Anyone here use Bryce 5 or use it to make Maps?

[Mars_999]

I was wondering if anyone here has or is using Bryce 5? Also would Bryce 5 be a good program to make maps for a RTS game? If so what format does Bryce save to? Is the image a 2D image or 3D? If it's 2D I suppose I will need a grayscale height map correct? Thanks

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by Mars_999
I was wondering if anyone here has or is using Bryce 5? Also would Bryce 5 be a good program to make maps for a RTS game? If so what format does Bryce save to? Is the image a 2D image or 3D? If it's 2D I suppose I will need a grayscale height map correct? Thanks

Bryce specializes in rendering high quality 3D terrains. If that is what you want in your RTS game, go for it.

Bryce 5 can save rendered images in many formats. It can also save objects in: 3DStudio (Mesh Export), AutoCAD DXF (Mesh Export), Direct3D (Mesh Export), Infini-D (Mesh Export), LightWave (Mesh Export), MetaStream, PGM, Ray Dream Studio (Mesh Export), RayShade HF, TrueSpace (Mesh Export), USGS DEM, VideoScape (Mesh Export), VRML 1.0 (Mesh Export), Wavefront OBJ (Mesh Export), WorldTookKit NFF (yeah yeah yeah, it's the last Mesh Export).

Also, you can easily create terrains in Bryce by importing a graymap into the terrain editor and texturing it.

Any other questions, just fire away :)

[Mars_999]

So if I had a .lwo or .3ds loader I could load the meshes up and texture them and this would work fine? What if I want the image to be a top down view and have height? e.g. Total Annihilation. So could one render the terrain in Bryce and then save it out as a .tga? Or am I going to need to load the mesh and convert it to a .tga myself? Or would I be better off just loading in the mesh and applying textures to it and using a grayscale of the textures to do height? I am unsure how one would use the program completely with one's code. I know some people are using Bryce 5 to make TA maps and they look awesome. A plus to using Bryce for your game is a commercial app that works and isn't to expensive.

[skyhawk]

one unfortunate thing I do not know, I do not know how to make othographics maps in Bryce, ie look at you map top down without any perspective...

and I believe you just load up the meshes and texture them... I'm not sure exactly how it saves it, or how you load it :)

I believe the best way to use these maps is create a giant terrain, render it orthographically (if you find out how, TELL US! or just me :) ) to a jpeg or png or tga or whatever, then use the mesh as a giant object and texture it in your game with the bryce rendered image... did that make sense?

[Mars_999]

I will look into it. If I find out I will let you know. I am interested in this due to once I am done with my shoot'em up I am going to work on a RTS. Thanks

[Carlos Camacho]

Do you mean to export the mesh data, or to render isometric tiles for a RTS game? a la Warcraft 2, Age of Empires and so on?

I think exporting the terrain from Bryce might not be a good idea as it might choke your renderer. (too many polygons) You might want to create your terrrain, and then render a overhead grey-scale map and then maybe play with it in Photoshop and then bringing that into your renderer, but I am no 3D/OpenGL guru...

If you are looking to render tiles, then I can help. My last test with Bryce showed that it isn't good for maing isometric for one reason -- you get perspective with its camera so you can't render perfect little tiles that will line up all nice and neat. If I use Strata or Cinema or another 3d app, I can turn off perspective, set the camera position and render out images that can be tiled. However, all the tests I did with Bryce have led me to believe that its camera will always "distort" (ie that perspective thing) so you won't be able to line up your tiles.

If someone knows a trick, or a proper way to set the camera, I am all ears. In my review of "Vue", this is something that I will test!

BTW.. A top down view, like Demios Rising uses would of course be fine.

Cheers

[Bachus]

http://www.shonner.com/totalannihilation/tamaptutorial.htm

It's a tutorial on making Total Annihilation maps with Bryce, but it should help in this instance.

[Mars_999]

I plan on using it with top down only not Isometeric. So Bryce should be fine. Yes I got the idea to use Bryce from somewhere on the net someone is using it to make maps for TA.

[Carlos Camacho]

Ah top down, that is a different story. Very good for that. The trick is to make tiles which can be tileable. Check out D.R part 2's postmortem (on insidemacgames.com)

p.s. When rendering your tiles, make sure the light source (sun) is always in the same position, otherwise some tiles will have "wrong" shadows.

p.s.2 I also recommend you render to disk to save time.

Cheers

[skyhawk]

no no no carlos, the map is one entity, it isn't a bunch of tiles like most games are... perhaps you should take a look at the maps in TA

[AJ Infinity]

I remember using Bryce for some iso tiles. Bryce is good. Like Camacho said, use Render to Disk to save time. Also use Mask Render and mask the render's mask onto the fully rendered image in Photoshop for collision mapping of tiles and transparency (in a 2D RTS). In a 3D RTS like War3, write your own terrain editor. I suggest a tile based system and not A ONE WHOLE MAP SYSTEM. They are too hard to make, the files are huge, and they take up too much memory.

Never mind, you mean TA style maps. :D

[SHONNER]

Originally posted by skyhawk
I do not know how to make othographics maps in Bryce, ie look at you map top down without any perspective...

In Bryce you have to use a 1-degree field of view for your camera. Move the camera very far away from the terrain so that it all fits in the camera's view. The result is a terrain map with no vanishing points. Similar to terrain photos taken from orbit (i.e. World Trade Center photos taken from orbit during Sept. 11. All straight lines.). See http://www.shonner.com/totalannihilation/maptutorial.htm for a tutorial.

[Carlos Camacho]

Good tip, I'll ty it.

[JonTrainer]

Check out D.R part 2's postmortem (on insidemacgames.com)

Carlos,
Do you remember what postmortem you were refering to in this post? I tried to search for something along these lines on IMG and couldn't find anything.

Thanks.

[skrew]

when i made maps for myth 2, i generally used photoshop to create the maps, (colour map, displacement map, and shadow map) and for a preview of the map id load them into bryce and take a picture just because it made it look so cool. but if you actually know how to use bryce, which i don't, then go for it

[Carlos Camacho]

This game:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/dr/

[skyhawk]

Just a note, bryce 5 (don't know about 6) suffers from major UI problems under Tiger. Makes it close to unusable to do any real work.

[JonTrainer]

Thanks Carlos!

If anyone else is interested, here's the article link: http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=122

[skrew]

maybe this is unrelated to the topic but i dug up an old m2 map i did in photoshop, pretty simple i guess, just made a colour map then edited it in grayscale to make a displacement map. the water looks kinda weird, all that was implemented within the map editor though.

http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20User%20Uploads/skrew's%20Uploads/syndicate%20copy.jpg