Hello guys! I'm always searching and trying new CAD programs for my work. I just ame across this one, and it's amazing! It is called Bryce 6.1, it is designed specially for producing natural landscapes, and what would you know, backdrops! It has a really neat render engine and the light effects are preatty nice. The software is really easy to use and has a very user friendly interface. It has a default librery of hundreds of textures, from brick walls to wavy waters and food. You can edit the sky effects, the lights, trees and landscape. Just after a few hours of tinkering I could start producing scenes like the ones shown below. These are low res for uploading purposes, but you can render in hi res for printing(3360x1833 in .tif, lots of MBs). With a good computer it'll take just a few minutes per render in the "standard" setting a few minutes in "premium". Here are some examples I made in standard render:
Took me only 3 min. to do this one and 30 secs to render it
The same as above, but added some foreground hills and some pine trees.
Same as above but added some fog and haze effects, preaty cool huh?
Making topography is really easy with the "terrain editor". The texture is called "Arizona".
Experimenting with the "Sky Lab"
You can make a scene as long as you like, just pan the viewpoint and keep rendering! Check out Bryce's web site:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/bryce?_m=dt
Those backdrops look very nice, but aren´t they a little to detailed?
The more detail a backdrop has, the more it "moves" into the foreground.
That sounds like very good software for printing backdrops, but the drawback to any computer printing is the limited sizes of paper you can use. Seams every 11 inches that have to be hidden don't particularly appeal to me.
cacole That sounds like very good software for printing backdrops, but the drawback to any computer printing is the limited sizes of paper you can use. Seams every 11 inches that have to be hidden don't particularly appeal to me.
Although if you have Microsoft Publisher, which is bundled on many windows machines, you can use any kind of paper that will fit in your printer, and the software handles the seams.
Lots of professional printing companies out there can run a long banner from a file you send them at a modest cost, provided you can convert it into a file format they can read.
If you work for the right kind of company and have an understanding boss, you might even be able to print it for free!
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
After poking around on the website for a while, I offer the following observations:
While the tool is indeed powerful and easy to use, and does have that "Wow" factor, it costs $100, plus probably another $25 or so to professionally print something useable (unless you want to piece together something from 8 1/2 x 11 paper).
That's a pretty steep cost for something I won't use that often, considering I can paint a serviceable one myself for about $10 in materials, or buy commercial products for about $3.50 per linear foot.
I found it a very good alternative for those of us that aren't paint artists. Just like digital photo backdrops are. As I said you can make it as long as you like. You could either print it in 24"x36" or use a photo editing software and a scroll feed plotter to print a really long scene. I know that for most of us, $$$ is a big concern... But I'm building a large layout. Having the backdrop handpainted is out of the question, let's face it, unless you're planning of having a flat blue background, anything else require a certain degree of artistic skills. I've seen really beautiful layouts spoiled by a horrible backdrop, they look like taken out of a "Felix the Cat" cartoon scene. Walthers Instant Horizons sell for $13.00 (24"x36"). Plotting in Hi-Res full color for the same size costs about the same (at least down here), but you can have a very realistic (Walthers aren't very realistic) custom background. With some "photoshoping" you may insert buildings and structures, even vehicules. I'm already experimenting with that...
IMHO, this software would be a bargain IF a person already had access to a commercial printer that could produce a continuous, seamless printout, and was going to sell backdrops commercially.
But for the same price as this software you can get a professionally printed backdrop from Backdrop Warehouse, and you don't have to contend with splicing joints together because they can print one up to hundreds of feet long if necessary.
They also use a very heavy weight paper that won't go through a standard household printer, and coat the surface after printing. Most of their offerings are actual photographs instead of illustrations.