Hello all,

I was thinking (surprise), what about getting together to produce something between us. I can 3d model (in/out of Bryce), but not much good with textures (really quite bad, but dont tell everyone). What if we decide on something, then all put "in a bit",.. thoughts,....

It sounds very interesting to me but it has to be something simple for we are still getting our feet wet with Bryce. ROTFL
How about suggesting any ideas that we have and then decide what we think we might start with?
Also, the object has to be made in separate parts or meshes to facilitate the editing or texturizing.


My suggestions.... a simple but unique house... or, it can be a funny animal/creature.

The building itself would be easy for me to build, which could be done in sections, the textures would need to come from yourself or other. From me it would have to be robotic, as organics are not my strong point.

We could start with a building, once done, it could then be added to a landscape, and then over time we could add/expand. If others then join in, they could add thier own part to the scene.

If you would like to make a sketch of a window/door etc for the building, I can build these to start of with.

Hi folks

sounds great and has my vote. Would be great if there others outside joining that project. If you need support, let me know.

BU

Ok, well...maybe l we could start with a house. I did a sketch of a house this afternoon.
It is rather asymmetric, kinda fairy tale house. If you want less details in it, it can be made simpler.
Also, I did not know if you prefer to start with a house that has straight lines only...?I mean, is it more
work for you to do a house that is tilted like this one...? I put little decorations here and there
but it can be modified too. Actually, I was thinking of adding a weather-vane on the roof....
But I prefer hold on a little bit and see what you and other people might say.

The door can be a simple straight door that might be improved by a subtle texture.
But if you think that adding a l'il window to it would make it look better, just go ahead! :thumbup:
You'll notice that I made Lancet arch windows but only one of them has shuttles.
I purposely made one side of the house wider than the other for this is the way I
"see" it. I made a chimney with a small cover on it and added two wrought iron decorations here and there.
Notice that the window on the roof is oval not arched.

The back of the house can have 2 arch windows too and one more on the side.
But again, I don't know if you or other people care for the back of the house.
On the other hand, adding one window to one of the side, sounds good to me.
So that we can be able to position the house 3/4 and have a pretty window showing to the side of it
and won't feel obliged to show the facade only.

The roof can have tiles so I will try to find an appropriate texture to make it look like it has tiles...I only drew just a few ones here.
The walls can be made of ciment, with a few fissures here and there.The staircase can be simple because part of it
will be buried in the gound and surrounded by long tufts of grass... Oh, I added a gutter in the end!

Maybe Odidio and other people can bring more ideas too so I will just hold off and wait for the people to comment.



original size

More people sounds good to me. If you know anyone that can join in, feel free to invite them
In the meantime, you can add your comments or any ideas that come to your mind.

Thanx!

Uguel,

WoW,..Very nice sketch. I can see this project is going to be excellent.
I will make a start later today and post some base renders for you to checkout, I can then upload the models (sections) for you to add textures.

If others want to add, please do.

Well, go ahead Stem and do not hesitate to bring your own modifications if need be.
I'm glad you like the sketch.. I was also tempted to draw a castle but finally I chose
to do a little house instead.

Great looking sketch Uguel.

I'll try to keep up and jump in here when I can, I'm a bit busy right now.

Hello Uguel,

I have put a quick model together, really just to test the import into Bryce, and to see if you will be able to apply textures to the model OK. The model is in 3ds. You can ungroup in Bryce, so you can apply textures to each wall, roof segment etc. I will be rebuilding this once I know all will be OK (this is only a test).





removed attachment, more complete model further on thread

Great looking model, what program are you using to build it ?

Hi odidio,

For this, due to all the curves in the model, I am using Rhino (version 1, that I have had since its release).

Holly Molly, look at this!...Here she stands so proud.... :thumbup: Congratulations Stem,
you did a GREAT work, it looks SO fine. I am glad that it went well for it might
not be easy to model a house with curves like that. The result is both charming and clever.

Ok, I will start doing a few samples of textures tonight and tomorrow. I will post the results
in the next following days.

Well, Rhino seems to be a fine application. I know a few people who use it on other forums and
it seems to be a real good program for modeling. I was wondering if you could do the same work (house)
in Hexagon too?

The model is just to see if you can texture OK,.. with the output as 3ds, I was a little concerned you may have problems with alignment/projection.


I have intented for a while to take a longer look at, and build in Hexagon (which I haven`t really had time to do up to now), but I will see if I can produce similar in Hexagon. I will have a spare afternoon friday.

The model I posted is broken due to scaling after build, so this will not be used again, so dont spend too much time applying textures to this (it wont take me long to re-build).

No worry Stem. I will try a few textures and see if it goes well.
The walls might not be a problem...maybe the tiles might be more difficult
because of the roof inclination so I'll see about it!

Hi Uguel,

As you mentioned, "we are still getting our feet wet with Bryce", so I am still trying to find the best way to create these models for import/texture in Bryce.

What I have done (for now) is to rebuild a section of the roof (one half), I have done this in Truespace (I found my TS4, which I have not used in a while), I have made the roof section and made a base texture of the roof from view. The texture can give you guidlines. This is only very basic for now, but will this help you?

This is the render of the roof section with the base texture



Another good point, is that the format of the model is not 3ds, so less polygons for render.

I have attached Bryce scene of this for you to try. (you can copy the texture from the material editor into your paint program for edit). This is a bryce 6.1 scene



attachment removed, finished roof included in model on post #23

Hi Uguel,

I have had a bit of time to check out Hexagon, it is not as advanced as Rhino1, but there are some good features. I will build the house in this over the weekend (time allowing). There is no direct output for Bryce, but it will output 3ds(in better quality than Rhino version I am using), there is also wavefront and dxf output that can be imported by Bryce. (all produce about the same amount of polygons per object/model).

Have a good weekend,

Steve

Your model worked pretty good stem.

I found a door on the web, put it in and grabbed a texture from here (lots of good ones there) for the roof.

Just some fun with it, I should have put a small light inside so you could see the window better.

Er...yes, it is not easy to apply texture and to render it the way you see them in
your 2D program. I noticed also that Bryce tends to fade the colours about 20-30 % less.
Also (it did that in the past too) the more I uploaded textures, the more Bryce was getting
difficult and started crashing. So, let's be indulgent.... ROTFL and contend ourselves with
what we can do here!!! Of course, lack of experience plays a lot and I still have to learn
a lot more about Bryce. So here's what I got so far....

you wrote:

As you mentioned, "we are still getting our feet wet with Bryce", so I am still trying to find the best way to create these models for import/texture in Bryce.

No worry Stem, I read on people who have experience can take up to 3 weeks or more only to build up one model
or scene. So why we as beginners should we take only one week to achieve our very first model? Let's take it easy for now. ROTFL

Well, your original house was very well done. The only fault was one my side, as you will noticed in my previous image,
is that when moving the house, 2 of the walls moved a bit and I had a hard time trying to adjust
their location. It is still not perfect though. Nevertheless I still have the original and will try other textures during the following days.

Ok, I will try with the new roof too.


Hey, Odidio that's a nice approach! :thumbup:

...the walls got straightened! :swoon:

I was just checking to see if you where paying attention.

I have rebuilt the model, and added the windows and such (curved roof is there for you). I have made the house bigger than the sketch, then we can always build the inside.



Have added model as attachement (I have had to export as DXF, as there was loss with 3ds). The model will have a different color for each part, this is just the color tagging from DXF.

Isn't she grand? Really beautiful, congratulations!!! :thumbup:

Ok, I will start doing new textures for the new house in the week-end. The old ones were not bad but they might not fit anymore.
Also, I want to improve the textures and try to have the shades coming out better. I worked with the Bryce mask feature for
every wall and roof part and I think I'll keep on that way in order to have the brick patches go where they're supposed to.
If everything goes well, it will be ready in a couple of days.

Just a question...does it really matter if I resize the house smaller to apply the textures and if I do so,
will I lose some texture quality once I make it bigger....any idea? I used to make the house smaller
because the rendering is faster.

Hi Uguel,

You can make the house whatever size you want, just try and keep in proportion. If the textures are now too small, would you be able to tile the texture? Like for the roof, does it really matter if the tiles look big, I see various tile sizes on houses.
I know, certainly for me, it is far easier to model than to apply textures. I know it is something I need to try out more.
So please, take your time, there is certainly no rush.

Rendering time, this is normally based on output render image size and the amount of polygons in the image. This is why I was trying to find the best format to import into Bryce (with less polygons). As example, with the roof, if this was flat, then there would only be a few polygons, but due to the curves, there of many hundred`s.

Super looking model stem, nice work.

Remember though not everyone has Bryce 6 so some files might not work in 5.

Hi odidio,

I am already ahead of you on that one. The format "DXF" will import correctly into Bryce5 (I did check with the free version 5 I have installed before posting) and Bryce6. This is one of the reasons for my checks on the import/export formats.

So, any model I post will be fully compatible with Bryce5.

So whats next? Should we continue with this model, maybe build the inside? and/or place more detail on the outside?

Yes, DXF and others fine, it was the roof section that was in br6 that I couldn't open. I'm pretty sure I had the 'All files' option selected when I went to open it, but it wouldn't show.

Are you making your own textures Uguel, and are they seamless tiles ?

Yep, I am making my own textures and most of them come out fairly well except for the roof
the symmetry isn't perfect t for it was hard to position perfectly. All the walls were done in Paint Shop,
the background of the texture is made with the texture filter in Paint Shop. I used a plug-in
for the bricks but could have use an image too. To go faster, instead of making a mask for each
parts of the house. I just select a mesh and paste the texture directly into it. I use Leo for this and let my Paint Shop
open while working in Bryce. So, if there's a brick that really do not fit I just move it. Ideally, you create one layer for each brick.
Sometimes I just reposition some of them for each wall in order not to have the same pattern repeating.
Depending of the section of the house, I use either "world space", "world front" or "world cubique"
as a mode of placement for the brick texture. It always depends which side of the object I select.


Well, believe it or not when I unzip the DXF file it came up like a PSP9 file!!
Out of curiosity, I just click on it and yep, it opened directly in PSP9 as a vector.
It shew up all flat like vectors do! I re-opened it in Bryce and it was ok.

....in my case, I notice that when I open a big 3D object , bigger than my scene can afford,
I have errors or crash.....

Here's an example of texture I did in PSP....



Edit: Oh, and I won't use the white texture anymore as in the earlier post (post 23) for it
was a bit too light.

Halt! please, I need more time, I want to finish texturing the house properly and then maybe just add a light in the house
so that it will be very pretty in a night scene. I have many ideas but my technique isn't equal to my intentions! LOL

I think I'll be ok to add the light! :)

Hi odidio,
Yes, sorry, I posted that for Uguel, as I wanted the texture/projection to be retained. I will of course in future, if I post a Bryce scene, post this in Bryce5 format.

Regards,

Your O.K. I was just thinking "odidio" may like to try out building some furniture for the inside of the house. Maybe a table with some chairs using the base primitives within Bryce. I could of done the stairs and flooring.

Regards,

No fault Stem, I am a bit quirky on the rendering and yes, it takes me more time than the usual
user...plus I am also not very comfortable with the program yet.

Good idea, Odidio is better than me at modeling.
He was the first that started doing hard tutorials here.

Hi Uguel,

Yes, the projection for textures within Bryce is really quite limited, with, at times, strange results.
I have been trying to import a model with texture + UV mapping, but Bryce just removes the mapping and reverts to global.
If I can help in any way with this, I will. If you would prefer the roof changed, then no problem.
I will keep playing with Bryce/projection/textures.

By the way, the wall texture is looking good.

Regards,

Hello Uguel,
I have made a texture (from one I downloaded) for the roof. Have a look and see what you think.



The only slight problem, is due to the UV projection, I have had to export the roof section+texture+UV as 3ds.
If you think this may be OK, or that you could edit etc, then you will need to import this roof, and replace the one you have.

The 3ds roof is attached, but I do not have enough space to upload the image, so this I have placed at imageshack which you can download:-


Make sure you place the image in the same directory as the 3ds file when importing into Bryce.

Thanx Stem, I got it. ...Well, this one looks perfect to me!!!
I'll give it a try soon.

Hello again,

I have been re-checking the UV within Bryce, and found there was no need for me to create the texture I posted (skewing the image to fit). A normal texture can be applied to the roof with "Parametric" projection. The front is OK, the rear just needs the image rotating 180deg.

Anyway, it works in Bryce 5 / 6. So what I have done is applied the texture for the roof, and named the objects in the model (so you can "ctrl click" to easier find the objects to texture)



I have uploaded the scene file (Bryce5 format) onto rapidshare

Download link

Regards,

Thought that I would show my face in here again. Wow, quite some work been going on since I have been gone. All you need now is a name. The GSF house? LOL

Can any of you guys model people? Maybe we can have a model of the GSF team? Provide ages and a few details like eye, hair colour, height, etc and we could create the GSF team.

wow, it looks very good. Well, I tried the new roof on my side too and finished mapping the walls.
One thing though. I noticed that the door panels are part of the staircase too. Is it possible to have it
separated, i.e. 2 objects instead of one? so that I will be able to apply a different texture for each of them.
If I remember well, it was cube #25.


...that was good of you to find a way to apply the texture to the roof in such a simple way.
I must admit that I find it a bit difficult to find the best match. Like in "Director's view" applying
a texture to the front walls wasn't too obvious. There might be a proper setting though. For now,
it's a trial an error thing and hope for the best!

Here's the house with the new roof. The mapping of the walls is done, the other elements will be completed soon.


I have 2 technical questions.....

1. How come when an object is selected the "Export Object" remains gray out? Once selected, the object
is supposed to be exported all right, hey?

2. When saving my file I cannot save it under a Bryce 5 file or .br5, it only displays .br6, is it normal?

We can add a mailbox in the front yard with GSF on it....


Can any of you guys model people? Maybe we can have a model of the GSF team? Provide ages and a few details like eye,
hair colour, height, etc and we could create the GSF team.

Hmm...in a few years maybe...? ROTFL

Looking very nice

It is the same with the Bryce primitives(cube etc), these cannot be exported. It is only possible to export a mesh created from primitives. You can save the objects as a "Object preset" (first select the object - then click the little triangle next to "Create", the object database opens, here you can save each object, then export as bryce object)

Yes, the versions of Bryce are not "backward" compatible. (The Bryce5 scene I posted was saved from Bryce5).

I have split the steps, now in 3 parts (steps + 2 sides)

ROTFL I think that the mailbox would be great. Or can you do me a version with the mailbox?

@Nebon, as soon as the house will be completed, we will add a mailbox!


------------------------------------------


Ok, this is what I got so far. The texture is done although the some of the colours
can be changed over and over to fit with a specific environment. Well... I find this house very cute plus, it has lots
of potential in it. We can tweak it as much as we want, especially by applying different textures
to get all kind of effects.

I will check on the web to see if I can find some nice mushrooms and bushes to put around the house
and in the foreground. There's so much that can be added to the scene! Ok, this is the first real edition of the
house with a scene, it might be changed over and over especially if I can find the right props to go with it.

Here you can download both the .br6 file along with the .bmp image.
....I think I will go to RapidShare next time for this one has plenty of ads there on their page.

the .br6 file
.Bonne Maison

the .bmp image
.bmp file


@ Stem, can you change the .br6 file for a .br5 file and send it back for those who has Bryce version 5?
thank you!!!! :thumbup:

...I was thinking adding a few mushrooms similar to these in the scene.

This is really impressive work ...by all... ..will keep an eye on this.

If you cannot find what you need, then I will build it.

I did note that the tree trunk was not rendering, I dont know if this was a fault in the scene file I downloaded. Also, I noticed that Bryce5 does not handle the lighting the same as Bryce6, so the scene is slighly darker.

Bryce5 scene download


I think quite good for our first project.