Tutorial 2

Step 1

This tutorial starts in Photoshop or in any other program which is able to create (Bitmap-) PICT files. I'll show how to get much more than the usual 256 grey levels into Bryce.

First we create a grayscale picture in the size of 1024 x 1024 pixels and save it as Pict or Targa file.

Pictures you would like to import using BSmooth must be quadratic, and their height/width must be a power of 2 (i.e. 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,... etc.).
If you use very big sizes, you should save the picture in the Targa TGA format, which uses less memory during import! You also may need to increase Bryce's memory allocation.


Step 2

Now make a new OpSet and add a PixLayer Op. Click onto the "Terrain... " caption of the start Op, and set the terrainsize to 64 x 64 pixels.

 
















Step 3

Take a look at the PixLayers Option dialog, which you get when you click onto the PixLayers's icon. Click into the preview area to update the preview. The default data set is shown (a 16 by 16 data set). Note that BSmooth does not interpolate if you provide fewer pixels than contained in the terrain! This can be very practical if you would like to create some blocky structures!
 
 
















Step 4

Okay, now click on the "•Default" caption. The Link dialog of the PixLayer is shown. Choose the Pict-file you've created in Step 1. You just have linked the Pict file to the PixLayer.

Step 5

Okay, now render the OpSet (⌘-R).

What happens if you use a 1024 x 1024 pixel terrain to create a 64 x 64 pixel terrain? 

The basic trick is to provide a Pict which has a bigger number of pixels than the terrain to increase the number of possible values for a single terrain pixel.

Every pixel in the created terrain is sampled from 16 x 16 pixels  (1024/64 =16), so every pixel represents the sum of 16 x 16 = 256 pixels. Each pixel in a greyscale pict represents a value between 1 and  256. Now guess how much levels you get if you add up 256 Pixels...

256 Pixels * 256 Levels = 65536 Levels  - which is Bryce 3D's internal resolution.

BTW: Bryce 2/Mac has used only 1024/2048 Levels