Bryce 5

by DAZ Productions

Product Features

• Create 3D landscapes and animations for print, multimedia, video, or the Web
• Create Web animations, generate thumbnails, or preview images frame-by-frame
• Make HTML image maps of your scenes with Web URLs embedded in specific objects
• Easily import, create, and edit preset textures, then save them as new textures for future use
• Handy palettes to quickly create and edit objects, design scenes, and render final images

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.1 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000094ADI
• Item model number: BRY5ENGPC
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,783 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Bryce 5 opens new worlds of creativity. Featuring perhaps the most powerful, innovative, and distinct user interface of any 3D application, Corel Bryce 5 lets you create breathtakingly realistic 3D landscapes and animations. Whether you're designing for print, multimedia, video, or the Web, Corel Bryce 5 will open whole new worlds of creativity.

Extreme power

• New! Network Rendering: speed up processing time by rendering a series of images from an animation or tiles of single frame across a network, exponentially saving time and money. This feature is especially powerful for designers working in production environments or with multiple computers at the same time.
• New! Tree Lab: create and incorporate highly realistic trees into your landscapes, specifying details such as tree type, branch density, leaf or needle density, coloration, and more. Plus, generate tree roots for even greater detail.
• Enhanced! Sky Lab: control the appearance and attributes of sky effects, including clouds, smog, sun, moon, comet, starfield, and halo effects, from a single control panel.
• New! Light Lab: ensure a more accurate depiction of real–world environments with more robust control over lighting on objects and in landscapes, including controlling the direction, intensity and tinting from one or more sources.
• Texture Editor: easily import, create, and edit preset textures, then save them as new textures for future use with a Texture Editor that's second to none.

Maximum ease of use

• Enhanced! Terrain Editor: take full advantage of the real estate of today's larger monitors and improve accuracy when fine–tuning terrains with new floating panels, fully scalable 2D and 3D image previews, and a time line for controlling the progression of animations. The improved look and feel not only simplifies and enhances the design process, but visually, it will amaze!
• Enhanced! Rendering options: achieve a whole new level of realism in your scenes with new high–quality rendering options, including Soft Shadows, Blurred Reflections, Blurred Transmissions (frosted glass), True Ambient Lighting, and Depth of Field. Plus, take advantage of optimizations designed to speed up the creation of architectural scenes.
• New! Metaballs support: save hours of valuable rendering time with Metaballs technology that lets you create organic shapes without having to resort to high–polygon modeling.
• Enhanced! Intuitive user interface: take advantage of handy palettes to quickly create and edit objects, design scenes, and render final images. The most distinctive and innovative UI of any 3D software makes this a great way for new users to learn Bryce!
• New! Presets: explore a virtually infinite number of textures and landscapes with preset collections that include terrains, waters, skies, rocks, clouds, and fog artist, Gavin Robb Incredible versatility.
• Landscape creation: quickly and easily produce remarkably realistic landscapes, impressive fantasy worlds, and other dynamic scenes.
• Image-editing tools: import 2D images from a variety of formats, transform them into 3D objects, then incorporate them into your scenes.
• Animation and Web capabilities: quickly and easily create Web animations, generate thumbnails, or preview images frame-by-frame in a storyboard format, make HTML image maps of your scenes with Web URLs embedded in specific objects, and create virtual tours using QuickTime VR.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Program - Skimpy Manual, February 23, 2004

By 

Maraich (PHOENIX, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bryce 5 (CD-ROM)

You really can't get a program this powerful for a better price. However, it isn't nearly as intuitive a program as I'd been lead to believe. Having never used any of the previous versions I didn't have any idea how anything in it worked. So... I cracked out the manual that comes with it and worked through the two "classes" that are in it.

Those walk-thrus are okay, but they do seem to assume prior knowledge to some extent. It took me quite a while to discover that there was a selection bar along the top of the screen that disappears unless you set your mouse pointer on it for a bit. Once I discovered that things improved quite a bit.

The walk-thrus a great introductory exercises as far as they go, but frankyly they could have used at least two or three more. There are new features to Bryce 5 that they don't even mention in the book. The book doesn't tell you that there is a "Tree Lab", and there isn't anything it about Metaballs. Really the manual takes the attitude that discovering how things work in the program is just all part of a great adventure. If it were a game I could kinda/sorta buy into this, but since it is a productivity sort of program, I think they're just making excuses for not having a fully fleshed out manual.

The only thing that has really saved me is that there are quite a few "how to" articles on the web that you can use to learn more. I'm making some pretty interesting pictures now, and learn something new every time I try a new project.

So, while I recommend the program, I suggest purchasing "Real World Bryce" (only available for up to version 4, but still very useful) at the same time. Also, go to all of the various 3D web sites out there and print out some "how to" articles - they'll help you immensely.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bryce 5.0, September 7, 2004

By 

D. P. Zielske "Muzeke" (Mankato, MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bryce 5 (CD-ROM)

I have used this software for over three years and have enjoyed the high quality renderings that I receive. It is easy to fit it into an animation computer array and the end product easily transfers to other design and editing software. On highest quality and resolution, rendering can take days, but the extreemly hight quality can go direct to post production studios. For web use I suggest rendering in lower resolutions. I Love the Bryce Skys :)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible price for incredible animation, May 1, 2004

By 

Jeff_w_91709 (The Woodlands, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bryce 5 (CD-ROM)

I was really surprised on the price drop. this was over two hundred dollars a couple of years ago.
For the money I was extremely impress on how my animations looked when I convert files and made DVDs.
Needless to say, the learning curve on this is steep and after a year, I don't really get some of the things that's offered in this software.
rendering is slow and there's nothing you can do about it.
I have a P4 1.7ghz and one of my work took over 30days to render.
The results are great!