THE BRYCE MASTERCLASS OF MODELING
Welcome to the start of the Bryce Master Class of Modeling.
This Page was last updated on 27th July 1999
This page is under continual construction and currently contains my first tutorial on skewing Bryce objects. To give you some idea of what to expect here, i list some of the tutorials which should appear on this page soon. ( not necessarily exactly in the order listed below, although we will be building on what we have learned in previous tutorials ).
1.) Skewing objects in 1D and normalizing for various forms of mating with other primitives ( find the start to this below )
2.) Skewing the Cube and the Pyramid in 2D. Making the Pyr2 and Pyr4 primitives from the basic Pyramid. Tapered objects and sloping walls techniques.
3.) Creating new basic building blocks using the methods and the new primitives we created in tutorials 1 and 2.
4.) Creating Helix Forms and other Forms out of skewed Cylinders.
5.) Creating new Forms out of the Cone and Pyramid.
6.) Creating Torus segments which can be joined seamlessly.
7.) Torus Object workshop covering the techiques to build large numbers of unique tubular forms.
8.) Primer on Compound objects. Various methods of allignment to produce new forms with little fuss. The 4 sector Sphere, or Organoid Object, introduced as a basic organic building block to replace the much too obvious "Bycean Sphere".
9.) Composites which do not require any math. The rounded cylinder, rounded cube and hundreds more.
10.) Getting into math. Joining a Sphere to the Elipsoid.
11.) Joining a Sphere to the tip of a Cone seamlessly
12.) Joining the base of a Cone to Sphere seamlessly
13.) The Dogbone object. Involving a seamless marriage of the Torus, Cylinder and two Spheres.
14.) Advanced math and Impossible Objects. Various Bottle, Vase and Onion Dome Forms.
15.) Hull objects. Aircaft bodies, Submarines and Space Craft building.
16.) Decorative designs and lattices based on objects we have learned so far.
17.) Celluar Organic Construction using multi-replicate. Looking at Nature. Avoiding the Bryce construction look.
18.) Bryce "Lathed" Spiky and Conical Forms using multi-replicate.
19.) Construction techniques by shifting the Origin and linking Primitives. The Pentagonal Frame and other impossible Geometrically perfect Objects in Bryce.
20.) Advanced Boolean methods using Formal Imagination and Perception without Math.
21.) Introducing the Displacement Lattice and Symetrical Lattice as major Form producers. A list of all construction methods using G2H maps is given. The following continue with this mode of work.
22.) 100% Bryce drawing, painting, building and filtering - no Photoshop or any other application is required.
23.) Designing and Building complex form with very high precision. The principle of degrees of symmetry and other issues.
24.) Reducing a Primitive Set to Displacement Lattice. Distance and Altitude renders. Mask Renders and Greyscale Ambient Painted Objects.
25.) The Art of using the Deep Texture Editor as a powerful 3D Modelling Tool. Various techniques to gain control. Gradiants and periodic Forms.
26.) Putting it all together in the Terrain Editor without having to paint. How to use layers and blend modes to form the Objects.
27.) The importance of Clipping Maps. Get rid of the square base. Building Leaves, Flower Petals and other wonders.
For this and many other tutorials to follow you will need at least a calculator ( physical or virtual). You could also use EXCEL or even a 4D app like LightWave3D 5.5 which has a math calculation pluggin.
Skewing Bryce Primitives
To build sophisticated Bryce models based 100% on the Bryce primitives, you must master is how to accurately skew objects in 1D and 2D. A 1D skew is around an axis parallel to one vertical face of the object or its bounding box. A 2D skew is done around an axis perpendicular to a plane running through two opposite vertical edges of the object and it is relevant only to the cube and pyramid.
Skewing the cube, cylinder or sphere in 1D is quite simple and will be covered in this first tutorial.
Start by creating a cube or cylinder and make sure you are in World Space.
Make sure the object bounding box is a 20.48 cube and snap the object to World Center.
Press the 4-key to get the orthogonal XY-plane view and hit the + key to zoom in and center the object.
Rotate the object 45.00 deg. ( exactly ) about Z-axis, using whatever method suits you.
Duplicate and group both objects ( this must be done after rotation ).
Determine what you want the Skew Angle ( SA ) of the finished object to be.
Then obtain the Dihedral Angle ( DA ), which is calculated as: DA = 90-SA.
Next the Y:X ratio of the bounding box is calculated as follows: Y/X = 100*(tan(DA*(_pi/180))).
This ratio is actually the Stretch Percentage along the Y-axis ( SPY ).
Note: The example i gave above requires the argument DA to be in radians,
if your application accepts degrees, simply use: SPY = 100*(tan(DA))
or if you have a conversion function, then use SPY = 100*(tan(rad(DA))).
Now open the 3D Transformations dialog and enter SPY into the Size Y field.
The oject has now been stretched in World Space but we still need to rotate it back again.
so that the top and bottom faces are parallel with the XZ-plane.
Rotate the object DA deg. ( exactly ) about Z-axis, using whatever method suits you.
Ungroup and then regroup the objects.
At this point Bryce may behave a little strangly and misallign your objects slightly,
so check for any rotational misallignment and fix it now
by snapping the object to 0 deg. with the rotation tool.
Zoom in on the ends of the bounding box to check for the least amount of misallignment.
You are now past the tricky part, you have your basic skewed object,
however the top and botton faces are not exactly 20.48 by 20.48 bryce units any more.
The next step is to normalize those faces.
From the Attributes dialog read and write down the X and Y dimensions of the bounding box.
Ungroup and delete one of your skewed objects.
We only needed it to force Bryce to transform in World Space and for reading the bounding box.
Next calculate the Stretch Percentage along the X-axis ( SPX ),
using the formula: SPX = 100*(20.48/(tan(SA)*Y)+(X-(2*(tan(SA)*Y))))
Change to Object Space
In the 3D Transformations dialog enter SPX into the Size X field.
You can also enter this value into the Size Y field,
which makes the Y-length in Object Space exactly 20.48.
Note that the Y-height in World Space will now be less than 20.48.
If you need the Y-height in World Space to be exactly 20.48, for mating with unskewed primitives,
then duplicate and group etc... as we did before to read the bounding box Y value,
The amount to scale will then be 20.48 / Y , however the skew angle will now become larger.
Save your object. You now have a new and very useful primitive.
I suggest you make a set of cubes with angles of 18 degrees, 30 degrees and 45 degrees
make one of each normalized in Y World Space and one in Y Object Space.
For example a cube skewed by 30 deg. can be used to make hexagons, star shapes,
one skewed 18 degrees, gives you pentagons etc...
Look at the object below - it is made from 756 skewed cylinders.
"Helicoid Bryce Form" - Bryce 2.1 1996
A minimal object composed of 756 cylinder primitives
"Bryce Molecules" - Bryce 4 1999
Sociable Bryce Building Blocks ?
All images on this page are 100% Bryce, no Photoshop postrender processing or any trickery whatsoever
Images by Peter Gene Budarickbudarick@dove.net.au.
