Islands in the Sun Part 1


fig1

You've probably seen it dozens of times, an Island with a default texture dropped onto a default water plane, it's simple to create, but it looks totally unrealistic. Here's what I mean in fig1.

I will show you a method to make this more realistic (fig2) and at the same time introduce you to a few Bryce shortcuts to help speed up editing and manipulating objects. We'll also find time to dip our toes into the Deep Texture Editor.

So, if you've half an hour or so to spare then follow along.

Note: This is the third in my beginners series so experienced Brycers may find some of the descriptions over simplified.


fig2
fig3
With Bryce loaded from cold you will see in the editor a default 'Infinite Plane' and a Camera. I like to work from the Directors view (2) fig 3a and usually set it up with coordinates shown in fig4 you can access these settings by clicking on the small arrow shown as (1) in fig3 then select 'Edit Current Camera'

fig3a

Tip: A useful safeguard is to save your current viewpoint, then if you should accidently move the camera or trackball you can recover the viewpoint in an instant.

To do this click on one of the 'Memory Dots' shown between the arrows (1) fig3a. There are six memories and initially they are empty, but once you click them the colour changes and the current one will have a small white dot at its center.

fig4

Time to build our Island, Just click on the Terrain Icon ( 3 in fig3 ) and the job is done.


The Terrains are generated at random, but try and get something similar to fig5 with a nice peak and gently sloping sides.

If you don't like what you see hit the 'Delete' key and try again.

fig5
Onto Part 2