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No plug-in is always going to be demeaning, as both are full blown programs and both are very capable at what they do best.
Partners is by far better, not add-on or even worse plug-in. Words are very powerful, and so any term which suggests that one is lesser than the other should always be avoided when one is trying to promote the virtues of something.
The programs can be used in conjunction with each other, as equal partners.
Three complementary but Standalone softwares... Bryce, Daz Studio and Hexagon as musketeers : "Un pour tous, tous pour un !".
We need bridges in all directions ... For example, a Boolean modeling Bryce to Hexagon for conversion in object... or send directely an object from Hexagon to Bryce...
I fully agree: Bryce, DS and Hexagon as three musketeers. I tend to (sometimes) pose people or animals in DS, model items in Hexagon and then almost always render in Bryce, because of its landscape, DTE, Sky lab, etc. End, of course, because of the David and Horo, who teach us to use Bryce to get all the power!
My wishlist for Bryce 8 would include:
* a tree lab that lets you work on bended and knotty stems of trees and that allows hiding not only tree stem and leaves, but also branches separately
* useful instancing
* useful particle generator
* sub surface scattering
* of course: 64 bit
All of this has been said.
Selling Bryce as the companion stage making and rendering software for the posed figures of DS and the items made in Hexagon might be a good idea.
I love Bryce, always will. But what's love got to do with it?
On Bryce and DazStudio as lovers....
Lets be fair and give credit where it is due. The DS 3DLite render engine which is Render-Man compliant is nothing to scoff at. In its full version it is good enough for Hollywood studios with a solid place in their workflows proving it has professional potential. It is more modern than the Bryce engine and can be updated much more easily. There are many effects we are still hoping to have "added" to Bryce that are already present in 3d Lite just waiting to be unlocked by a programmer via a plug-in of some sort.
Marketing Bryce as a plug-in / additional render engine for DS will fail for several reasons:
1. Bryce currently still has no SSS, so humans will never look as good in Bryce as they will in DS. Remember that the only thing DS users care about is the way the humans look, the rest of the environment is much less important to them. And even when Bryce does eventually get SSS, it will be horribly slow rendering like most every other advanced effect in Bryce.
2. Bryce has no native hair. As anyone knows, it is super slow rendering transmapping, so close-ups of females with beautiful flowing hair are not practical. If you use Light Domes, IBL, or TA and attempt to render a close-up with lots of hair it will take weeks to render, literally. If Bryce had its own native hair support it would make things so much better. The mesh hair now available in DS makes this hurdle much less difficult to overcome. Thank God for Look at My hair and Garabaldi. I can even imagine using this as a tool for grass on landscapes in DS. Lack of hair in Bryce means lack of grass in Bryce. A landscaper that can't produce grass? Are you kidding?
On Bryce and Carrara as lovers...
Carrara is everything Bryce should have been and would have been had it been treated with the right kind of love from the start. Most of the features we ask for in Bryce are already present in Carrara. We just seem to be waiting for the tools to be introduced in a "Bryce-like" manner.
Bryce is far behind Carrara, there is no comparison I'm sad to say. Here are a few examples of the failings:
1. Atmospheres: The word on the street is that Bryce has better atmospherics than Carrara. This is not true. In the first place, Carrara has longitudinal/latitudinal sun controls that also respond to the time of year and the actual day and time. So in Carrara, if you know the latitude and longitude of a location and you know the day and time, you can input those values and Carrara will know at which altitude and azimuth to place the sun. In Bryce the best we can do is guess work, manually guestimating where the sun should be for a given time of year and time of day. Cute, but not very professional. Further, Carrara has a cumulus cloud primitive that allows separate controls for the tops and bottoms of clouds. While David has had some success creating cloud slabs with dynamic undersides, in truth the underside should be flat and the top side should be dynamic. The problem is that in Bryce the flat side is always too flat. We need a real cumulus cloud primitive in Bryce. Just a side note, Vue's clouds also have the right kid of behavior on the underside and top side. Bryce is the only one without it. NOT GOOD!
2. Bryce has trees, but they are spawned on metaballs. This alone makes them almost completely useless for any real work. Carrara has a much more robust tree generator producing plants that actually look like real trees from most viewing angles. But less obvious is the lower polygon footprint of Carrara trees, and the fact that one needs not rely on transmapping since you can import any geometry you want into Carrara to use as leaves. Bryce doesnt allow you to use your own leaf meshes so we resort to super slow transmapping. NOT GOOD!
3. Bryce has instancing, but it is very primitive and not fully mature. Carrara's way is much better. Surprise surprise. NOT GOOD!
4. Carrara has an ocean primitive which can be animated. Bryce has nothing like that. In fact, I'd like to see someone even try to animate water in Bryce via the terrain editor, not just on a 2d plane. NOT GOOD!
5. Carrara has caustics. Bryce doesnt have it.
6. Carrara has reliable displacement even if it is less useful than the excellent displacement in Daz Studio. Bryce has it but it is not mature enough to be reliable yet. Basically useless. NOT GOOD!
7. Carrara has actual industry standard animation tools. Bryce's animation tools are okay, but due to the slow rendering most of its abilities are not even tested. It's just not practical to render animations in Bryce. EXTREMELY NOT GOOD!
8. Carrara has a much more robust Lighting model. Though TA has come a long way, it still has too much difficulty with indoor scenes, which shouldn't be any more challenging for the engine than outdoor renders, but there you have it. Carrara's GI is fast rendering and beautiful to look at most times both indoor and out.
On this same note, lets consider that in Bryce using soft shadows results in a MAJOR render time hit. In Carrara this is not the case. So in Bryce to get a good look from an IBL one needs to use hundreds of light samples to produce a natural softening of the light output with fewer harsh shadows, yet harsh shadows still prevail in most cases. But in Carrara as Howie's scenes demonstrate, domes made of fewer lights but with each light casting soft shadows looks really great. Even a dome of 10 lights with soft shadows renders slower than a dome of 2000 lights with hard shadows in Bryce. If soft shadows were faster I'd use them a lot more often. SUPER EXTREMELY NOT GOOD!
So in the final sum of my post all I can say is that until Bryce actually gains an advantage over the other applications in some way, there is little developmental future to be seen with the application. If it can't make landscapes as well as Carrara then why bother using Bryce for landscapes? If Daz Studio is much better at humans than Bryce, then why not stick with Daz Studio?
The final nail in the coffin is that Bryce is the slowest of the three rendering applications offered at Daz3d. This is due to the fact that Bryce is a full brute force ray tracer but ray-tracing is not the only way to render a scene. But Bryce doesn't have any other tricks so it does everything in the most complicated manner making it slow as all heck. All render engines get old eventually, and Bryce's is ancient.
Bryce's only hope, is to innovate. It needs to come up with a tool or two that are new to the industry yet extremely useful. But innovation takes research, and research is what Bryce will never get with multiple year lags between development cycles. What Bryce needs is to be an only child of loving parents so it can get the attention it deserves. But that will never happen.
Until Bryce gets better than the other applications at something, it will never be taken seriously. Until people have a compelling need to come to Bryce because it has features and tools not found elsewhere, they never will come.
Want to render animation in 360 degree panorama rendering. useful for art effects
Not finding any option.
Have to manually render each frame.
Very tiresome
Any hope in near future !!!
:coolsmile:
Unfortunately, I think Rashad is right on all points ...
David had convinced me yet ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftw9GgMhafs
I buy the update Carrara but it does not want to work today (problem with serial number) ...
Perhaps a plug-in to make a Bryce Skin for Carrara could satifaire the Bryce Addict ... ;-)
You think that you use Bryce but in reality it's Carrara... Is that possible?
Rashad I am playing with Carrara, well I was till it turned into a pumpkin at midnight last night, but I still prefer the way some things work in Bryce, and in particular the terrain generator. I am finding the Carrara one is very tricky, it just doesn't seem to respond in the same way
And I don't like the fact that so far I see no way to hide the animation stuff, which is something I don't need. The other day I managed to hit a wrong button somehow and found myself rendering an avi sequence instead of one render.
Also something else that Carrara doesn't appear to have is the "Colour perspective" control which is such fun to use. I couldn't have got my Monochrome out of Carrara in the same way as I could do it in Bryce, (Still only a WIP)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/index.php?&ACT=50&fid=38&aid=92871_XWEX9TwOiynkK2vw0mE9&board_id=1
So far, although Carrara will be another tool in the box I don't see it replacing my beloved Bryce.
Two things which are getting more popular nowadays are 3D printing and 3D telly... these things are where the bulk of innovation will be over the next decade.
If Bryce could be an innovator in rendering 3D (two cameras rendering the same scene to make the final 3D image as per 3D telly) animations, or could be an innovator in preparing models/scenes for 3D printing, it may help.
Although I wouldn't be particularly interested in either, if it brought new people and new development to Bryce I doubt there'd be any complaints.
I think Rashad's assessment of Bryce and Carrara is a bit biased. One would expect a list of pros and cons in a comparison. But we take it as Rashad's view in a free world.
Bryce can do that already. Just put an appropriate lens in front of the camera. Hint: True 3D Rendering.
Yes, of course Horo and I'm not dismissing nor underestimating the power or versatility of your product, but 3D telly no longer uses the colour separation. it uses poralisation (as I understand it).
But I am talking about innovation into new ways to approach things just as you did when you developed your lens. But for 3DTV animation, I think it would need more than a lens, it's a whole system of delivering moving 3D pictures as broadcastable files.
A professional quality system within Bryce would certainly give it a USP amongst the non professional 3D artists and animators and that renewed interest would put Bryce in it's rightful place as a maveric leader not an old curiosity. :)
Your reference to 3D printing reminded me of this. I think that 3D printing for the masses has a way to go yet. :coolsmirk:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23727229
Indeed, which is why there is massive room for innovation in this field.
And most of the problems stem from the 3D software not preparing the models correctly. :D
But I wouldn't want to turn Bryce into something that It's not... I'd only want it if it rejuvinated the interest and investment into Bryce. :)
Rashad’s assessment of Bryce spun me into a bit of a depression last night, especially since my entry for the Bryce summer contest blew up the day before and I could not recover. That was my fault for not saving frequently enough. However, upon rereading Rashad’s comments I agree with Horo, his comments are a bit biased.
What Bryce has that Carrara lacks is David and Horo. If not for their tutorials and help on these forums, my third go at learning Bryce would have ended as my first two, with Bryce being uninstalled from my computer. My very primitive knowledge of Bryce has brought me more pleasure than Studio or Carrara because I can more easily create what I want in Bryce. Obviously, I am not much interested in rendering people.
All that being said, my dilemma over the next week or so is whether or not to get Carrara while it is on sale. Eighty-five dollars is a lot of money for me, and I feel my time would be better spent learning Bryce well, but I have some time and money invested in Carrara 7. So I will ponder.
Thank you for your kind words, my recommendation is that if you feel 85 dollars is a lot of money, then save it, what you learn in Bryce - or indeed any other render engine you care to name, is largely transferable. There are many things common between all these platforms and the best thing to learn with is the tool you are most comfortable with using. If while learning you try to swap between applications before your are familiar with the key concepts involved, you will hinder your progress and become frustrated. Don't over complicate matters for yourself, pick something, stick with that for 12 months and then see where you are. If you do choose Carrara, which I'm not saying you shouldn't, likewise stick with that. The first steps are always the most difficult.
@Dave - ah, I see. Well, there are/were several schemes for 3D TV. The one I had experienced at the TV Symposium many years ago displayed the picture for the left and right eye alternatively. You had to wear spectacles that were synchronised with the TV. Generally, working with polarised filters is a good means to separate the information for each eye.
@Dino Gramps - thank you for your kind words. I think the best thing with Bryce is its community. Where would I be without all the help I've got? Nowhere! I second David's advice. Start with any 3D program and stick to it until you are fairly familiar with it. Once you hit the wall would be the time to consider investing money and time.
Art is not limited to artificially re-create realistic landscapes and scenes.
Thank you for your advice David and Horo. You both have said what I know to be true. The learning curve is bad enough juggling between Studio and Bryce, let alone adding a third program.
Horo - Your statement about art not being limited to artificially recreating realistic images is very true. It is a box that is very easy to fall into in many areas. A good example is the modern symphony orchestra. They are mainly relegated to playing so called masterpieces that are centuries old partially because that is what their limited audiences will pay to hear. At least that is their excuse. Don't get me wrong, though, I love the music and have played in many semi-pro orchestras (string bass). I believe that the demand for such music is greater in Europe as the schools there give a better eduction in the classics (music and otherwise) then here in the US. However, my point is that there is much more to classical music than what you hear on the average symphony program.
I took the update Carrara because you can switch from the standard version (my previous version) to the pro version for a reasonable price (the same price to go from 8.1 pro to 8.5 pro).
I just hope that Bryce will be updated one day. It's to limited today. But I love it! You can still progress with a new render engin like Octane but the cost is high (199 € + graphics card).
At first, I think use Carrara to create backgrounds HDR (HDRShop) for Bryce. This is a fake HDR but it works well.
You can find my first attempt here (8000x4000) - http://gabrielm1968.deviantart.com/art/Endor-hdr-prob-393513246 .
I use it for this picture : http://gabrielm1968.deviantart.com/art/Star-Wars-Lovers-395394326
I think Rashad’s assessment of Bryce and Carrara is true on many points (Trees, instances, 64b, displacement, SSS). On some point I find Bryce better than Carrara (terrain, texture editor, interface, community and tutorial).
So, even if I slide slowly to Carrara, Bryce is not dead (not yet).
Couldn't have said it better myself. I've had the good fortune of getting to know them roughly a decade ago over at a much smaller forum where we had lots of great intimate conversations. The fact that Horo and David are both wickedly intelligent and that they apply that intelligence to Bryce and helping the community is fantastic and unquantifiable.
If I had my way I would do implement Bryce 8 like such:
1. First would be 64 bit support. I don't care if it takes a full year of code re-writes, without this change there is little future. Considering the age of Bryce code a year of constant work is not a bad estimate.
2. New Interface: I'd set aside no less than 3 months, a full quarter just to update the menus and palettes. Already we have run threads in these forums to generate ideas for improving the interface. And while the new interface cannot please everyone, it could make room for later advancement in features. Once we get a new updated and modern look and feel to the application, we could focus on other things.
3. SSS, Caustics. We all agree on their importance, no need to explain.
4. Cloud Primitives / Ocean Primitives This requires a new Lab for Cumulus Primitives and Ocean Primitives. Editing options would include Bottom Flatness for clouds and wind for the Ocean Primitive. Unlike Carrara that is limited to only a few types of noise, Bryce's excellent procedural generator could make clouds that easily outperform those of Carrara or Vue.
5. Native Hair/Grass. This is something so basic that it's hard to imagine how we've gone this long without it.
6. New Render Engine: This could take a year on its own to develop with constant working. So many things could and should be faster rendering and fear of long renders hinders artistic risk taking.
7. Octane Exporter : Octane is built on procedurals just like Bryce. If there was any application out there that might be somehow "ideal" as a secondary render engine for Bryce Octane seems like the one since many materials could be sent over without any need for translations directly from the material lab.
8. Updated Atmosphere: New types of scattering, a new haze model that isn't so horizon hugging. A scaling tool so that one could set visibility based on distances like in the real world.
9. A Carrara / Bryce bridge. This way you can create plants and other models in Carrara that are easily sent over the Bryce, and vi e versa. I would pay GOOOD money for a Carrara/ Bryce bridge.
10. If all that made its way into B8 and the application not have exploded I'd then want to start working on the animation tools and in the same train I'd look into native posing for Daz figures.
I think it must be very complicated to maintain several applications with dissimilar code. Considering that Bryce, Hexagon and Carrara were created by different developers, its a wonder how any improvements can be made at all.
One feature in Bryce, which is the reason that I purchased it, is the ability to render 16 bit depth maps. This function is supposed to be in Carrara (there is a save option for it), but it is broken and has been broken since it was added. It unfortunately affects Carrara's terrain editor as well, so you can't get a 16 bit greyscale image out that way either.
It's creat terrain in Bryce and export in Carrara.
I will really love using brushes in gray scale for Bryce Terrain Editor. It should not be very complicated to do ?
Obviously, this is not the terrain editor to Vue or Geocontrol... But, Bryce is simple and effective for make Terrain (Fractal, image, DTE, filters, Brushes)...
Just a perspective of a noob CG hobbyist with more money than sense:
I never would have spent a cent at Daz were it not for the give-away of Studio. Barrier to entry was too high for a new hobby, at the old prices. You have to get hooked first.
I never would have invested time (no regrets) in learning Bryce were it not for the activity, impressive renders, creativity, friendliness and passion displayed in the Bryce forums at Daz and elsewhere, but especially at Daz. If Daz ignores Bryce entirely all of that will eventually go away. Just look at the Hexagon forums.
I never would have had the slightest interest in Carrara (vs a free tool like Blender) were it not for being drawn into the Daz eco-system by way of Studio, Bryce, and the Daz store. Definitely not without experiencing some of the limitations of Bryce firsthand (e.g., broken instancing lab, 32 bit, etc.) as well as some of its strong points. Won't know whether I'll regret purchasing Carrara 8.5 for a good while longer than 30 day return period. My final opinion on Carrara will probably make little difference to whether or not I continue to buy from the Daz store, but in general the more I am a regular user of Carrara/Studio/Bryce instead of something else, the more likely I am to buy content from Daz. Why? Because the hottest forums on those applications are hosted through the Daz store. and I see Daz's product promotions every time I log on. If I am using some other products for CG, the less my attention will be on what Daz is selling, and the less I will buy.
For that reason the needs of the Bryce forum members should be and probably are of interest to Daz management. For Bryce to remain useful to Daz, Bryce needs to remain interesting to old-timers and newcomers alike, to keep the community alive and the forums interesting. But because the market is limited so must be the development effort. Doubtful whether Bryce could successfully go open source given the head start of competitive open-source software already out there. So the short term effort should be directed to fixing/enhancing functions that can easily be fixed, like the Studio bridge and hopefully the instancing lab (great idea but crashes constantly). All of the things on the wishlists would be nice, but implementing most of the features will probably never be economically feasible so long as programmers have to be paid.
Not knowing much about these things, how hard would it be to develop a free SDK for Bryce similar to what Daz has for Studio? That might keep the old-timers around developing new plug-ins, and draw in new developers, continually enriching the user experience without having to finance so much programming up front.
What I would say is not that Bryce should be a plugin, but more like a specialized 'lite' version or Carrara. The same for DAZ Studio.
DAZ would be like Carrara but with the focus on existing content rather than making new 3D models. The "modeling" features would be disabled (and it could still be free).
Upgrade to Bryce and it would provide the landscape, atmosphere, water, and cloud settings. You would get a slew or textures for rocks and plants and so on.
Finally, upgrading to Carrara would provide advanced modeling, rigging, and texture capabilities.
It would all be under the same engine so there wouldn't be "does Bryce load Genesis 3 figures?" or "When will they update it to be compatible like the others?
But right now, I would settle for Mac compatibility.
Pressures on my time have kept me away from Bryce (and I was only ever a beginner with it anyway) but I figured out how to animate water with the terrain editor a few years back. I didn't refine it beyond making simple waves in this test scene just to prove to myself I could do it. And I know it could never do proper fluid motions but the flowing waves/water you see here was remarkably simple to do and there are a lot of experienced Bryce animators who could take it so much further than me (and probably have already!)
http://youtu.be/ScX_utz41wE
I'll post a guide in a separate thread in case it's of use to anyone. I think I did one in the old forum somewhere but it'd be better here.
Regards,
Steve.
Pressures on my time have kept me away from Bryce (and I was only ever a beginner with it anyway) but I figured out how to animate water with the terrain editor a few years back. I didn't refine it beyond making simple waves in this test scene just to prove to myself I could do it. And I know it could never do proper fluid motions but the flowing waves/water you see here was remarkably simple to do and there are a lot of experienced Bryce animators who could take it so much further than me (and probably have already!)
http://youtu.be/ScX_utz41wE
I'll post a guide in a separate thread in case it's of use to anyone. I think I did one in the old forum somewhere but it'd be better here.
Regards,
Steve.
Yep, fantastic stuff, really really awesome!!!!!! Thanks for proving me wrong!!
Yes please. I would love to see Bryce Pro 7 upgraded to Bryce Pro 8 in 32-bit and 64-bit version availability. It shouldn't be that hard to make. You already built a powerful program (The hard part is done). All it needs is an upgrade and making the product more user friendly and faster renders. I would buy it in a heart beat. ;-)
It constantly pains me to see Bryce languish, ignored for years first by Corel and now by DAZ. I want to see Bryce 8 Pro with ability to use all real and virtual CPU cores, multiple GPU cores from BOTH major manufacturers AMD and Nvidia, and an improved Bryce Lightning.
Or flat-out replace the renderer with one that is truly capable of high performance in massively parallel systems and networks.
Fix the weird looking trees. Fix the importing/exporting issues. It's time to make Bryce 64-bit only. HD meshing is now available and that's going to require gobs of memory and an OS and application that can see all that memory. Continuing to struggle with a 32 bit copy just permits the developers to keep thinking in the old ways of coding, and makes for an application that will always be less than it should be.
Allow me to put characters right into it from DS or Carrara. Or bring my landscapes and abstracts from Bryce into either of those programs or back-and-forth to Hexagon. If all this means Bryce becomes a plugin, then so be it; it is not an insult or a demeaning to become a plugin if that frees up the artist for creation like never before. All I care is that you make Bryce work in ANY WAY THAT I MAY IMAGINE USING IT (and five more, just to be sure).
It's time to take Bryce forward to the future, and the best way to do that is to revitalize and resurrect the innovative spirit and creative design and coding that Kai Krause and Metacreations did when they birthed it. The world is watching and waiting, so do it right!
I've been reading the thread here with interest and I'm usually only inclined to remain an observer (to which my post count will attest!), but it occurs to me that there is an elephant in the room that hasn't been noticed yet. Usually there is one of three possible reasons why a company purchases another company's software. One is that they intend to further develop it and market it for profit. The second is that they wish to obtain the intellectual property it contains for use in other products. The third is that they wish to reduce competition for products that they currently sell. I have no idea which is the case for any of DAZ's portfolio, of course.
The four major pieces of software that DAZ has acquired, or developed and currently markets seem like a rather strange combination. I say strange because the last thing any company wants is to be in competition with itself. Their products should complement one another ideally, or at least be uniquely different in their purpose or use. And the latter must go beyond interface or workflow. In other words, they must be differentiated by what they do, not how, in my opinion. When we look at the DAZ products, it seems to me that there is simply too much overlap, with only DAZ Studio tending to be limited to a particular speciality, and even that is not completely distinct.
It does not surprise me at all that developement cycles are what they are for some of the DAZ applications. Four different render engines to maintain and develop? Three of four applications that can do modelling, only in different ways? And so on. It seems to me that Bryce has an identity crisis more than anything else. From a business perspective, I believe the question is simply this: "What is it that Bryce does or can do, that no other DAZ software can do?". Not how, or how well, but what. And is that thing or those things valuable to the company's market? If the software only does things that the other software does, what is the point? If it does it better, then pick one, use the best of all of them and produce a single solid product with a progressive development cycle. From a business perspective, that simply makes sense.
I know this won't earn me any fans here, but I'm only stating what seems obvious to me. DAZ is a business, after all. Personally, I have no axes to grind. But, as the old saying goes, "be careful of what you wish for". The solution to the lists of features wanted may be to roll Bryce and the others (two at least) into a single app. If it was your business, isn't that what you would do?
There is already a bridge from DS to Bryce.
Would you like to argue with the established Bryce community on that point.
Say rather that DS is a plugin for Bryce lol. Can you imagine the outcry, although I usually do get laughs when I say that DS or Poser are only plugins to get content into Bryce.
Do remember that DS is the new kid on the block, compared to Bryce, Carrara and Poser. DAZ 3D started work on DS around the time when it did seriously look as though Poser was heading for a sudden demise.
It unfortunately is. DAZ 3D set out on the 6.3 to 7.0 dev cycle to do just that. It proved to be more elaborate as primarily anticipated and it would have run massively over budget.