Real World Bryce 4, 1st edition
Authors: Susan A. Kitchens, Victor Gavenda
Venue:  (2000)

From the Book:So you went and did it-you bought yourself a copy of Bryce. You saw a beautiful landscape on someone's Web site, or your friend showed you a stunning otherworldly vista she created for a video game, or you saw the program in action on a colleague's computer and were taken with the subtle beauty of the interface. You parted with your hard-earned cash, rushed home with the box and ripped off the shrinkwrap. You put the software through the install-register-serialize routine. So now what? You tenatively start clicking things; create a cube, move it around. Click the thing that looks like a mountain at the top of the screen, and BAM-there's a mountain in your picture. Cool! Now you get more adventurous. What happens if you click that tiny little M-thingie next to the mountain? YEOW! What in blazes is that? Don't worry, it's just the Materials Lab, it won't bite ...much. Welcome to Bryce. Throughout the program you'll find over and over again that a deceptively simple surface masks an underlying complexity. You'll also find that Bryce's complexity leads it to trip over its own feet from time to time. You could grope your way to Bryce-mastery on your own, but you've done a much smarter thing: you've bought this book, which will serve as your guide on your journey of discovery. We'll tell you how to get started in Bryce, how to use the expert tools, where the secret handshakes and decoder rings are hidden, and we won't hesitate to point out the spots where the manual leads you astray or the software is just plain broken. What This Book Covers This book is a revision of Susan's Real World Bryce 2, which in turn was a revision of her earlier The KPT Bryce Book. It has been completely rewritten to document software that has undergone extensive modification and enhancements since the last time this tome hit the streets. The book continues on in the tradition of applying a keen observer's eye and answering the questions, "What does it do?" and "What can I do with it?" We observe Bryce's behavior and tell you what it does. This book covers Bryce 4.0.1 for both the Macintosh and Windows 95/98/Windows NT platforms. At the time of this printing, there are four different shipping versions of Bryce 4 in existence. There's Bryce 4.0 shipped by MetaCreations. There is an updater, 4.0.1, which changes MetaCreations Bryce 4.0 to Bryce 4.0.1. This is the version of the software that we worked with for most of the book. When MetaCreations sold Bryce to Corel, Corel "re-branded" the software with Corel logos on the box, manual and splashscreen, and shipped that as Bryce 4.0; we'll call it Corel Bryce 4.0. Due to a small version error in the Corel 4.0 version, the MetaCreations 4.0.1 updater did not work to update it to 4.0.1. Just as this book went to press, Corel released Bryce 4.1, which includes the 4.0.1 patch. The update works on both the MetaCreations and Corel Bryce 4.0 versions and copies of Bryce updated to 4.0.1. The differences between 4.0.1 and 4.1 are slight-a new starmap with real constellations, some new import and export modes, and some additional volume materials functions. Note for Bryce 3D users: The feature gap between Bryce 3D and Bryce 4 is much smaller than the gap between Bryce 1 and 2, or between Bryce 2 and 3D. Although this book deals with many specific items in Bryce 4 that won't be found in 3D, much of the coverage, especially the new material on animation and the Materials Lab (including the Deep Texture Editor), is applicable to both Bryce 3D and 4. In response to readers' requests, we've added a feature for beginners: Chapter 2, "An Introduction to Bryce." If you're new to Bryce, work through the chapter step by step, and in the course of an hour or so you'll touch on most of the program's key features. Although the rest of the chapters provide some background on key concepts, the emphasis of this book is to push you onto the "Bryce Power User" track. Tutorials and guided explorations abound-follow along with the book in one hand, and your computer's mouse in the other. While we observe Bryce throughout these pages, we are assuming that you know how to use your computer's operating system. If you don't, please refer to the documentation that came with your computer. Bryce takes you into a complex world-not as complex as our own, but complex nonetheless. In Bryce, everything is related to everything else. When writing about it, there's a risk of oversimplifying while looking at the big picture, or getting mired in the detail while exploring all the possibilities. Our approach cruises between these two risks, providing a look at the big picture while including plenty of detail. Because everything is related to everything else, however, there are numerous cross-references directing you to other chapters.