Here I gathered some useful tips that were posted by our members in various threads.
If you find out a new tip or any info that you find useful, please do not hesitate
to add to this thread. If you have any questions or need more explanation concerning
the topics discussed here, please ask them in "Help For Users of Bryce"
or you might click on this link below
Help For Users of Bryce

Please post one topic per message for clarity.

Thank you,

Uguel

From Odidio

It's fun to experiment with the editors.
You can always make your own terrains in other paint programs too then load the pictures in. There's also the plugin option to manipulate the picture.

I was reading some things over here, and there are a few tricks and some good info.

I like the one where when you are in the editor, hold the 'space bar' down on your keyboard while you select one of the effects. Now you can paint with that effect.

From Stem

I just wanted to follow up on this, as there is another way to add/remove a current effect.

If you select and apply an effect in the "Editing tools -> Elevation", you can then "Undo" (which reverts the Terrain back to before applying the effect), then change the "Brush Behavior" to "Paint effect" which then allows you to apply the effect with the current brush (basically the same as with "spacebar+effect"), but you can also select "Brush Behavior -> Unpaint effect" which will allow you to remove the last effect from selected areas using the current brush.

From Stem

...this is a reply to my question on how to draw a path on a bumped terrain or hill.

I am not completely sure the effect that you want, or what you are working from. So I will give one example of how I would place a path onto an hill.

A very simple example:

First, I would have an hill created in Bryce, and a path that I made in a paint program:

Hill


Path


I then have my texture for the path


and texture for the hill


I know, but the textures are only for example.

So now we go to the texture editor and add first the path texture(base), then the hill texture(green), and then the path itself(path), so you would see in the texture editor



The "base" and "green" are just added normally in the Texture source editor, but when you add the path you must copy and paste this into the second window :-
This is because the path is for transparency.

When the textures are loaded, then applied, you can render the hill


Now to cut the path into the hill
Select the hill, and then go into the terrain editor, in the Editing tools, select "Pictures", the left image is the hill, now in the centre image load the path, then left click(hold)

on the blend, and slide this untill you see the path blending with the hill (right picture). dont go to far, or the path will be too deep



When the blend looks correct (you may not get this correct the first attempt, so would advise you save the scene first) select apply, the path will then be cut out of the hill




This may not be what you want, if not, then please give more detail of how you want it to look, as there are other ways to do this.

Copying material

!. You can copy the material or texture of a selected object into Bryce (Ctrl+Alt+C)
and paste it to another object (Ctrl+Alt+V) into the scene you are working in.
Notice that you can also use Bryce Menu to do this, Menu > Edit > Copy Material >
Paste Material.

For instance, if you have a rock that have a texture that could fit to another
object, say a wall, you can copy and paste the rock texture to the wall.

2. You can also paste it to another object that is in another scene, so you can close the scene
you are working into, go to the Menu > File > Open....and you simply open another scene and paste
the material to another object of your choice.

Copying Matrix

You can also copy the matrix (position, size rotation) of an object)
in your scene and transfer it to another one....this comes in very handy by the way! :thumbup:
So let's say that you have an object or a terrain that you selected and its position or origin
is X -41,42; Y13, 35; Z 32,87 like in the screenshot below.



....and for any reason you decided that you do not want that object or terrain anymore in your scene
or in that specific emplacement and want to replace it by another one that will occupy the same emplacement,
simply select the first object (the one that has to go) and go to the menu
Edit > Copy Matrix or press Alt+C and then select the new object
that you wish to assign the position, size and orientation attributes, go to the Menu > Edit > Paste Matrix
or press (Alt+V). Your second object will occupy the same place where your first object or terrain was
and will have the other attributes (such as size and orientation) applied as well.
After that you can delete the first object if you don't need it anymore or
you can move it to another place in your scene.

Importing Your Terrain into Photoshop, Paint Shop or Other *2D Applications

For editing the terrain, we usually use the brushes or Bryce's editing fractal presets
but there is another way of doing this...and this is what I want to share with you.
You can use Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop to edit the terrain (or other 2D applications)
The advantage of using a 2D application is that we get a larger selection of brushes
and we have all the program functionalities at our disposal.

To export your terrain.

In Bryce’s terrain editor press Ctrl-C. The terrain’s greyscale image
is copied into the clipboard. Open Photoshop (or other program) and create a new file (Ctrl+N).
Usually the file Photoshop creates is already the size of the copied image, mine was 512 X 512 pixels.
Press Ctrl-V to paste the greyscale image and here you are! The terrain is now pasted into your new Photoshop document.

I tried it also with Paint Shop, and I did not have to open a new document, it was pasted directly into the workplace.


Now you can edit your terrain with your 2D application. Simply choose your favourite brushes,
settings you like and so forth. Once you are done, save your terrain on your desktop either as a .PSD file,
.TIFF or .JPG and, once back into Bryce's Terrain Editor, use the fractal window to import your terrain.
For this, go to > Editing tools > click on the ''Picture'' button and simply browse to your desktop to
retrieve the terrain.

Once your terrain is opened, you might click on “Smoothing” two or three times to blend
the different hues of gray.


*Notice that there are other 2D applications that offer a respectable choice of brushes and some of them
are free. For instance, it is certainly possible to obtain similar results by using the brushes that come with Art Weaver
or even Twisted Brush. They both offer enough brushes to achieve what you need to do. If you are more
comfortable using another graphic program, go ahead and use it....for it is the program we know
best that often produces the best results.


Art Weaver
Twisted Brush

Terragen to Bryce


Well, another l'il trick I learned lately. This might come handy for those who likes to use
both Terragen and Bryce. After you created a terrain in Terragen, it is possible to export it into Bryce after.

Here are the main steps

1. You create a terrain in Terragen.

2. From the landscape window, you click on "Export"

3. Another window will appear "Terrain Export"

4. Scroll down the export method options and choose "Lightwave3D Object(s)"

You can choose to export your terrain to your desktop....

5. The you open Bryce > Menu > "Import Object..."

6. Your terrain will be displayed in your scene.

Notice that it can look a bit rough. In order to soften its appearance, select it.
and click on the "E" in the property options. This will allow you to smoothen its surface
and you do that by cranking up the red bar. Try not to go too high for it would take
a very long time to edit. I usually go between 100-110.



Once your terrain is edited, you can add a material and other objects to complete your scene.