Background music is Copyright © 1996, 1997 by Michael D. Walthius. All Rights Reserved.
he
next chapter addresses camera and render controls. The first few
pages of this chapter deal with definition of terms, describes how
raytracing works, etc. Much of what this chapter deals with is on the
left hand side of the interface. The nano preview is the thumbnail at
the top left side. It provides a small rendered preview of the scene
the user is working on. 
Several
options are available via the drop down menu which is accessed by
clicking on the small triangle at the lower right corner of the nano
preview thumbnail. The options are pretty much self explanatory. Just
to the left of the nano preview thumbnail is 8 memory dots. These are
for saving a particular view. The top dot is always the default view.
The icon just below the nano preview thumbnail is for view selection.
The view desired may be selected by clicking on this icon which
sequences through the views available, clicking and dragging or by
hitting a number on the key board. Top, bottom, front, back, left,
right and camera views are available. The small white circle just to
the right of the view selection icon will cause the view to spin
slowly around when clicked. This is called fly around. The view may
be rotated in the vertical plane by moving the mouse up and down.
Holding down on the control then moving the mouse will cause the view
to zoom in and out. A mouse click will stop the fly around and
restore the view to its original spot. The spacebar will pause and
restart the flyaround. The enter key will stop the fly around at the
location it is at when the key is struck. The set of 3 icons just
below the view selection icon are for camera placement control. 
I
was surprised to find what appears to be quite a bit of redundancy
here. The left/right arrows on the arrow pair lying down control the
X axis. The left/right arrows on the arrow pair on the right provide
identical control of the X axis. All the user has to do is click and
drag on any of 4 arrow heads to move the camera about in the X axis.
The same situation exists for the Y and Z axis. When the blue/green
button shaped object at each arrow intersection is clicked and
dragged the camera moves in 2 axis. A drop down menu may be accessed
via the small triangle just to the right of the camera placement icon
set. 
The
options available are pretty much self explanatory. The bottom
option for editing the camera launches the camera edit dialog box.
The camera edit dialog box may also be launched by double clicking
any of the camera placement arrows or by double clicking the
trackball. The offset boxes are for Bryce units. The rotate boxes are
self explanatory. Field of view and scale are self explanatory. The
best way to understand the values in these boxes is to change them
then observe the results. Below and to the left of the camera
placement icon set is a small button. Clicking and dragging left and
right on this button will cause the view to bank around as if you are
in an airplane. To the right of the banking control button is another
button. This button is the field of view button. Clicking and
dragging left and right in this button will cause the view to zoom in
and out. It appears as if the camera is moving closer and farther
away however what is actually happening is the camera lens is going
from wide angle to telephoto.
mmediately
below the camera placement icon set is the camera 
trackball.
The camera trackball allows the user to freely rotate the camera
about the scene and view any part of the scene from any angle.
Holding down the control and alt keys constrains the camera's motion
to the X axis. Holding down the alt key constrains movement to the Y
axis. To the right of the camera trackball and even with its bottom
edge is a drop down menu that is accessed via the small triangle. The
trackball selection on this drop down is the default. The center to
selection option is inappropriately named. It should be called rotate
around selected object since that is what occurs. The center to
selection option centers nothing. The selected object stays in its
place even out to the edge of the view or beyond. The tripod option
causes the camera to remain in a fixed location. In this mode the
camera trackball controls the camera as if it was on a tripod. Below
the camera trackball are 5 small balls that are used for rendering
control. The ball on the left will turn the textures on or off. The
second ball selects a fast preview mode. The large middle ball is
clicked to start the rendering process. 
The fourth ball is to resume rendering in case it has been paused by
clicking anywhere in the interface during the rendering process. The
fifth ball will clear the rendering that has transpired and start
rendering again from the beginning. Bryce can also do area rendering.
They call it plop rendering. All that is required is to start a
render then click anywhere on the interface to pause the rendering
process. When the rendering process is paused the cursor appears as a
crosshair when it is placed over the partially rendered image. A
marquee may be dragged over the image to select an area for
rendering. When this is done 2 balls appear at the upper left of the
selected area. The larger upper ball works exactly like the
previously discussed fifth ball. All the rendering that has taken
place is cleared and the rendering begins anew but only for the
selected area. The smaller ball just below the larger one resumes the
rendering process for the selected area and thus works like the
fourth previously discussed ball. There is a 2 choice drop down menu
available via the small triangle just below the 2 balls. The first
choice is to zoom to the selection. 
This
causes a zooming effect on the selected area. The second choice is
to hide the selection. This choice causes the selection marquee area
to be hidden. In this case the 2 balls and the triangle disappear.
Rendering in this situation must be handled by either the fourth or
fifth ball. The image instantly reverts to wireframe anytime the
camera trackball is adjusted. Just to the right and slightly below
the 5 rendering balls is the options drop down menu which is
accessible via the small triangle. 
The
first 3 antialiasing options are self explanatory. I couldn't find
anything in the manual or help files about spatial optimization. The
report render time option causes the render report dialog box to
appear after rendering an image. This dialog box provides quite a bit
of rendering information. The perspective render option is the
default. The 360 degree panorama provides an image that is for usage
with Apple Quicktime VR. The mask render causes the selected object
to be rendered in black and everything else in white. The distance
render option provides a grayscale image with close images darker and
farther images lighter. The manual describes a process using
Photoshop and a perspective render then using a distance render in
conjunction with red and blue 3D glasses to achieve depth. I followed
the procedures but I didn't see any depth of field with my red and
blue 3D glasses. 
The
manual also has procedures for bringing both a perspective and
distance render into Photoshop then placing the distance render into
the alpha channel of the perspective render. A Gaussian blur is
performed and the image is supposed to achieve a photographic type
depth of field effect. I didn't see that either but maybe I did
something wrong. The altitude render option renders objects lighter
in gray the higher they are. The plane and terrain are darker since
they are normally lower in altitude. There is a brief paragraph
describing accelerated raytesting but there is no option for anything
like that on the options drop down menu. The last 6 options available
on the option drop down menu concern various document resolutions and
are self explanatory. A double click on the large render ball will
call up the document setup dialog box. This dialog box can also be
activated via the file drop down menu. A huge variety of preset
aspects and resolutions are available. Document resolutions may be
manually entered. Aspect ratios are constrained or not. The last few
pages of the camera and render control chapter has several tips for
camera stuff and rendering stuff. Apparently Bryce can perform batch
rendering if the user desires. I did not verify this.
he
next chapter addresses hidden palettes. The hidden palettes appear
only when the cursor is passed over them. At the bottom of the
interface is a hidden palette devoted to object selection. The
adjacent image shows what the hidden selection palette looks like
when the cursor is passed over it. Notice the icons look pretty much
like the icons in the create palette. 
The
first icon, which bears some resemblance to a ground plane, will
select all the water, cloud and ground planes when clicked. A click
on the sphere icon will select all sphere like objects including
ellipsoids and squashed spheres. A click on the cylinder icon will
select all cylinder like objects including tuboid, squashed and
stretched cylinders. This also applies for all cube like objects,
pyramid like objects and cone like objects. The icon after all the
light icons that looks like 2 toruses looped together is the group
selection icon.. This icon is for selecting all objects that are
grouped. The next icon to the right of the group selection icon is
the family selection icon. Recall that Bryce has the feature to
assign different colors to the wireframe images. The is done by
selecting a color family after clicking on the small color swatch
button that appears below the attributes icon (A) and above the
materials icon (M). These are the button like icons that appear next
to a selected object. Each color has a family number associated with
it. 
Therefore
the user could, for example, assign different color families to each
type of spherical object, cylinder object, etc. and then select them
via this menu rather than be faced with the perhaps undesirable
choice of selecting every particular object type in the image by
using the selection icons. There appears to be an error in the manual
which states "the menu text is colored so you can select by
color". None of the text on my menu was of any color other than
black. Next to the family selection icon is a pop up menu which is
accessed via the small triangle. 
This
menu allows the selection of polyhedrons. It also allows the user to
inverse the selection and select all of the objects. The last option
is the alternate VCR mode. In order to understand the alternate VCR
mode, one must first understand the VCR mode. The VCR controls are
just to the right of the pop up menu and look similar to VCR
controls. Clicking on the larger arrows allows the user's selection
to step forward and backwards through the objects. The smaller arrows
step to each object type that has been stepped to with the larger
arrow. For example, if the user stepped to a cylinder with a large
arrow, the user could then use a small arrow to step to any squashed
cylinder, stretched cylinder or tuboid that might be in the scene. If
the user steps the selection through the scene and selects a group of
objects then the small arrows will step only to groups. The alternate
VCR mode allows the user to step through the scene and hit every
object in a sequence. The smaller arrows will now deal with the
selection of families. The round button in the middle between the
arrows is the solo button. When this button is clicked all the
objects are hidden except for whatever is selected. The alternate VCR
mode has no effect on it.
he
next hidden menu to be discussed is the display menu which is on the
right side of the interface. The top icon is for a marker pen. 
This
allows the user to write anywhere on the interface or image with a
red pen. The writing disappears when the pen is clicked again. I
discovered that a right button mouse click on this icon allows the
user to specify different colors and pen widths from a palette at the
top of the interface. 
The
next icon toggles the interface to maximum or minimum size. The next
icon launches a pop up menu that allows the user to choose from a
variety of backgrounds, colors, etc. The color selection launches the
colors dialog box. 
This
dialog box provides access to RGB, HSV, HLS and CMY color palettes.
Numerical values may also be entered in the little boxes on the left
end of this dialog box to achieve any color the user may wish. The
next icon down is for the nano editor. The icon is on as indicated by
a red dot. The window appears above the camera trackball when
rotating a scene. The nano edit window is also available on a
temporary basis when holding down the spacebar and the alt key and
moving an object. Then the small window appears above the object. The
next icon is the plop render icon. Metatools refers to the area
render feature as plop render. This icon will turn on or turn off the
plop render feature. The next icon is for depth cueing which is what
gives wireframe objects in Bryce their appearance of depth. Wireframe
objects appear lighter in color if they are farther away. I found
this effect very subtle and barely noticeable. The user can drag up
and down on this icon to make all the wireframe objects lighter or
darker in color. 
A
control click on this icon will turn off anti aliasing which is very
noticeable. Everything gets jaggy. The next icon will turn the
wireframe shadows on or off when clicked. The next icon will turn the
underground wireframe on or off when clicked. When they are off the
user can see any objects that may be underground. The next icon
activates a pop up menu that controls wireframe resolution. The
motion option has 9 settings from 8 to 64. This controls the
resolution of the object's wireframe when it is being moved about. 
Static
has 4 settings from 16 to 128. This controls the resolution of the
wireframe objects when they are not moving. Selected also has 4
settings from 16 to 128 and controls the resolution of the wireframe
object when it is selected. The next 2 icons are for zooming in and
out. The icon that looks like a hand is for panning. It is dragged on
to control panning. You may recall that panning could be specified
numerically in the previously discussed camera and 2D projection
dialog box which was activated by double clicking the camera
trackball. The last icon is the display mode icon. Clicking on this
icon will toggle the user through 3 display modes. The first is the
standard wireframe display. The second mode is the wireframe /bitmap
display mode. See the adjacent image. This mode will allow the user
to edit the wireframe objects after an image is rendered while
retaining the rendered image. The third mode is the rendered mode
which you are automatically taken to anytime an image is rendered.
All pages copyright© Roger A. Moncrief, Indepth Reviews, 1997
Thanks to Judy Gefter, !LuM! and Charles Blaquiere for
their advice and counsel, some I heeded and some I didn't.