Topic: Bryce 5.0: Good for Modeling SFC ships? (Read 2450 times)

Stormbringer · « **on:** March 07, 2003, 06:44:56 pm »

I can get it for about 70 USD used on E Bay. Documentation on Bryce's site says it can import and export in a number of formats including LWO. I understand LWO is easy to convert to .mod format. I had a LWO BSG that IIRC I converted just by renaming the extension(?) Does anyone know anything about this program and its ease of use and utility for building SFC models? Any recommendation for it or a similarly priced modeling program that fits the bill. Not milkshape or Gmax as they don't import directly to usable formats.

James Formo · « **Reply #1 on:** March 07, 2003, 07:01:27 pm »

um milkshape has plugins for sfc mod files and is the most commomly used lowbuget 3d tool for sfc

Stormbringer · « **Reply #2 on:** March 07, 2003, 07:52:55 pm »

Quote:

um milkshape has plugins for sfc mod files and is the most commomly used lowbuget 3d tool for sfc

That being the case, why is it generally panned by people here (though more so in the SFC I and II iterations of this and other model forums?) Is it an ease of use issue?

Lord Schtupp · « **Reply #3 on:** March 07, 2003, 08:02:17 pm »

No, do not buy Bryce 5 for modeling ships. While Bryce is a cool, easy to use program for making and rendering landscapes, to make anything more complex than basic primative objects is excedingly difficult. It has no way to manipulate individual vertices or weld two primatives together, in fact the only thing you can do to a primative created in bryce is scale it. To derive more complex shapes you can boolean (subtract) shapes, or just build by stacking. However MOST IMPORTANTLY you CANNOT export any object from byrce except for terrain (single lattice) and double lattice object.

Worthless for building ships or anything technological, period.

Lord Schtupp · « **Reply #5 on:** March 07, 2003, 08:21:34 pm »

np storm- I opened up bryce5 to check my facts btw. Any complex objects that you want in your Bryce 5 landscapes you really need to create in a real modeling program and import into bryce...

I couldnt really recommend a 70 dollar modeling program, as the only ones I have used are renderman, rhino, and by far the most 3d max. Try looking for a used copy of MAX. Or try using milkshape, though I have never used it.

U know if you or anybody here are full time students you can get an educational version of MAX or lightwave, which is identical to the retail version. The discount for educational versions of software often exceed 75%. I saw educational MAX for 800 dollars US as oppsed to 3500 retail.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #6 on:** March 07, 2003, 08:59:20 pm »

That ain't chicken feed though.

Currently I am struggling just to build a new computer. Bought a soyo kt400 dragon ultra platinum MB and albatron TI4280 pv turbo 128 vid card (which benches better than a G4 4600) this month next month is an amd xp 3000+ the month after is either 1.5 or 3 gig of pc 3200 ram. The month after is a 400 gb raid array of hard drives and other storage then a power supply and jupiter case down the line is a multiformat DVD R/RW and Audigy 2 platinum sound card and speakers. So almost all of my spare funds are tied up for the next six months or so.

I've heard milk shape is hard to use or cannot create all the files necessary to create good SFC models by itself. There is a thread in this forum about Gmax that seems to indicate it lacks a vital plugin for model conversion. You use it though. What is your procedure?

Oops! You said you use max not gmax, sorry 'bout that.

James Formo · « **Reply #7 on:** March 07, 2003, 09:23:19 pm »

Not sure what the phrase panned means. Milk is a basic 3d program. It has move, rotate, scale, extrude, weld. The shapes you can select are box, sphere, geospere and cylinder. Yea it does not do booleans or splines but its 25 bucks and has 30 day free trial.

I just recently learned that milk will do I-maps but you have to use the alpha map for the I-map. Anyway have to try it out.

So the only thing milk will not do as far as making the model game ready is hard points. Maybe thats what you meant by people panning there milk models. Yea we need someone to do our HP's but that is no big deal. Oh also can't do break models. But if you copy your mod and rename it as a break and add some damage textures and put a hole in the hull. You get a ship that looks like it just had the crap beat out of it as it spins away.

Anyway I myself am looking to upgrade myself as milk can only go so far. For example the back end of a Constution would be very hard in milk. Though Atolm had a similar shape in his Mercury and piece it together using 3 parts. It looked quite good.

You do need to use something while you are saving up for max. Yup Gmax is your other alternative. It is max without rendering is what I have heard and its free. Harder still to get models into game though. If you do use Gmax you will have an easier transition to Max later if thats the way you go.

Good luck

Stormbringer · « **Reply #8 on:** March 07, 2003, 09:40:22 pm »

Thanks for the info. Thats not as bad as I thought. If I put a model in without HPs don't the weapons fire simply seem to come from the center of the ship or is that a no go unless hard points are added?

As to the break mod I thought it was a clone of the whole model that was sliced up into at least four parts. If so why cant it be done manually (perhaps making multiple clones and erasing different sections of each clone and then saving them to the same file) even if milkshape has no automated function to do sectioning? thanks in advance.

James Formo · « **Reply #9 on:** March 07, 2003, 09:47:05 pm »

Correct. With no hardpoints the model will work fine. Its just that all the weapons fire from the middle of the ship. On a frigate class you won't even notice. CA's and above really should have them as it starts looking a bit wierd.

As far as breaking the model up into parts. You can do that, but they will all spin away moving the same direction, which looks totally unrealistic. A true break has pivot points and looks like an explosion with peices flying off in different directions.

Behold the power of milkshape

Stormbringer · « **Reply #10 on:** March 07, 2003, 09:57:25 pm »

Looks good. How sophisticated is the help database? I'm going to need it a lot...

James Formo · « **Reply #11 on:** March 07, 2003, 10:12:37 pm »

The only help file available is at the site where you d/l milk. It is just the basics. There are some tutorials there as well. I just posted a link for milk in a thread about 2-3 days ago. If you do a search for milkshape you should find it. One of the harder things to figure out is mapping textures. I did a picture tutorial in a thread at SFCnet that I will mirror over hear. I hope it doesn't scare you off. It not too bad really but you do have to stumble through some stuff.

The model in the pic was built almost entirely by scaling. I extruded the top of the bridge. I think I will post a tutorial on how to make a basic saucer. I am currently in a bit of a modelers block, where I don't know what project to start next, so I guess I'll do up some basic tutorials

. I mean basic, because a lot of tutorials you see, they assume you already know the basics.

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Re: Bryce 5.0: Good for Modeling SFC ships?

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