scene - not going to work
obj would be ok maybe - textures will be a pain
the best way is to do it all in Blender .
the Blender home page has links to other sites where you can see what people
are doing to make a living using Blender .
Surprisingly, perhaps, I've been there some time back and am registered there, so I've seen scenes others create and was impressed. Punny thing, though. I was told in my intro thread that I could get just as much help in Blender here. At this point, I'm just asking questions that could be food for thought on an issue that might come up again later.
Thus the questions about beefing up the capabilities with system enhancement. Speaking of enhancement, how does one use the Genesis shape modifiers to model larger breasts? I've been playing with them (the modifiers I mean) a bit, but all I managed to obtain was a figure with a severe case of thoracocyrtosis...
Another question is really about Hex, I imagine, but may apply to both DAZ and Blender, if not Poser. Do the bones used for rigging need to be simple geometry or could I actually model the biological skeleton, then use those for rigging? I realize we are talking more vertices. In fact, is there a way to plan ahead by knowing the memory requirement of a single vertex?
Also, this one has gone unanswered... anywhere. Can I create horses and other animals in Hex and finish them up in DAZ, then bring all that together in Bryce?
Yes, an USB stick is what you refer to as thumb drive. Though installing Bryce on one is a bit tricky. But in this way I could sneak in a bit of brycing while at work without installing it on the machine.
8 cores per computer. This was limited during development from 16 because each core also uses memory, so 8 was a compromise. If you have 5 machines with 8 cores each on your home network, your render will, of course, use 40 cores in total.
I haven't answered the unanswered questions, because all I can say is I don't know. Hopefully, others can help.
Hi Horo,
You just answered the main systems query. (I hope my word play doesn't induce any tossed mouse moments...) What that tells me is Bryce just might be a building block tool to a super modeler. Blender seems to have a built in memory use readout. If the DAZ software doesn't, I might be able to cook one up on reasonably short order and put it out as freeware... I have one little gadget that's handy for viewing fonts along with their keyboard code. Maybe I'll dig that up and add an install wizard then put it in freebies...
How would I set up a networked system? Would I install a copy on each machine?
You only have to install Lightning on every machine you want to use as a render client. Only the main machine needs Bryce. In earlier Lightning versions, the main machine running Bryce automatically also worked as a client. This is not so anymore. But you can start Lightning on the main machine as well, then it also takes part in the render and is not limited to distribute tiles to the clients, collect the rendered ones and assemble the image.
Lightning is quite stable in this version (2c). You can pull out the network cable on a client (the work done is lost) and reconnect it later and the client requests a new tile. The final render won't have holes. Do engage Use Tile Optimization if you render a still image. If you render animations, do not use it because each frame can be considered a tile. For stills, a tile is 100 x 100 pixels (or whatever is left on the left side and at the bottom).
Always use the fastest machine as host. The slowest machine is usually the last one that finishes. Be aware that the host sends the source file to each client in succession. Therefore, some clients already work on a tile while others still wait to get the source file. Unfortunately, the host doesn't send the source file as broadcast or multicast (has been requested already, but it didn't make it into this version.
You also have to care about the firewall since Bryce uses ephemeral TCP and UDP ports. You can actually network render on only the host machine to get the hang of how it works before you spread the work all over the network. It is generally possible to render over the public Internet but you'll have a hard time to set up the router because of the ephemeral ports used (which port goes to which machine, if you only have one public IP). Also this was requested: to use dedicated ports. I made it work once when I had a company laptop at home right beside the main machine and tunneled into the shop and went from there to the Internet with a public IP. That's also when I realised that the whole source file is sent to the clients.
And do please understand that Bryce is not a modelling Program Per Se, although many of us use it to constrauct models using the built in components and boolean tecniques. Hexagon is the modelling program in the DAZ 3D stable.
I understand the purpose of each. Realistically, it will be quite some time before I'd get to powerful projects. Winter is usually my busiest computer season. Today we're up to the higher 40's, so I'm out doing home improvement. I certainly appreciate all the input from both of you and definitely not forgetting the rest. Everyone's two cents worth adds up after a bit when stone soup is in progress. Machine capabilities are always an important factor when learning any software; free or otherwise. It helps me get an idea of what I can do with all these "new toys."
We really do need a more social type forum here. Some of the art comms out there are very abusive and many creative people are docile, so easy to offend. In the TOS it states we aren't to get personally involved. People who care about others often find that difficult... especially if you plain old fashioned like some folks out there in cyberspace...
Well on the issue of portability this probably isn't exactly what you meant but, Bryce can exist and run entirely on a USB thumb drive if it's big enough. So you could carry that with you from one machine to the next and not have to worry about licensing issues.
If your goal is to make money doing animations for tv broadcasts though, I'm thinking you're looking at the wrong software? I'm not really sure though, I'm just going on what I hear others say, that Bryce, Hexagon, Studio, Poser, are not what the professionals use. Now what the pro's do use I have no idea, although I'm sure it could be learned fairly quickly by researching it. Now all that being said could Bryce produce quality animation suitable for selling to networks? In the right hands sure, is it the most efficient or best suited program for that task? probably not.
Still it's only $20 right now and there are alot worse ways to spend $20 that definately won't help your future. So on the chance that it might make your dreams come true and the knowledge that if nothing else it's a way to pass time and create art, I say you should go ahead and buy it. You'll not find any of the programs the "Pros" use at a price even close to that reasonable.