Bryce, also often referred to colloquially as Bryce3D, is a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program specializing in

fractal landscape A fractal landscape is a surface that is generated using a stochastic algorithm designed to produce fractal behavior that mimics the appearance of natural terrain. In other words, the result of the procedure is not a deterministic fractal surface, ...

s. The name is taken from

Bryce Canyon Bryce Canyon National Park () is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern ...

—a rugged region with many of the same landscapes that were first simulated with the software.

History

The original Bryce software arose from work with

fractal geometry In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illu ...

to create realistic computer images of mountain ranges and coastlines. An initial set of fractal based programs were developed by

Ken Musgrave Forest Kenton Musgrave (16 September 1955 – 14 December 2018) was a professor at The George Washington University in the USA. A computer artist who worked with fractal images, he worked on the Bryce landscape software and later as CEO/CTO of Pa ...

(who later created MojoWorld) a student of

Benoît Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of phy ...

, and extended by Eric Wenger. Wenger later met and worked with software artist

Kai Krause Kai Krause (born March 14, 1957) is a German software and graphical user interface designer, best known for founding MetaCreations Corp., his Kai's Power Tools series of products, and for his contributions to graphical user interface design. B ...

to design a basic

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

. The first commercial version, Bryce 1.0, appeared in 1994 for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

. Bryce 2.0, shipped in 1996, included much beyond the original notion of creating a realistic mountain range. These included independent light sources, complex atmospheric effects, the addition of primitive forms with Boolean methods to combine them, a revamped Texture Editor and the ability to export models to

DXF AutoCAD DXF (Drawing Interchange Format, or Drawing Exchange Format) is a CAD data file format developed by Autodesk for enabling data interoperability between AutoCAD and other programs. DXF was introduced in December 1982 as part of AutoCA ...

. Bryce 2.0 was also ported to the Windows platform, although the first stable version, 2.1, was not released until 1997. The ability to animate a scene was added (in a stable form) with the cross-platform Bryce 3D (version 3.1) in 1997 by the newly formed MetaCreations Corporation. A "camera object" unseen in the final image acted as the observer. The camera can be held in one place for a single image, or sent on a trajectory with images being rendered at many locations. The collection of images created along the camera's trajectory are combined to create a realistic animation simulating a journey through a dynamic world. In 1999 Bryce 4.0 was released with major improvements in the handling of atmospheres and skies, textures and also in the import/export of objects. In 2000 Bryce was purchased by

Corel Corporation Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviation ...

. Corel released version 5 of Bryce in 2001, which included several new features, like Tree Lab and metaballs. Unfortunately, rendering on version 5 was much slower than version 4, and the price tag set by Corel higher. Soon followed a patch to version 5.01, which fixed some bugs and added a few undocumented features. In 2004, the software was sold again, to

Daz 3D Daz Productions, Inc. (commonly known as Daz 3D, stylized Daz3D or DAZ 3D in some logos) is a 3D-content and software company specializing in providing rigged 3D human models, associated accessory content, and software to the hobbyist as well ...

. In 2005, Daz 3D released Bryce 5.5 which included the

Daz Studio Daz Studio is a free media design software developed by Daz 3D. Daz Studio is a 3D scene creation and rendering application used to produce images as well as video. Renders can be done by leveraging either the 3Delight render engine, or the Ira ...

Character plugin. This integration between DAZ's application for the manipulation of 3D models, Daz Studio, and Bryce allowed users to import content from Daz Studio and

Poser Poser or ''variant'', may refer to: *a hard problem, a poser *a hard question, a poser People * Poseur, a person who inauthentically adopts a certain subculture *a person playing a role, a role-play, a fake, an imposter * Bob Poser (1910–200 ...

, complete with all materials including transparencies, directly into Bryce, thus making it easier to have human figures in Bryce scenes. In October 2006, Daz 3D released Bryce 6.0 and has released an update (6.1), this includes a Mac Intel compatible update. New features include animation import, support for dual-processor systems as well as hyper-threading, random replicate tool, advanced terrain editing, HDRI support and other tweaks. The interface remained largely the same, but with a green tint to it, and different buttons in the create palette. In June 2007, Daz 3D re-released Bryce 5.5 as a freeware. In Summer 2009, Daz 3D released version 3 of Daz Studio. This version seemed to break Bryce 6.1. In December 2009, Daz 3D released Bryce 6.3 which improved stability, and added support for Mac OS X v10.6. Bryce 7 was released in July 2010. New features include the Instancing Lab and advanced lighting. Updated features include the Daz Studio Bridge, the Sky Lab, clouds and HDRI. Bryce 7 is available in three versions, a limited free version, a standard version lacking the new features and a pro version with the new features. Bryce 7 is not currently compatible with OS X Lion (10.7), Mountain Lion (10.8), or Mavericks (10.9) (except for Bryce 7 Personal Limited Edition 7.1.0.74), thus the newest version of OS X it is compatible with is Snow Leopard (10.6). As late as October 2018, Bryce 7 development has been halted, including when it comes to addressing

MacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

compatibility.

Features

Bryce 7 features: * Instancing Lab * Improved Light Lab * Sky Lab Improvements * Particle Emitter * Daz Studio Bridge * Improved Import/Export file formats

References

External links

* * *
Bryce Tutorials and ResourcesReview
in

Shadis ''Shadis'' is an independent gaming magazine that was published in 1990–1998 by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). It initially focused on role-playing games. Publication history Shadis was conceived and started by Jolly Blackburn as an indepe ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bryce (Software) 3D graphics software 3D animation software 1984 software Fractal software

History

Features

See also

References

External links