Zer0 Rei is wondering about the ongoing legacy of Bryce - What's going on in 2024?

Zer0 れい

Hi everyone!

Dropping by, saying hi, introducing myself and hoping to spark a discussion al in one.

I've been trying to be more pro-active about communitybuilding this year, especially with increasing people picking Bryce back up out of nostalgie and love for Y2K era aesthetics.
I myself am using Bryce partially professionally, picking it up out of interest for certain album covers a couple years back and now doing loads of album covers on commission while exploring the possibility of real-life artworks built with Bryce. The commissioned stuff is on my site and I'll attach a picture of some of my recent canvas-printed pieces too.

A lot of my current artists' journey meanders about the value of old technology in both software and hardware so it's been living rent-free inside my brain.
Because the music scene is all bout re-releasing synthesizers from 50 years ago and making new music with them, while 3D modelling abandons progenitors.

So how do people here feel about the future of Bryce? Why Bryce?
How important are the idiosyncrasities of an ancient bit of software compared to the polished high resolution stuff AI can pump out now?
How do we utulise the newly available computing power to make Bryce better? Or to make oru artwork better? When do we start losing part of the charm?
How different is the attitude here, where people have generally been using the software for ages compared to the new users that're found on Instagram and Discord?

Cheers,

Sebastien/Zer0 Rei

NGartplay

Ooh and ah....very cool print outs of Bryce works.  I used to print and sell my XaraXtreme works.  I painted the paper or canvas with a print medium and printed it out on my printer.  Epson inks because they are color fast.

Bryce needs better skies without using HDRIs.

Bryce needs better foliage without having to import.

Hansmar

Hi Zer0 Rei / Sebastien, good to see you in the forum. Your picture shows really wonderful Bryce works. And your artworks on the website breath Bryce and are amazing.

I never printed anything from Bryce (yet), though i know some people have done exhibitions with Bryce work. I mainly like Bryce for the wonderful UI and the options in texture editor and terrain editor and lights. I realise that there are a lot of things that will push people towards other software. Probably the most problematic issue is the limited memory it can use. As soon as you start entering multiple people or animals and trees or other objects from non-Bryce sources, you quickly get into lack of memory. You have to modify external picture textures into Bryce procedural textures (where possible), reduce detail on necessary picture textures and forget copy./past and learn instancing to get a full scene. Of course, part of the fun about Bryce is that you have lots of challenges to overcome and it is great if you succeed.

Regarding the future of Bryce, let's be realistic. As long as it works, there will be diehards, like you and the forum members here, using this great tool. But don't expect any updates anymore. I think there is no businesscase for DAZ to update (or even sell) Bryce (and Hexagon). Even the much more complex and modern tools of Vue and PlantFactory are now no longer commercial, but available for free (and will no longer be updated/developed), because their owners decided to focus on other types of software. I tried out both tools and they have loads of wonderful options, that Brycers can only dream of. They apparently saw no businesscase for Vue and PlantFactory and to me that suggests that there is no chance of a realistic businesscase for Bryce, partly because it is so out of date. 

Ofcourse, there are things Bryce may do (much) better than other tools and its interface is great. And I will keep using it, because I like it so much. However, I cannot close my eyes for the fact that other tools are more advanced, faster, more up-to-date and often better suited for the purposes for which many people could have been using an up-to-date Bryce.

Subtropic Pixel

Sorry for my late arrival, but haha, I've had my hands full this summer!

In my opinion (which is the right opinion), Bryce needs basic bug fixes AND a 64 bit update.

And THAT really is the right opinion.  I've been campaigning for these bare-minimum things for years now, and nothing ever happens.  I'm very upset with DAZ and I don't spend any money with DAZ anymore because of this.  So all that's left for me is to come here every so often to be like the pea under the multiple mattresses or (more likely) a bedbug for the DAZ people who aren't supporting Bryce but have to come to this forum for some other reason.

I don't use Bryce anymore because it's a very crashy-crashy experience and therefore not fun at all.  But if we got word that it's going to be supported, I would consider starting to use it again.

I can go away for 6 months or a full year, and come back and nothing has changed.  That is wrong, and worse yet, it's an opportunity that is actively being ignored and missed by DAZ leadership.  I would love to see DAZ do better.  Or sell the rights for Bryce to somebody who is willing and able to give it the love it really deserves.  Giving it the dignity of bugfixes and 64 Bit mode would show that DAZ still respects Bryce and Bryce's user base.

Once we started seeing fixes, that is.

Hansmar

Subtropic Pixel, I guess all us Bryce users (diehards) agree with you on what would be needed. But that will not change the lack of a business case, specifically since they now have the Ultrascenery that is integrated into DAZ Studio. Let's be honest: there will never be any further development of Bryce. But it is still nice to work with, if you are patient enough to avoid crashes.

Subtropic Pixel

Hansmar said:

Subtropic Pixel, I guess all us Bryce users (diehards) agree with you on what would be needed. But that will not change the lack of a business case, specifically since they now have the Ultrascenery that is integrated into DAZ Studio. Let's be honest: there will never be any further development of Bryce. But it is still nice to work with, if you are patient enough to avoid crashes.

This is 2024.  We should not be forced to band-aid 32-bit software to keep running on our modern machines.

And man, oh man, we shouldn't have to put up with avoidable crashes!

THAT is the right way to think about this.  We can make a business use case for basic fixes and 64-bit mode, plus maybe Apple M silicon.  Hell, fix everything that's wrong with it and put it up on Steam.  Blender is there.  Why not Bryce?

Anything less, including the current state of affairs is just not good enough.  The intellectual property alone could bring in SOMETHING for DAZ.  Just sell the IP to somebody who would be willing to take care of it.  And if you don't need the money, then just donate the proceeds to a school who trains disadvantaged kids in 3D art and animation.  Or a school that teaches math, science, and English to people who want to learn.  God knows we need it.

DAZ isn't making any money off of Bryce now.  Sell it for $10,000.  I'd buy it as long as my attorney would not see any copyright showstoppers in the contract for the sale of the IP. 

Not gonna lie.  I'd love to get my hands on the source code for Bryce.  Bare minimum, I would fix the crashes, bring it up to 64-Bit modernity, and see about fixing the User Interface so that anybody older than 38 years of age won't have to squint just to read the damned drop-downs and help files.  I don't know if it ever ran on Mac, but I'd start with Windows code first.  Then Mac, eventually arriving at full Apple Silicon compatibility.  I'd like to see what Apple's latest beast, the M4 can do on Bryce animation renders.  And what was that networking renderer all about?  Man, that would be awesome.  I'd also like to see if it can run on iPad.  Hey, an M4 is an M4. 

And CUDA processing if you have an RTX graphic card?  Man oh man, the sky is *not* the limit, assuming you have the vision!

I'm not too proud.  I'd even find Kai Krause's phone number to see if we can make something happen.  Or at least have lunch.  I'd fly to Byteburg, or wherever his castle is!  And I'd solicit input from some great fantasy and scene artists such as Roger Dean (Album covers for Yes, Azia, and others), Michael Whelan (he did book covers for Robert A. Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and album covers for Meat Loaf, The Jacksons, and others).  Oh, and the artists here, too.  The best of the best.  God bless you all for keeping the faith.

Our tagline could be "BRYCE 2030:  Not Your Daddy's Old Floating Mountains!"

It's better than the current, "Bryce 2024:  It's Not Dead...yet."  Puh-lease.

Going further than the bare minimum, I think it should be made Open Source, with a future strategy to rebuild it in its entirety with Python.  Or at least bring it up to snuff with a current version of C, C#, or C++, and maybe offer a choice of core rendering engines, with plugins that could be added by the user.

Do it, DAZ.  Sell this property to somebody who'd be willing to give it the TLC it deserves.  Free Bryce from its purgatory!

Now, the question for everybody else here:  Why am I the only one who can actually visualize a THRIVING future for Bryce?  I'm just not willing to settle for mucking and muddling along.  My God, I can almost TASTE a beautiful future for Bryce!  But everytime I say something, everybody else here seems content to let it languish.

I highly doubt that by this point Bryce still contains any top trade secrets that other softwares haven't already cracked by way of independent research and work.  But even if it does, let's work this out.  There are probably multiple solutions to every problem.

DAZ should make this happen.  Some of us still have enough energy to make magic happen, especially when it comes to coding (or making coding happen).  But ain't none of us getting any younger.  The clock is indeed ticking.  A 20-something engineer isn't going to have the fire in the belly to do this...and maybe not the time either, 'cause he's got a couple of full time jobs already. 

But somebody who knows it from 1997?  Now you're talking MOTIVATION.

All I can do is keep speaking up.  I wish I could do more.

Rashad Carter

SubtropicPixel,

Please don't think the community is shooting you down when it comes to Bryce development. We all want it. However due to circumstances outside of anyone's control, we have come to realize that Daz has limited options about how it can handle development of Bryce. Details aside, the final picture is that Bryce is unlikely to see further development in our lifetime, unlikely to ever be made open source, and unlikely to be purchased by new owners. The entire 3d industry is moving in a direction that a new and updated Bryce probably wouldnt look anything like the Bryce we've all come to know and love. No one is more heartbroken than I am, and yet, I still use Bryce very regularly. There are still many innovations to be found in the software as it is currently, so we continue our deep dive into the abyss. Fingers always crossed, we carry on! Hang in there my friend, the bitter pill is tasted by all of us.

Edit to Add:

The frustration with lack of development has been a real heartbreak for me personally. My own artistic goals were always based in "realistic" renders. While the typical Bryce style has always been super cool, my goals were "technically based" moreso than artistically driven; attempting to produce results that don't immediately indicate Bryce as the rendering software. Twisting my mind and the tools in Bryce was fun fun fun. Never any postwork or levels adjustments as an added challenge. Mastering atmospheres, volumetrics, instancing, materials, and lighting, with still so much more to learn and master. I've included several of my old studies from days past indicating just how far I was able to push the software especially with the advent of Bryce 7 pro hoping to encourage users and developers to give it some love. So far, nothing has happened. But I haven't given up hope. Its my opinion that with enough patience at rendering time, Bryce can still compete with current industry offerings. Took multiple days for most of these single frame renders, so animation was never feasible. We have to work harder for results other applications currently spit out with ease. Yet I still believe Bryce is amazing, and worthy of time learning to master even without any further development. Bryce will never die for me or for any of us diehards. We are surely in this together.

NGartplay

Wow Rashad...I'm drooling looking at your work.  For as long as I've used Bryce I've never come close to one of your works.

Rashad Carter

NGartplay,

You are very kind!! These studies aren't really "art" admittedly, they literally are just technical homework on display. These renders were either pre-cursors, or early tests of the many new lighting options and features like instancing available in Bryce 7 Pro.

If you decided to do so NGartplay, I believe you could and likely already do exceed my humble studies, just probabaly harder on yourself than you need to be. My work by no means indicates any sort of ideal standard or limit to what Bryce can do with enough patience. Lacking any real visual art training and insight myself, I have clung to realism simply because I figure it provides its own internal standard for appreciation. A bit cowardly, honestly. Because all these years later I still hardly find usefulness for golden ratios etc. though I know they exist for a reason. Admittedly, there's no "life" to my renders, which I find limits their value and I dont encourage others to necessesarily seek "realism" as an ultimate goal especially for Bryce due to its tendency to limit expression and take insane amounts of unnecessary time. Like a musician constantly practicing scales, but never performing in front of an audience...that's me with visual art! But appreciation is always good to hear, thanks so much!

If you are inspired by those mere studies, you really should see the true artwork of some of the true masters, of which I am not one. Check out Bryce5.com, (assuming I'm allowed to point you there without offending the Daz forums TOS).

Horo, David Brinnen, and many other talented and experienced Bryce artists of the time helped me along greatly in my boundary pushing exploits. I'm sure they found me exhausting and relentless, but they still stuck by me!!

From the work I've seen from you and many others in the challenge and Bryce render threads here, there's no lack of skill and experience available in our community today. Just as vibrant as ever. True, I don't often comment these days, which may seem like a lack of support, but it isn't meant to be so. Bryce is just a sore subject for me after so many years of dedication, so I don't often get involved in conversations, but know that I am always watching and admiring.

The reason I pop in now and then and display my old renders isnt to brag, but to show new people who haven't been around for as long that there are many different types of visual styles within Bryce's capabilities, and to go for it, realism indeed, if they desire it.

Biggest difference between those days and now is the amount of time and patience people have for rendering. I myself don't even have the type of patience I once had, so these days I usually settle for GPU unbiased rendering solutions, which are much less fun, but far more practical.

I long for the days when Bryce was my first rendering engine of choice, and I pray I get to have that experience again. But if not, I still feel grateful to Daz for hosting the software, and for the huge development push they put into Bryce 7 at a time when we thought Bryce 6 was already the end. I'm no longer "upset" with Daz3d, I'm thankful. They gave us what we have now. So long as it still works, I'll work with it.

Rashad Carter

NGartplay,

If you do decide to explore some of the more technical aspects of Bryce you may not yet be as familiar with, I can point you to a few concepts. Horo has many tutorials on his website, many written quite verbosely by me  I admit, that explain in great detail the way I approached lighting in my studies. My thinking is quite different than most users, so be prepared for surprises. For now I'll just mention a few.

Antialiasing:

Many of the lighting approaches I use are somewhat "complex" and therefore do not get along well with anything other than standard AA. The complex lighting rigs alone add quite enough time to rendering, and higher AA settings and Premium effects just increases that another 10-fold or more. 2 days is one thing, 20 days is quite another!! Keep this in mind if you explore the concepts I'm offering. Stick to standard AA, even though its kinda ugly. Better lighting adds more to the result than better AA in my opinion. All of the renders I shared above are standard AA and still took days to render.

Lighting:

"Cool to the Touch" Always consider if you could reach into the screen and touch the objects with your hands, how warm would they feel? Think in terms of thermodynamics. I'll explain.

I made several fellow Brycers annoyed years ago when proposing obnoxiously that uniform ambience "glow" at the material level wasn't a good solution for realism on most surfaces. But we kinda needed ambience back then for indirect lighting when most people's computers werent fast enough for much anything else. Networks of radials werent feasible yet for most users. I went and spent about a million dollars on what was then a state of the art machine that I still use todaty. Most everyone today has a faster computer than the one I'm using. Anyhow I stopped relying on ambience probably 15 or 20 years ago.

Indirect lighting is probably the biggest challenge if seeking realism in Bryce. I avoid Ambience at the material level at nearly all costs, aside from items which are out of thermal equilibrium. Basically, unless it's meant to feel "hot" to the touch and glow like fire or lightning, or even a light bulb, I dont use ambience. Ambience flattens the geometry because it bakes away self-shadows. There are many other methods for correcting hard shadows locally that I think lend more depth and dimension to the apparent image. You want some degree of shadows yes, just not too much or too little. This is also why I always keep Sun/Moon shadows at 100%, and correct shadows using more lights placed strategically within the scene. Lowering that Sky Lab setting below 100, while it might allow lights to penetrate more surfaces and would seem to save time by requiring fewer additional lights to correct, will actually have a flattening effect similar to material ambience, so it is to be avoided in most cases. It also adds to rendering time substancially. Yep, bad for speed!

Another trick: You can also use a small Light Dome with modest quality settings to create the appearance of soft shadows from a light source within a scene, without the need to enable Premium Rendering effects and run into AA related time explosions. Volumetric clouds are an exception however. NEVER light a volume cloud with IBL or Light Domes or TA, as this leads to suffering beyond comprehension. Use only sunlight, and material ambience for clouds. Works really well.

Geometric Complexity and Lighting Choices:

Bryce is quite ideal for scenes of low geometric complexity. Quick to build, quick to render, and onto the next project. But realism often requires more detail to be convincing even for a moment. The level of geometric complexity a scene requires to appear somewhat realistic usually determines which approach I take. I'll explain a few considerations.

IBL for instance is fantastic, but it has the limitation of sourcing light only from extremely far away from world center, so in scenes where a simple central focus is displayed, with few geometric obstructions from the IBL sky, IBL really shines. This is the case in the Coffee Break render, lit with IBL. However in scenes with lots of geometric complexity, the models will likely still have hard shadows where they should not for realism sake. Typically noticeable on the undersides of surfaces. I think of IBL as being more similar to sunlight, but instead of only shining from one point in the sky IBL provides colored light from many more angles and many colors based on real world measurements which is awesome, but it still doesnt always supply enough light in local areas blocked from direct view of the sky... unless you correct for these shortcomings such as I'll describe below.

IBL and Light Domes set to Infinite share most of the same strengths and weaknesses. One way to overcome the main weakness they share is to disable shadow casting for ground terrains and water planes, allowing the IBL or Dome Light illumination to penetrate the terrain and water palnes and directly illuminate the target models from full 360 degrees instead of only 180. Giving the impression of light "bouncing" back upward into space, which is more similar to real life helps a lot.

True Ambience is also quite fantastic, but for some reason the rendering time scales exponentially with the number of radial lights in a scene. One or two radials, no sweat. But 5 or 50, crazy rendering times. Though TA is surely unbeatable for accuracy, it limits lighting options too much for my tastes with most projects. So I use faked GI methods, like Domes and 3D Fills instead. Much faster rendering, acceptable results, much more user control. No need for high levels of AA and Premium settings.

If the scene has a super high degree of geometric complexity, and the camera is set deep within the nest of geometry, I might actually use a 3D Fill, as this is a tool initially conceived by David Brinnen and further regulated with Horo's and my own studies that provides illumination on all sides of a model by means of virtual radial lights floating randomly within a given 3D volume of space. 3D Fills can "see" around corners. A very clever cheat David discovered. Super useful for interiors like the Open House render and Deco White renders above. However, I use them for landscapes as well when there are lots of trees, mountains, buildings etc surrounding the camera.

3D Fills are by far my preferred method for indirect lighting for interiors. Rarely use TA, sadly. Though I love TA and use it for certain things like product promos, not for discussion just now.

Learn the Instancing Lab if you havent already. Realism in landscapes needs lots of stuff. Lots of grass, lots of trees with lots of leaves, stones, etc. They say less is more, but for vegetative landscapes, my opinion is that only more is more.

Atmosphere and Scaling:

The Haze feature of the Sky Lab is very useful as well as problematic, thus knowing the sense of scale you want to create is essential. Create a metric for reference, like 12 Bryce units equals 1ft. This will help you better know where to place distant objects so they arrive within the desired area of the haze field.

Closeup items should not need haze at all, however sprawling landscapes will. Most of the skies available in the Sky Lab are for me set in the exact opposite manner than they need to be. But also keep in mind the original programmers thought of scenes much smaller than what I was trying to achieve, so I had to start over from scratch with a whole noew approach to haze. Bryce has the flexibility I found so no worries! I'm sure I wrote a tutorial at some point about Sky Lab settings regarding Haze, probably on Horo's site someplace. The Cement Jungle render and the Green Canyons are examples of haze that thickens with distance in a convincing manner while remaining clear in the foreground. Another trick: I always use maximum Cloud Height in the Sky Lab for Sky Lab generated clouds, as this setting has unexpectedly helpful effects on the haze field. Maximum Sky height also improves the appearance of the Cumulus Cloud settings in the skylab, as they modify the viewing angle and the clouds appear less flat because of it. Also MAximum Cloud height widens the "Horizon Line" we often see with the haze in Bryce. Once you raise the Cloud Height, you will find you need much less haze for the same desired result.

If you have any questions we can discuss details further in PM's, or likely in another thread, as I have already derailed this one enough I'd say. Fun fun!