Bryce 5.5

Bryce 5 is a 3D program for animators, desktop artists, Web designers. Bryce 5 is the leading 3D program for animators, desktop artists, Web
designers and multimedia producers.
Bryce is ideal for creating 3D graphics for magazines, ads, or virtually any illustration that would benefit from the powerful 3D impact of realistic perspective and shading.
Bryce animation features let you create great animations for video and multimedia easily.
Bryce key-event and timeline-based animation lets you create incredibly realistic, fully animated, 3D worlds where rivers rush through gorges, the sun sets over the ocean, or mist evaporates to reveal flocks of birds soaring between mountain peaks.
Bryce is also an invaluable tool for interactive multimedia.
Main features:
- Faster Rendering: The already powerful Bryce render engine has been greatly optimized. Now you can render your favorites scenes on average 1.5 times faster!
- Bryce Lightning: This new version of the Bryce Lightning network render application utilizes advanced image compression for improved rendering over either a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN). With greater stability and a more compact client interface providing detailed feedback, rendering Bryce scenes on multiple systems is easier than ever before.
- DAZ|Studio Character Plugin Integration: Now you can easily load, and edit any OBJ model using the new DAZ|Studio character lab. This plugin allows you to load in thousands of 3D figures, vehicles, wildlife and more while you work inside of Bryce. Launch this application to either import new content into your Bryce scene, or to edit pre-imported assets. Any changes to the imported content are updated to your Bryce scene at the touch of a button,allowing you to continue your creative process without unnecessary interruption. Faster load times, increased stability, and more logical object grouping have been added as compared to the previous Turbo Import solution (available separately).
- Enhanced OpenGL Support: Bryce 5.5 adds the ability to see, in real-time, the texture maps applied to objects in your scene. By using optimized versions of the full resolution textures, you can pan, zoom, and rotate your workspace while seeing a full color preview of the objects as you work, even with ground and water planes. Version 5.5 has OpenGL support for the following display styles: texture shaded, wireframe, lit wireframe, hidden line, wire shaded, smooth shaded, wire textured shaded.
- Improved Terrain Editor: Enjoy greater visible detail due to increased resolution coupled with an improved default display style. Receive instantaneous feedback when editing terrains via Realtime Linking in the 3D Preview. Edit terrains more easily with an improved brush size and more visible Terrain Canvas Tool area. Improve accuracy when fine-tuning terrains with floating panels, fully scalable 2D and 3D image previews, and a time line for controlling the progression of animations.
- New Light Lab: The Light Lab provides new and improved tools for editing lights. The redesigned Light Lab makes it easier to adjust lights as all the controls are now conveniently placed in a single location. The new gradient feature lets you add a color gradient to lights. When a light has a gradient applied, the color and intensity of the light is determined by the distance the light travels and the gradient that has been applied. You can create your own gradients and save them for future use, or import gradients from Corel PHOTO-PAINT or Adobe Photoshop. Other new lighting options include Shadow Ambience, Soft Shadows, and premium rendering effects like Blurry Reflections, Blurry Transmissions, and True Ambience.
- Tree Lab: The new Tree Lab lets you create tree objects in a scene. You can control the size and texture of the tree trunk, the thickness and number of branches, the type of foliage and its frequency, randomness, and color. You can import images to be used for the trunk or foliage texture. You can also control how gravity affects the tree, making branches bend and leaves droop to varying degrees.
- Metaballs: Also new to Bryce are Metaballs, a new object type found on the Create palette. Metaballs are spheres that blend into each other based on proximity. With Metaballs, you can create a wide variety of organic and realistic-looking shapes.
- Enhanced User Interface: To enhance ease of use, the user interface in Bryce has been enhanced in a number of ways. For example, the Terrain editor has been redesigned to give you more control when painting effects, to let you create more detailed terrains, and to provide larger previews and animated previews of the resulting terrains. The animation playback controls have been streamlined to make them easier to use. The Create palette has also been simplified to make it easier to find the object you want. In addition, two new object types have been added to the Create palette: Metaballs and Trees.
- Updated! Dozens of Presets - explore a virtually infinite number of textures and landscapes with preset collections that include terrains, waters, skies, rocks, clouds and fog, metals
Bryce also includes :
- partial shadows for objects with volume materials
- shadow ambience for lights
- new 3D Grid spatial optimizer
- new terrain grid resolutions: Gigantic (2048), and Planetary (4096)
- support for distributed rendering effects for lights, including soft shadows, blurred reflections, blurred transmissions, depth of field, and true ambience
- support for Total Internal Reflection (TIR)
- enhanced Render dialog
- volume shading mode
- volume materials shading mode
- uniform density shading
- five new mapping modes: Sinusoidal, World Front, World Side, World Cubic, and Object Cubic
- new Sky Integration feature
- distance squared texture noise & phase type
- earth-based starfields and comets
- new import and export filters and plug-ins
System requirements:
- Pentium®Processor or Compatible
- 700 MHz (1 GHz or faster recommended)
- 512 MB RAM min (1 GB recommended)
- 100MB free hard drive space for installation (500 recommended)
- OpenGL compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB of onboard
- (Drivers supporting OpenGL 1.1 recommended)
- 32-bit graphics color depth
- CD-ROM drive