A few questions about Bryce 5.5

[KaiserJ]

i've decided it's time to step up and make some nicer landscape textures for my maps... but, after having fiddled with the interface, i have a few questions.

how do you go about exporting the texture map?

is it possible to work with a non-square map?

and yes... any links for bryce-related spring mapmaking would be helpful. thanks in advance!

[Beherith]

A pic is worth a thousand words:
Camera settings: select the cam, press the A icon to bring up this menu:

A low FOV of 1 will make it nice and isometric.

Non square: use a high res terrain for this:


On the other hand, bryce is a bitch to work with. Very unintuitive. But bryce 5.5 is free on the daz3d website.
Takes VERY long to generate textures, up to 12 hours for a medium sized map.
Its heightmap editor sucks compared to photoshop.(except the erode tool, that rocks)
Also, when importing heightmaps into it, use PNG format, BMP causes ugly banding.
I rather recommend WICed, way faster and friendlier.

[KaiserJ]

thx behe!

hehe already figured out the bit about the square / rectangular maps, i just wasnt used to the interface and couldn't find the transform button... (who designed that interface anyways!?! someone who had never used a 3d program before?!!)... this information is most helpful to me :) someone needs to add it to the wiki

so WICed is the way to go in your opinion, eh? i'll have to give it a try... the whole bryce initiative i took was after downloading l3dt... didn't realize i'd have to pay for it to make anything worthwhile for spring, so i was saddened, and wished to explore other options.

certainly i'm a fan of the look of both bryce and wiced maps... in any case, hopefully sometime soon i'll have something new to show... i've been trying to come up with a nice "crystal" material to use, quite unlike the usual grass and rocks on most spring maps :D seems like i've also found a reasonably good method of combining multiple climates/materials on a single map using alpha.

[KaiserJ]

btw i'm sticking to my guns on this one; springmapedit combined with an image editor is the best way of editing a heightmap that i've seen so far, because it gives you the most control over slopes and unit accessibility... sure, it doesnt have the nifty automatic erosions and heightmap manipulation processes, but that's a moot point at least for me... being able to see how your texturemap aligns to your heightmap pre-rendering is also a massive bonus. if only frostregen would put in a customizable texture generator (hint hint) i'd be able to throw all of these other inferior programs out the window! muaha!

[smoth]

what are your camera settings? How do you get orthographic perspective?

[Beherith]

You cant get real orthographic, but by setting the FOV to like 1 degree or lower, and setting the y distance from terrain to high enough to encompass the terrain with this very low field of view, you can get very close to isometric (1-2 pixels close on a 1k*1k terrain)

[smoth]

that sucks, it means I probably won't use bryce.

[KaiserJ]

so essentially... what i'm doing in order to grab a texture map, is setting my max document size, (seems to go to about 4000x4000) making my near-orthographic camera, and then snapshotting the map into 4000x4000 tiles, and then combining them in an image editor?

or is there a secret trick to getting a single image exported that's the exact dimensions i want....

[hunterw]

tiles?

bryce renders the entire 4000x4000 pixel image of your entire map im pretty sure

[KaiserJ]

tiles?

bryce renders the entire 4000x4000 pixel image of your entire map im pretty sure

the texture im trying to get is 4096 x 8192, this is the problem

[Beherith]

Well, if you remove the background image, (that gravel shit) then render in 8k*8k, it wont cost you extra cpu time if there is nothing in that bit, just clip it in photoshop/

[hunterw]

tiles?

bryce renders the entire 4000x4000 pixel image of your entire map im pretty sure

the texture im trying to get is 4096 x 8192, this is the problem

just move the camera and do two 4096x4096 and then splice em

alternatively you may be able to zoom out far enough to do the 8192x8192 and hten the sides or tops would just be black, then crop it in your image ed

havent used bryce for a texture yet so all this is just bs that might not work

[Beherith]

Wouldnt recommend splice, it hard to do nicely and results are iffy. Just render is bigger.

[KaiserJ]

for some reason, i dont seem to be able to set a document resolution higher than 4000 by 4000... when i try to enter 4096 into the type-in area, it just bumps it back to 4000...

maybe i'm missing something, back to the drawing board this evening.

*edit : 4000, not 4000k lol*

[SirArtturi]

You must choose from file and render to disk. There you can set wanted size...
You need also keep in mind that if you make highresolution texture you need to have at least doublesized 16bit heightmap to get it look good. Better if you make the heightmap as same size as your output texture will be.

If you have more problems please join #mapping and ask people from there. I think you will have better and faster response from there...