Let's make a Volcano!

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Or other neat meshes using height maps.

First you need to download and install the absolutely free version of Bryce 5 from download.com.

Download the program files here 23.98MB
http://www.download.com/Bryce/3000-6677_4-...tml?tag=lst-0-6

Download the objects and materials here 23.77MB
http://www.download.com/Bryce-Presets/3000...tml?tag=lst-0-7

Install and run the program. One of the first things you need to know is that the windows bar hides at the top of the screen until you push the mouse up to the top. You will need to do this to file save, print, and exit the program. Many of the controls and menus only appear after you click another button.

The other thing you need to know is this free version of Bryce only exports terrains and lattices (mirror sided terrains). You can’t export primitives, metaballs, booleans, or trees. Terrains are very good in Bryce and much easier to model than in Blender

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The program should open with a blank gray screen and the create menu. The portion of the window that has the create tools is near the top left edge above the gray. The first three objects look like water, clouds, and ground. These create infinite planes with what else, Water Clouds and ground applied. The next button that looks like a mountain creates a terrain. That’s the one you want. The next button is the tree lab. These won’t export so forget them for now. After that you have the rocks button. It produces 20-30 random rocks. The next button that looks like a top is the lattice button. It makes a double sided terrain. After that you have a set of blue primitives and yellow lights. None of these will export so we might as well move on.

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Press the mountain button once. A random mountain is generated in the center of the gray space. This mountain is displayed as a red wireframe because it is the active object. There are a set of squares located to one side. From top to bottom these buttons control, Attributes, family, link to parent, track object, materials, and edit. The A (attributes) button has to do with booleans that don’t work with this free version, Family changes the wireframe color so you can keep track of lots of wireframes in Bryce. Link to parent and track object are for Bryce animations. The M (materials) we’ll deal with in a little while. For now click on the E to open up a whole new window with the terrain editor.

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The terrain editor has several windows on it. You can grab each of these by the top and drag it around where you want it. Let’s explain the various controls.

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The narrow window farthest to the left is the brush control. It has five buttons on it. The top one is the brush size. Left-click and hold on it and a circle appears on the Terrain Canvas window. Continue holding and drag the mouse to the left or right. The circle will get bigger or smaller to change the brush size.

The next button below that is the hardness. Click hold and drag again and the fade from the center to the edge of the brush changes. You can make a great big dot that is solid from the edge to center or a softer one that is more of a cone.

The next one I describe as brush shape/hardness. Click and drag again and dots appear to show how much pressure the paint effect will have on the canvas. This is useful if you want to create a bowl in the center of your terrain but not completely wipe out hills and valleys.

The next button is brush height. Click hold on the button and move the slider up and down. The top (white) is high. The bottom (black) is low. What you paint on the terrain canvas becomes hills or valleys and also shows up from the side in the 3D Preview window.

The Bottom or grid button determines the number of pixels used to generate terrains. Click on this and a window pops up with choices. The editor starts in the middle around 512-very-fine. This is 512x512 pixels wide. You can go up to 4096 but bigger terrains slow the computer way down.

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The terrain canvas is the space you draw on to create lands. Like I said before white is high and black is low. On the top right edge are two buttons that look like white boxes and a black down arrowhead. The white button makes the background edge of the window appear.

The thing on the right is a clipping bracket. Grab the bottom edge of the bracket next to the bar that shades from white and drag up. The dark parts of the canvas turn red. The square edge of the canvas is clipped off. These clipped parts will not generate meshes. Now you don’t have to worry about square bottoms on all your mountains.

Try moving the top edge of the clipping bracket down. The white parts at top turn yellow. This will leave a hole in the top of your mesh.

Click on the down arrowhead. Another pull down menu shows up. The top sets the 3d preview size. You can turn on or off the visible brush the next command is solid. If you turn this on the yellow part you cropped will be capped flat instead of having a hole. This is great for leveling the top of a mountain to put a city on. Smooth keeps the steps between pixels from being jagged. Keep gradient keeps the steps of a step pyramid steppy. Export saves the mesh out to use in another program.

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The 3d preview is self explanatory. The timeline works with animations. You can make mountains crumble to the sea in Bryce but that’s for another lesson.

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The final window is the editing tools. This is really powerful and very complicated. The best way to learn is just try clicking things. I will cover several key things. You have three tabs at top, elevation, filtering, and pictures.



Elevation has lots of buttons that change the image in the terrain canvas. The most important is the fractal button. It has another down arrowhead beside it. Click this and you will see a large menu with different names like mud cracks, zorch, lava, alpine hills, etc. Click on a name and the menu disappears. Click on the gray ball to the left of fractal and a new land appears in the terrain canvas. Click again and the same type of land but with different features and scaling appears randomly. Just keep pressing till you see something you like.

Filtering changes the slopes around objects. Just try it and see what it does.

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The last tab is pictures. You can draw in other programs such as paint and import them into the editor. Pictures need to be grayscale and some multiple like 512 pixels. If you use an 8 bit image the result will have steps. Stay with tiff or other high res format instead of jpg. If you want a terrain that follows a planned slope you can load a simple picture in the second window to combine the two. Click hold and drag the blend ball left and right to control how strong pictures blend. Default is 50/50 and you can go anywhere to either extreme.

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So about that volcano; Start with a default mountain. Change your brush to a ball about 10 pixels wide. Set the height to white near the top. Draw a circle on the canvas. You can also add irregular blobs. If you want a deep center cone set the height near the bottom and fill in with the brush. You only need to create a general shape.