Cheers everyone!

Doing some research on how to make some decent SkyBoxes for Game-Guru, I stumbled over the good old Bryce landscape-generator... In contrary to Terragen (very cryptic) and VUE (expensive), it is VERY affordable nowadays and delivers high-end results... I remember to have played back with some early versions yeeeears back and it was very easy to use and lots of fun. The new version ist still very easy and fun, but quite complex regarding tweakability...

In case you don't remember it. The latest version 7.X has the following features:
http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-pro-dte-terrain

So here are my questions:

- Is there anyone here that can quick brief me on how to generate a SkyBox with Bryce Pro?
- Is it correct to render a landscape as a 360° panorama? What size is good? And than what?
- Does someone know how to move the sun / moon around? My first attempt produced a sun that was half-way outside the panorama-frame (which is a contradction to nature itself, isn't it?)

Hint: You can still find some promo-versions of a 7.X if you look carefully in the web

Thanx in advance!

I had already answered in another thread before noticing this one so will cut and paste

skyboxes are six images....front, back, left, right, up and down which should stitch seamlessly. Normally a 3d app uses a 90 degree FOV and 90 degree rotations from a fixed camera position for rendering of skyboxes. Bryce, if I remember correctly, requires an odd FOV and is something like 112.5, this may have changed since I last used it many years ago so you will have to check it out. Panorama renders are for use on sky spheres or cylinders which GG doesn't support as yet. You could create a sphere model and texture this to use as an entity within your level.

The main reason I dropped Bryce even though it is an easy to use little bit of software was the render engine being a donkey and takes hours to render out anything decent, it is all the same a product which is fun to use if your new to it all.

Hi @Mrs Baird,
to set up Bryce cameras see this tut.

To adjust sun:
Hold Ctrl=Alt and double click the sun ball on the Sky & Fog tab.

Now you can hold Ctrl=Alt and click the desired position in your scene at anytime to place the sun\moon.

As rolfy said rendering can take a long tile depending on the setup of your scene.

Hope that helps.

Edit: by the way you can get Bryce 7.1 pro for $20 directly from Daz3d and sometimes they have it on special as well.

OldFlak....

Thanx very much, Rolfy & OldFlak! Both replies are really interesting... This is quite a cool forum.

I managed to get a free Bryce 7.X Pro Setup with additional media from an old Download which I did when they gave it away as free promo. So I will give it another try. The rendering is reeeeally slow but I could do it on a second machine running at night, like in oldschool times ... It's not like I want to do SkyBoxes everyday. I just couldn't get into Terragen, it's far beyond cryptic and I don't like to guess all the time...

@Rolfy:
I took a screenshot of the possible document formats in Bryce 7. Which one should I take, if not "panoramic"? I did not know I can use a simple sphere in Game-Guru. The fact is: I am still waiting for an in-deep manual and I am not a big fan of video-tutorials...

EDIT: I am reading the Bryce/SkyBox-Tutorial... The pics are missing, but its quite detailled. Thanx!

Hi @Mrs Baird, you are welcome,

Resolution 1024 or 2048.
Aspect ratio 1:1.

I usually dev at 768, render at 2048 on Regular setting in fast preview mode to test in GG, and then when all is good, render at 2048 on Super Fine, although Regular seams to be ok as well.

I actually bought VUE as well (a lot dearer OUCH), but been unable to get a render anywhere near that of Bryce so far, and it makes Bryce look like a race horse. Will keep plugging at it though

Happy asset creation!

OldFlak....

Select 'square' and set your output resolution as OldFlak described.