Bryce 5 Tips, Hints and Undocumented Features

Bryce 5 Tips, Hints and Undocumented Features
Bryce 5 has a number of features that are either not documented or fully explained in the manual or on-line documentation. This page is set up to compile those items. I do not claim to have discovered these, I am just compiling them. If you have a tip or undocumented feature for Bryce 5 please let me know a webguy@planet-3d.com


Negative Metaballs	To me this is cool. Hold down the shift key when clicking the metaball icon to create a new metaball. The metaball will have a negative effect on other metaballs close to it!

Custom Leaves	Go to the tree editor. Select User Leaf from the drop down menu under foliage shape. This leaf will be a 2D pic. You can add your own custom leaves by selecting material under foliage texture. Load you new image which must have an alpha mask.

Willow Tree	From the newsgroups. How to make a convincing Weeping Willow tree. Here are the settings: Branch/Trunk Distribution 10 Branches per segment 1-10 Segments 10-13 Branch start angle 70 Branch end angle 0 Trunk thickness 2-40 Branch thickness 48-50 Tree Shape Mountain Ash (yes, that's right!) gravity 100 Randomness 100 Foliage Weeping Willow Scale 2 Number of leaves 6 Distribution Spiral One word of advice - change the "Branch End Angle" setting last. It'll render quicker.

Tree Preset Easter Egg	If you are one of the lucky ones who grabbed the 5.1 patch there's an Easter egg ( hidden feature ) hold down the Alt key as you click the tree icon to create a new tree, a list of preset trees pops up.

Numerical Input of Colors	Alt + click (Windows) or Option (Mac) on the color swatch and you can manually enter the numbers for the color, or change from RGB to HSL, HSV, or CMY. You can also access your computers color picker (say if you have custom colors saved), by Crtl+Alt (Windows) or Control-Option (Mac).

Custom Menus	Do you know you can add more folders to various preset menus? Go to your Preset directory. Then pick one of the sub folders like Materials. In the folder you will see an installed folder and a user folder. No create a new folder like Misc. Now when you select your Material presets in Bryce 5 you will have another menu option down at the bottom other than installed and user. View the new preset category.

Depth of Field	Depth of Field can easily be set. First select the object that you want to stay in focus. Got to Render Options. Under quality Mode check Premium. Check Depth of Field and then click on Set to Current Selection. That's it!