Bryce 6 doodles
Well, for awhile now I've been wanting to start working with Bryce again. It's been many many years, but what with this and that and all, I just haven't gotten to it. But, I'm feeling especially motivated right now. I'd thought being able to do stuff in Bryce would be cool for making posters for my Sims, because even though you can get very realistic results from Bryce, there's still an artifical quality to stuff made in Bryce that I think would fit in well with the sim world.
For those of you who might not know, Bryce is a 3D landscaping and object modeling program. Excellent, but a little hard to use. A long time ago, I think like back in the mid 90s, I puttered around with it a little bit, with pretty basic results. My first ever Bryce piece (indeed, my first ever 3D piece) can be found HERE, and it's laughingly simplistic. Later I used Bryce to make the background and water effects for THIS drawing (probably NSFW!). But aside from those two things and a fair amount of puttering, I never did too much with Bryce because it is difficult to use and I just never had the patience or inclination to sit down and try to make the most of it.
But I wanted to, like I said. I think it would be an ideal medium for creating some of the worlds I have in my head. And it would be excellent for doing sims posters and backgrounds for photo shoots. So, not too long ago when Bryce 6 was released, Dino asked if I wanted it and I said sure! Maybe it was time to give it another go.
So, I've been practicing. I think I'm primarily interested in the landscaping features, but I've also been trying my hand at making actual objects, which is a new experience for me. I know other artists have been doing 3D stuff for years and years, but I'm a bit slow to evolve and quite loyal to my antiquated 2D methods. Spending so much time with Sims has changed that, I think. Plus, I've been stuck in a major art rut lately. Might as well introduce something new to mix it up a bit.
Anyway, here are some of my practice doodles. Don't expect anything magnificent or anything on par with Pixar, but this has been fun for me, so I thought I'd share.
First thing I did was go through the very chinzy tutorial that was included with the program, which covered the absolute bare bones basics of terrain building. This is what I ended up with:
The second tutorial hit lightly on making objects, so I gave that a whirl with pretty simplistic results. I made a square building with some arches and an open doorway. Not very thrilling on its own, so I submerged it in some icy water. Then I made another one and submerged that too. I like this picture. It's very chilly.
Then I decided to play around with color and atmosphere effects and such, and came up with this:
I love it, actually. But I thought to myself that it would be even niftier if I could put in a couple of spaceships zooming through. That meant I needed to learn how to model some objects, so I poked around on the intra-tubes for some better tutorials than what had come with the program. My first attempt at an object was pretty basic - a glass with some liquid in it.
Stunning, is it not? *snerk* But hey! It was my first ever 3D object (not counting the ridiculously simplistic UFO in the first picture linked above). Having achieved some success with a basic glass, I tried for something a little more complicated:
Behold, the world's thickest wineglass! And yeah, it is floating. Why? Because it's artsy, that's why! It's certainly not because I forgot to bring it back down to the ground surface after assembling it. >_>;;
Glasses are all nice and good, but I wanted something meatier:
I'm admittedly quite pleased with my goblet, and it was great practice for putting shapes together to make an object. After the goblet I was going to follow another tutorial and make a Greek column, but I wasn't thrilled about it, so I skipped the column and went straight to what I'd wanted to make in the first place - a spaceship! And make it I did. It took forever and it is very basic and chunky, but I really really like how it turned out:
Yep, exhaust fumes and everything! Most importantly, however, is that I had lots of fun making it. I never did bother to try to put it into the landscape that inspired it, but that's okay. I like it just the way it is.
Sooooo, now that I've had fun making a couple objects, I'm going to put my attention back on the landscapes and practice at those some more, since that's what I really wanted the program for.
For those of you who might not know, Bryce is a 3D landscaping and object modeling program. Excellent, but a little hard to use. A long time ago, I think like back in the mid 90s, I puttered around with it a little bit, with pretty basic results. My first ever Bryce piece (indeed, my first ever 3D piece) can be found HERE, and it's laughingly simplistic. Later I used Bryce to make the background and water effects for THIS drawing (probably NSFW!). But aside from those two things and a fair amount of puttering, I never did too much with Bryce because it is difficult to use and I just never had the patience or inclination to sit down and try to make the most of it.
But I wanted to, like I said. I think it would be an ideal medium for creating some of the worlds I have in my head. And it would be excellent for doing sims posters and backgrounds for photo shoots. So, not too long ago when Bryce 6 was released, Dino asked if I wanted it and I said sure! Maybe it was time to give it another go.
So, I've been practicing. I think I'm primarily interested in the landscaping features, but I've also been trying my hand at making actual objects, which is a new experience for me. I know other artists have been doing 3D stuff for years and years, but I'm a bit slow to evolve and quite loyal to my antiquated 2D methods. Spending so much time with Sims has changed that, I think. Plus, I've been stuck in a major art rut lately. Might as well introduce something new to mix it up a bit.
Anyway, here are some of my practice doodles. Don't expect anything magnificent or anything on par with Pixar, but this has been fun for me, so I thought I'd share.
First thing I did was go through the very chinzy tutorial that was included with the program, which covered the absolute bare bones basics of terrain building. This is what I ended up with:
The second tutorial hit lightly on making objects, so I gave that a whirl with pretty simplistic results. I made a square building with some arches and an open doorway. Not very thrilling on its own, so I submerged it in some icy water. Then I made another one and submerged that too. I like this picture. It's very chilly.
Then I decided to play around with color and atmosphere effects and such, and came up with this:
I love it, actually. But I thought to myself that it would be even niftier if I could put in a couple of spaceships zooming through. That meant I needed to learn how to model some objects, so I poked around on the intra-tubes for some better tutorials than what had come with the program. My first attempt at an object was pretty basic - a glass with some liquid in it.
Stunning, is it not? *snerk* But hey! It was my first ever 3D object (not counting the ridiculously simplistic UFO in the first picture linked above). Having achieved some success with a basic glass, I tried for something a little more complicated:
Behold, the world's thickest wineglass! And yeah, it is floating. Why? Because it's artsy, that's why! It's certainly not because I forgot to bring it back down to the ground surface after assembling it. >_>;;
Glasses are all nice and good, but I wanted something meatier:
I'm admittedly quite pleased with my goblet, and it was great practice for putting shapes together to make an object. After the goblet I was going to follow another tutorial and make a Greek column, but I wasn't thrilled about it, so I skipped the column and went straight to what I'd wanted to make in the first place - a spaceship! And make it I did. It took forever and it is very basic and chunky, but I really really like how it turned out:
Yep, exhaust fumes and everything! Most importantly, however, is that I had lots of fun making it. I never did bother to try to put it into the landscape that inspired it, but that's okay. I like it just the way it is.
Sooooo, now that I've had fun making a couple objects, I'm going to put my attention back on the landscapes and practice at those some more, since that's what I really wanted the program for.