 |
Bryce - The Assembly
Putting It All Together
İMeski ( Robert Cox ), 2003
This tutorial may not be distributed in part or in whole in
any media without the written consent of the author. It is for your private use
only. The TreeDruid objs are distributed under a special licensing agreement with
Zenstar and they may NOT be distributed in any media. The TreeDruid objs are for
your personal use only.
TreeDruid is a Trademark of Zenstar
Zbrush is a Trademark of Pixologic
Bryce is a Trademark of Corel
|
Bryce - Time for Assembly and Patience
Ever see a big old tree with a dead branch in it? In the picture above, I duped the main branch, made the leaves invisible, and took some color out of the material and moved it. At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to do the same.
A few comments are needed here. The precise positioning, scaling and rotation of the tree parts is going to tax your patience. I am including a few tricks to make it easier but, still, it ain't gonna be easy. I have used other modeling software that makes it pretty easy but I wanted to do it in Bryce so that anyone with Bryce can do it. The important thing is to keep your cool and back off if your are feeling frustrated. It can be done and if you follow the tutorial, I'll try to make it as easy as I know how. There may be better ways... if there is, write me. I love to learn. :o)
The Base
1. Import the tree base into Bryce. If you are using the one that I made, it is in the resources zip file and is named ZSphereTreeBase.obj.
2. Rotate the model and change your camera view to look like this. I suggest, rather strongly, that you switch to the Directors view. Lower the camera but do NOT zoom in on the trunk with the camera dolly. Use the magnifier in the tool list on the right side of the screen to magnify the mesh. Then hold the spacebar down, drag in the screen, and use the hand to position the mesh as shown above. Approaching the view in this way allows you to fly around the tree base without it wobbling or going out of view. Positioning the tree parts is going to be tedious.
3. Choose a bright color for the tree base so that we can easily see the difference between the limb and base. We are going to do a lot of plop rendering.
4. Click on the Family attribute and choose a color that will stand out when the base is in wireframe mode.
5. Import the smaller of the two trees. If you are using my mesh, it is called leftsidebranches.obj.
6. Click on the A and call up object attributes. Check Show Origin Handle.
7. Locate the little green marker for the origin handle.
8. Drag it down to the base of the tree part. rotate around the tree base by using the camera dolly looking at the origin handle. Adjust it to the approximate center of the tree part limb. It doesn't have to be exact but should be generally in the center at the bottom of the tree part.
9. Ok, I am satisfied with the position of my origin handle.
10. Dolly around until you can see the bow in your tree part caused by the wind you applied in TreeDruid. My bow turned out when I was facing the camera in the Director's view.
11. Get the Edit menu up and click on the little white dart below any of the transformation tools. Select Object Space.
12. Click and drag the "Y" axis rotation and rotate the tree part until the inside of the bow faces the tree stump.
13. Click and Drag the "Z" rotation until the tree part is following the approximate path of the left side fork of the tree stump. Keep in mind that we are facing the camera, so the fork tine you want is on the right of your stump.
14. Switch to the top view and select the leaves by CTRL clicking. The leaves are Tree_Druid2_1. Select them.
15. Click on the "A" to get the Object attributes up and check Hidden. When we plop render, we don't want the leaves covering up what we want to see. You may want to hide the limbs too but I didn't have to do that.
16. While we are viewing from the top, do a quick render to see where the tree part is relative to the stump. Because we aren't using any textures, it will go fast.
17. Click on the the view mode selection box, shown in the yellow rectangle at the bottom right of the image above. Select the mesh/image mode. Make sure that you get all of the the tree parts ( deselect and select if you have to ). Drag the tree part until the base is over the stump as shown above. Then rotate in "X", as shown on the rotation tool in the image above, until the tree looks something like the wire mesh (red) of the tree above.
18. Use the scaling tool ( the center box ) or grab a handle on the corner of the box around the tree and scale up the tree part. Render, scale and position as many times as you need. Don't worry about getting precise at this time. I scaled the one above until it covered the view of the part of the stump I am using.
19. Switch your view back to the Director's view and position, scale, and rotate the tree part until it looks something like the above. Be sure to take several different views by rotating the camera dolly to help you position the tree. Plop render or render several times. Patience!! It really won't take that long. Just keep trying.
20. After you get your limb positioned, LOCK IT! And Lock the tree stump too! When you put the other tree part on it, it will be harder not to accidentally select the wrong part.
21. Here I am locking the base of the tree.
22. Here I have imported the larger tree part and have positioned it. This is the result of one of many plop renders. Be sure and turn the bow of the new part toward the center of the tree like we did with the first part.
23. Duplicate the second part and position it on the final tine of the tree base. Again, turn the bow toward the center of the tree. For an additional realistic look to your tree, duplicate it again and leave the leaves invisible ( hidden ). Plop this copy dead in the center of the base. Dead limbs.
Texturing Your Tree
Before you go any farther, save what you have. It would be a shame to blow all of the good work you have done up to this point.
Included in the resources zip file are the mats for the leaves and wood parts.
