Corel Bryce 5 www.corel.com Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG  Bryce 5 was released in July 2001.  This is the first release by Corel. When I saw the new look of CorelDraw 10, I was disappointed.  When I saw the new look Corel gave Bryce, I was blown away. The opening avi file if absolutely beautiful…and I want the tutorial to reproduce the finished image! Bryce 4 had an opening image that was a classic mountain peak with snow. It was very nice but the new look is green hills sloping down to a sandy beach then to the water and the image and the detail are terrific. This is exactly why I wanted to get Bryce 5, I wanted to create beautiful landscapes. I have been making my own backgrounds for the graphics I use on the web site for along time. I've used sky generators and other tools but I wanted to try Bryce to see if I would like it. Well, I love it. Bryce comes with tons of tools and ways to create landscapes and edit the attributes to create unique images. It also creates animations. I didn't really work with this much since my main interest was in creating terrains for my image backgrounds. Once I installed Bryce 5, no problems doing this, I began playing with the tools. I was a little overwhelmed by all the tools and options at first but it was only a short time before I began to figure out what to do with the main tools. Then by following the included help/tutorials, I created a terrain that had a lake that was carved into the landscape not just a flat plane. This took me several attempts to get right but the look has much more dimension that a flat lake.  Things that weren't turning out right by guessing how to work with the tools became much easier once I worked with the tutorials. I learned that I had to group or select the mountains and the ground to make the texture I applied flow evenly and not be cut off. I now know that if I want to accomplish the cut out look for a lake that I have to add a terrain, flip it over, and then make it a negative Boolean objective before adding water to it or the plain will flood with the water texture instead of inside the cut out hole. I learned how to add or remove shadows, edit the sky and items such as stars to it and much, much more. The image shows a terrain I created, it is rendered. You can see all tool selections available. Bryce has many presets that you can apply to the elements in the image. There are lots of sky choices, water types, terrains, plants, and objects to work with. By clicking on the menu that floats along side the wire frame, you can edit the attributes. For example the mountain range can be eroded, sloped, smoothed, or any number of other choices to take a jagged mountain range and change it into a gentle sloping hill that has a smooth appearance. All other features can also be edited. The image is created in the wire frame view and the image can be viewed from a number of different angles such as director's view (the default), front, back, top, bottom, etc. Each gives a different perspective of the image. As you add and edit the sky elements and terrains textures, you can then render the image to see how the finished product will look. While the wire frame image is being worked on, there is a view in the top left hand corner that is a "Nano Preview". You can see a thumbnail image of what changes are being made and how they look before the image is rendered for a full size view. *The texture on the rendered image above is called iceberg. You can see all the toolbars shown here surrounding the work area.  These images show what a wire frame looks like, this is the area where you are creating and editing the image, the toolbars, and then the rendered scene which shows what the textures and features applied look like in the finished state. When an image in finished it can be exported to a bmp file.  Animations can also be created for web use. Clicking on the "Create" palette changes it to the editing tool. You can see in the image here, that the tools bar has changed to the editing mode and that the image is shown in the wire frame format. The tools down the left side are the view, camera controls, and the render controls. Moving them around displays the image from a variety of directions and angles.  Down the right side of the application window are the display editing tools. The animation time tool is located across the bottom. The small grouping of tools on the lower right side is the object editing tools. Images can be imported in a variety of 2D formats and changed into 3D objects.  Then they can be added to a scene. In the upper area, when the Sky & Fog tools is clicked you get the drop down menu options as well as access to the Sky Lab which has more features for adding to the sky. Features new to Bryce 5 include a Tree Lab where the object specifics can be adjusted. For example the tree type, the density of a tree branch, or coloration. In the Light Lab, custom control of the direction and intensity of the lighting sources for a more realistic look. Another new features is Network rendering. The rendering process can be speeded up by rendering the images on multiple computers at the same time. The palettes of presets that come with Bryce have many terrain, sky, object textures, materials, and objects choices. Clicking on a thumbnail image and clicking the okay check on the window applies the choice to the selected area.  Adding new choices is as easy as clicking on import and bringing in any new materials, skies, etc., that can be created by the user or found on the internet. The item imports and is added to the list with its preset name. It couldn't be easier to do. Obviously I have just touched the surface of the power and creativity of Bryce 5. Since I am a complete novice to the program I am learning as I go along and enjoying it very much. It takes a little time and practice to work with to obtain the more detailed results but the outcome is certainly worth it. I did find it very easy to experiment with when I was just adding objects and applying textures to them. Whether you are interested in creating alien worlds, beautiful terrains, or animations, this is a great product to work with. If you would like to see Bryce 5 up close and personal, you can see it at our Graphics & Web Development SIG and watch a total amateur play with it!