| Ever wanted to get textures out
of Bryce? Of course you have! Well, there's quite an easy way to do this so
that you can use these textures in other programs. The textures won't look
exactly the same as they do in Bryce, but hey, experiment and see what
happens. |
| Create a terrain and click on the E button
to enter the Terrain Editor, then click on New to get a blank terrain. |
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| Make sure you have the highest
color selected (white). |
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| And paint the entire terrain
until it is solid white. |
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| You can lower the terrain if
you wish using the Raise/Lower option. |
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| Accept the changes and go back
to the Bryce main window. |
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| Bring up the Material Library
and choose a texture. Here I've chosen sandclumps from a package by Jonathan
Allen. Accept the texture by clicking on the check mark. |
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| Now, choose File : Export
Object from the file menu. Enter a name for your object and select the
Wavefront OBJ format. |
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| The Export Terrain panel will
come up and looks like this: (Click on image for a larger view) |
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| Click on the Material Preview
ball (circled) and Bryce will create the preview maps. (Not sure if this
step is really necessary, but I always like to see the preview image.) |
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| The right side of the Export
Terrain panel contains the Image Maps area. Notice that Diffusion
Color, Ambient Color, and Bump are selected. This is because these items had
a blue ball in the columns. If you used the same texture as the diffusion
and ambient colors, then deselect the Ambient Color option (or not).
At the bottom are the Size and Format pull-down menus.
The default size is 256x256 while the default format is .bmp. |
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| Bring up the Size menu and
choose the size you want to export the texture at. I prefer 1024x1024 just
so I can use the textures in a size where I don't have to worry about it
being seamless. Also, the larger the size, the more details in some cases. |
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| If you want the image exported
in a different format than .bmp, then bring up the Format menu and choose
your favorite format. |
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| Once you are ready, click on
the check mark and Bryce will begin exporting out the image maps and the
terrain obj. |
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| Here is the results of the
image map export, the first texture is the ambient channel, the second is
the bump map, and the third is the diffusion. |
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| You can now import these
textures into another program like trueSpace or ZBrush. |
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| Example of different export
sizes. The image is back was exported at 1024x1024 while the one in front
was exported at 512x512. The area in red on the front image is the same
section shown in the back image. |
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| You can also change the scaling
of the texture in the Material Editor in order to affect how much you get.
The first image shows the default Stone Wall texture at its default scale of
18.7% and the second image shows the scale changed to 100%, both at 512x512. |

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| Remember, you
won't get the same amount of detail from the exported textures as you do in
Bryce and they aren't seamless, although they could be made seamless with a
bit of work on your part. Play with the bump map settings in whatever
program you import the textures into in order to increase the details.
Also, remember to honor copyright issues. If the original material preset
wasn't created by you, then the exported textures can only be used for your
own personal use. |