Create a Landscape of Your Choice

Bryce 6 is a 3D modeling and animation program that is particularly useful in

making fractal landscapes. The user interface is simple enough to be used even

by beginners. 'Light Lab' provides you excellent control over sunsets, moonlit

nights or a high-noon ambience. Using the 'Tree Lab' feature, you can paint your

landscape to resemble the famous gardens. 'Metaballs' technology allows you to

create organic shapes with high level polygon modeling. 'QuickTime VR' feature

gives the freedom to create web animations, generate thumbnail images, preview

them in storyboard format and create virtual tours. Since Bryce is a DAZ

product, integration with DAZ Studio is but natural. The software also supports

high-def image rendering for creating more realistic landscapes. Let's see how

to generate a mountain using this software.

Select the terrain from the displayed icons at the top of the window. When rendered, this will give you the Bryce fractal mountain. Click on the 'E' button to open the 'Terrain Editor'.	Click on the black triangle at the far end of the 'Terrain Canvas' and select 'Solid' from the drop down menu, to make the terrain solid. Click on the 'Grid Shape' and set the resolution to 1024.

Go to 'Editing Tool' window and click on the triangle, next to the word 'fractal,' and select 'Rounded Dunes' from the list. Click on the round button to the left of the word 'fractal'.	Now click on 'Gaussian Edges.' The terrain canvas becomes darker at the edges, which means low land at the edges of the mountain. Click on 'renderer' to bring up the 3D preview.

Go to 'Terrain Editor' and change the resolution down to 128. You can see the surface is rougher but a bit jagged. Click on 'Smoothing' and reset the resolution to 1024.	Raise the terrain to the highest level using the 'raise/lower' band in the editing tool. You can see the difference in color. Now click on the gradient icon and choose the color.

Close the 'Terrain Editor' by clicking on the 'tick mark.' Open 'Object Attributes' and change the X, Y, Z values to 150, 75,150 or as per your monitor preview area.	Go back to 'Terrain Editor' to change the angle of slope of the mountain. Click on 'slope noise' and 'height noise' once. Clicking on 3D view will start the rendering process.

Click on the triangle to the right of the Edit button. This shows up the 'Material Editor'. Select a beautiful backdrop from the preview or import the it by clicking on 'Import' .	Open the 'Material Editor' again. You can select trees, snow, mist, metals and transparent effects for enhancing the beauty of your mountain. Here we selected 'Christmas Winter'.