When MetaCreations tanked, fans of the 3D landscape-creation program Bryce were sent into a spin. The core group of users had always depended upon the company to update and improve the Bryce program. Even when Corel purchased a chunk of the MetaCreations stable, including Painter and the KPT series, users still could not be sure that the product would continue to evolve.
Worry no more, because Corel has handily displayed its commitment to the MetaCreations classics with the new version 5.0 of Bryce. The new features in this update don't constitute across-the-board redesigns, but they're miles deep in possibility.
A feature that will appeal to professionals — though Bryce has always been pitched at the prosumer level — is network rendering. The program has built-in hooks to join up many computers so they can all render together. You don't need separate licenses for each computer, either, as the included program Bryce Lightning installs on additional computers to share the rendering duties.
The multi-threaded network rendering, which works with both Macs and PCs, can happen over a LAN or on a global network. Most of the time this type of rendering is for assembling long animations, but the method still works for individual frames as well. In fact, in the render options is a check box for Tile Optimization, which breaks up the still into a series of tiles. Each computer churns away, rendering a specific section of the graphic. This is welcome news, as Bryce has always been a very slow renderer, primarily because of the astronomical number of computations the program makes to create dazzling detail with reflections, refractions, rays, and textures.
Another welcome addition, which allows the creation of objects that have not been possible before within Bryce, is Metaballs. They're claylike objects that repel and absorb each other when they get close. Put several Metaballs together to form lumpy objects and use negative Metaballs to put dents and holes in objects. This comes very late in the game, as almost every other program supports them now.
Normally, users created these organic shapes in other programs, such as LightWave 3D, and imported them into Bryce via the program's file import options. This allowed more natural objects to be combined with Bryce's excellent rendering output. Now you can do it all within the program. Hardcore Metaballers may be a little disappointed — though you can apply all the usual Bryce commands to shape and alter, there is no Metaball-specific toolkit for working with these objects, as seen in other programs. Despite this, it facilitates the creation of objects like spilled liquids and bubbling lava.
A new Tree Lab includes just about everything you could ever want for creating a forest. All of the features are here, including branch distribution, branch angles, truck and branch thickness, and number of segments. The branches and trunks can be mapped with an image or one of the many materials created in the Material Lab. All of the many presets for nearly every type of popular tree can be set with randomness for diversity in creating a forest. You can also adjust the gravity of a tree — to grow perky maples or low-hanging willows.
Want leaves? Bryce has 'em. Stacked, staggered, spiral, bunched, or coniferous — a click will change them on the fly and you'll see a realtime preview of the tree coming to life. Give leaves a uniform color, map them with an image, or dip into the Material Lab for thousands of texture possibilities. One handy option is the scale slider, which lets you scale the foliage independently of the tree itself. You can also set the number of leaves.
Previous versions of Bryce had lighting commands scattered in different parts of the program. The new Lighting Lab in Bryce 5 brings it all together. Options include intensity, edge softness, shadow ambience, soft shadows, color, falloff, and gels. Lights can also have volume, making the light's ray visible and able to interact with other objects. You can even set lights to shoot a beam to infinity. The preview screen allows toggling to show either a basic lighting example or to view the actual scene, where you can see the lighting effects in realtime.
An overhaul of the Bryce interface keeps the basic feel but buries usability improvements here and there in many of the subscreens. For example, the Terrain Editor now features floating palettes, similar to those in KPT, which facilitate creating a very customized environment. But in other sections, commands are locked down.
The Bryce CD ships with a ton of presets, example files, light filters, plants, flowers, objects, and galleries. A run through these will definitely inspire and show the true power of the program.
Bryce 5 has developed into an extremely powerful program that keeps knocking on the door of professional use. A few things might be keeping that door shut, however. The interface takes some getting used to for beginners. Beautifully sculpted and gorgeous to look at, the purpose of most of the buttons isn't apparent until you click them. One pet peeve I have is that the program still takes over your screen in Windows. You can't shrink or size it; it's fullscreen or nothing. This hinders running various programs at once.
Professional users will miss the plug-in architecture, aside from bitmap effects, that the bigger 3D programs have. As such, there is unfortunately no user base consistently coming up with new tools for the program.
On the plus side, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better 3D program at this price point. So many features are packed into this program that it would take months to fully exploit them all. This is almost a textbook example of constant refinement, as the developers seem to work less on whiz-bang features and more on making the organic interface more usable and powerful.
And the output is as dazzling as ever — thanks especially to the new rendering effects such as depth of field, blurry reflections, true ambience, and soft shadows. The rendering engine is still a little too pokey for my taste (even on a Pentium 4), but the payoff is colorful and visually arresting output.
As Bryce 5 continues to veer toward professional use, the program never strays too far from its core audience — those who want the best 3D landscape generator around.
