Building and Shooting Objects in Bryce 4

I. Creating the compound object

1.1 Bryce 4 has been installed on every machine in the Hypermedia Room except the two older machines on the east wall. Launch the program. You will see a gray window with a perspectival coordinate axis for a ground plane and a vanishing point leading to a square camera indicator. This is your working area. You are seeing the Director's View, in which both the camera position and its field of view are shown from a reverse angle. Surrounding this display are various tools at left, top, and bottom.

1.2 Find the row of 3-D shapes lined up at the top of the screen along what looks like a shelf. These represent the object primitives available in Bryce. Select one of the dark blue objects, such as the cube, sphere, or torus. An instance of this object immediately appears in the working area. A "nano-view" rendering of the object appears in the small window at top left.

1.3 The object should be highlighted (drawn in red with resizing points). To the left of the object is a vertical stack of tool buttons. The bottom-most tool in this stack is the Material Tool, represented by a capital M. Click on this tool. The working view is replaced by the Materials Lab.

1.4 Look at the nano-view square in the upper left portion of the Lab screen. Notice the two triangular buttons that appear next to this window, one by the upper right corner, pointing to the right, and another near the lower right corner, pointing down. Click on the first of these triangles (the one pointing to the right). You should see a window labeled Materials. This window contains another nano-view, below that a menu of materials categories, and to the right, thumbnail samples of various materials in the present category.

1.5 Browse through the materials by clicking on their thumbnail representations. Note that these selections do not change the original material of your object. If you're feeling adventurous, browse through the category list. When you find a material that seems suitable, click the check button (shown as a check mark) at the lower righthand corner of the Materials screen. The Materials window will close, returning you to the Materials Lab. Note that the nano-view of your object has now taken on the material you selected. At this point you may experiment with the settings in the lab or simply click the righthand check button in the Lab window to return to the main working area. When you come back to the working area, the nano-view of your object should reflect the material change.

1.6 Back in the working area, find the topmost button in the tool stack opposite your object. This is the Attributes Tool, marked with a capital A. Click on this button. A window will open showing the General tab of the Attributes dialog. At the top of this tab is a Name Field and below that a series of radio buttons. The first of these is labeled Neutral and should be selected with a red dot. The next two buttons below this are labeled Positive and Negative. Click on Positive, then click the check icon at lower right.

1.7 Create a second object by selecting another primitive from the object shelf. Note that the new object appears in the center of your working area, sharing a center point with your first object. Click on the new object (but not on one of its black resize points!) and drag it a short distance so that some of the second object's volume falls outside the first object.

1.8 Modify the material of the second object, as in Steps 1.3 through 1.5.

1.9 Change the value attribute of the second object as in Step 1.6.

1.10 Create a third object overlapping one or both of your first two objects. Modify its material and space value as with the other two objects, but this time set the value to Negative.

1.11 In the working area, drag over all three of your objects to select them. All should appear in red. A single tool stack should be visible. The lowest button in this stack is the Grouping Tool, marked by a capital G. Click on this button. If you look closely at the nano-view window, you'll see that your third object, the one with the negative space value, has become invisible. Though this may not be apparent in the current view, the volume that it shares with one or both of the positive objects has been cut away or hollowed out.

Illustration above shows the display after the grouping action is complete.

1.12 Save your work at this point, using the default Bryce 4 format. In Windows, your file will automatically have a ".br4" extension. Add this extension if you are working on a Mac. Be sure to save to some identifiable directory on the PC, or preferably to your Zip disk.

II. Create and export views

2.1 In the lower lefthand portion of the working area you should see five ball-shaped buttons. The one in the middle is larger than its neighbors. Click on this button to begin rendering the current view. Rendering will take several passes, including one for Anti-Aliasing. On most of our machines the process should take under a minute.

2.2 When rendering is complete you will probably see a report of statistics. (Mac users may not see this feature.) Click on the check button to put this window away. Next move your cursor out of the working area and up to the very top of your PC screen, where a general menu bar should appear. Find the File option and pull down its menu. Select the option labeled Save Image As…, which should appear around the middle of the menu. A standard Save dialog opens. If the default format is something other than JPEG, change it accordingly. Save the current rendered image as View01 (or View01.jpg for Mac users).

2.3 On the lefthand side of the working area just below the middle of the screen is a large hemispherical object with crossed blue arrrows etched into its face. This is the Camera Trackball. Click on the trackball and drag. The rendered view of your objects will vanish instantly, replaced by wireframes, and you'll be able to adjust the view in all six axes of rotation. For simplicity's sake, try to restrict your movement to the horizontal axis. When you have lined up a notably different view, repeat Steps 2.1 and 2.2 to generate a second view. Name the resulting JPEG file View02.

2.4 Repeat the steps above until you have four views of your objects, named in sequence. Try to be sure that at least one of these views shows the cutaway or hollowed portion of your object set.

2.5 Transfer your Bryce file and the four JPEG images to your personal folder on cow.ubalt.edu.