Corel and Bryce® 5 Sure to Make a Scene

Striking an optimum balance between power and ease of use, Bryce® has long been a favorite of designers seeking an entry point into the world of 3D landscaping and animation. And now with Bryce 5, the newest version of the software and the first release since Corel acquired the product, new features and enhancements have been introduced that propel the software to the next level. These changes reflect Corel's commitment to realizing the full potential of this remarkable product, and are sure to delight 3D graphics users everywhere.

Corel brings Bryce up to speed with network rendering

Bryce has always had an extremely powerful rendering engine, but the time required to render images was often too prohibitive to be practical. This is no longer the case. Recognizing the needs of designers, Corel has added network rendering to Bryce 5. This addition speeds up processing time substantially by rendering images on multiple computers at the same time.

Enhanced options make Bryce 5 a true render machine

Augmenting the power of network rendering are several new rendering options, including Depth of Field, which lets you specify a point of focus while Bryce automatically blurs objects in the foreground and background. Other options include Soft Shadows, Blurred Reflections, True Ambient Lighting and Blurred Transmissions. In addition, Bryce 5 delivers 48-bit dithering, improved Texture Mapping and a Material Shading mode to control the self-shadowing of objects.

Say 'goodbye' to high polygon modeling and say 'hello' to productivity

New Metaballs support lets you create amazing organic shapes without the need for high-polygon modeling, which can save you hours of time. And innovative UI enhancements-such as floating KPT®-like palettes and fully scalable 2D terrain canvas and 3D previews-let you maximize screen real estate, whether you're working on a single monitor or several. The result is a more productive and enjoyable user experience.

More realism than ever

The addition of two new labs gives you the ability to create scenes unprecedented in realism and detail. For instance, the Tree Lab lets you specify tree type, leaf type, coloration, even branch and leaf density. The Light Lab, on the other hand, enables you to control a light's color and intensity, travel distance and the color/alpha gradient used, ensuring a more accurate depiction of real world environments.

For Windows® and Macintosh®

Further reflecting Corel's commitment to those who are passionate about creativity, Bryce 5 has been engineered to run on both the Windows® and Mac® platforms, including Mac OS X. In fact, Bryce is only the beginning. In the future, Corel will continue to develop creative products for Mac OS X.

For more information on Bryce 5, visit http://www.corel.com/bryce5.

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Date this article was posted to GameDev.net: 8/21/2001
(Note that this date does not necessarily correspond to the date the article was written)

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