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Bryce 5 Sun - Tutorial Introduction

The Universe According to Bryce 5

In the Universe of Bryce 5, the Earth (your scene) is the center of the Universe. In Bryce 5, it's all about relationships-- the relationship of objects to their light sources and light sources to the camera. And you've got to understand that to make use of Bryce 5 lighting effectively. Digital lighting is a little different than natural lighting, which allows for some interesting effects, as long as you understand the basics and the power of these relationships.

The primary source of light in Bryce 5 is the Bryce Sun. It has a companion light source, always in 180 degree opposition, the Bryce Moon. By default, the Bryce Sun and Moon are turned ON and affect your scenes, whether they are outdoor scenes, or indoor scenes, even within an entirely closed object (i.e. no windows). The Bryce 5 Sun and Moon have a direct relationship to the Bryce 5 camera. Understanding this relationship is essential to making good use of these powerful light sources.

Bryce 5 allows you to turn OFF the Sun and its effects, which obviously turns off the Moon as well. This provides a wealth of opportunities for artificial only lighting, and there are MANY parameters in the Sky Lab you can adjust to take advantage of this approach. Bryce 5 is one of the most powerful and flexible 3-D modeling programs available, as Bryce 5 users are constantly discovering!

But the Bryce 5 Sun is a very useful light source and it helps to understand its relationship to your scene to make effective use of it. The Bryce 5 manual explains the Sun and Moon but does not give a hands on experiments to help grasp their power. These tutorials take that additional step to help you feel comfortable and understand how to use these light sources to their best effect in your scenes.

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About the Author:

Tim Thompson, author of this (and our other Bryce 5 tutorials) has been working with digital media for 14 years. He started with Bryce when it first appeared and has followed the program through its upgrades to the current version 5. Tim uses Bryce 5 for a multitude of projects, including some of the interesting games on our ClydeSight2.0!, the fun and games cat site, and for the multimedia interaction in our CD-ROM, System 12 Self-Improvement Interactive: Smoke Free! Tim has also been a teacher, having instructed continuing education classes for five years at Boston's Emerson College in desktop publishing and design and Web design classes in the Boston Urban Scholars program. Tim is a man of many talents. He not only creates digital art, but also composes music! ClydeSight Productions is pleased to publish his two albums, Symphonia Felina and Other Musical Masterworks and Forestdale-Tone Poems Inspired by Nature. Of course, Tim designed the covers for both albums! Tim's tutorials and digital art have won him high praise from the prestigious Renderosity.com digital artist's Web site. His tutorials for Bryce 5 have been enjoyed the world over and are used in local schools to augment their curriculum.