Bryce 6.1

As this long-awaited update makes it to the virtual shelves, we look at what has changed – and what hasn’t

Bryce has been a definitive example of corporate product pinball, starting in the days of Kai Krause’s KPT and Metacreations, ricocheting between spin-offs, landing temporarily at Corel and coming to rest at DAZ. DAZ bought version 5, released version 5.5 with a better tie-in with DAZ Studio and now version 6.0 is here, a year and a season later than originally planned.

So what’s changed? The core of Bryce certainly hasn’t. The interface remains unique with its love it/hate it approach. Installation remains slightly eccentric, with separate installers for the main package and for associated textures and tutorial/ example scenes. This could surely be streamlined, but it’s less quirky than the complex installer in version 5.5.

The biggest new feature is support for HDRI/IBL, which helps push Bryce further in the direction of photorealism. This has been added to the Sky Lab. There’s a selection of light probe images, but if you have Photoshop CS2 you can add your own using the HDR file feature. HDRI is a useful addition, but it’s quite tricky to get the settings to hit that photorealistic sweet spot, especially considering render times.

Other changes include a shopping list of minor modifications. Import and export facilities have been extended with animation import from DAZ Studio and mesh export of Booleans. The Terrain Editor has also had a makeover, providing support for smoother terrains with 16-bit files and a wider range of editing brushes. A random replication tool will produce instant copies, and you can customise the moon with stick-on images. MacTel users now have full native support, which is the biggest change in version 6.1.

Negatives? Bryce is still glacially slow, especially in any scene that features reflections and refraction. It’s also not entirely stable. This is most obvious in the interface, which stops for breaks without letting you know what’s going on. There were no crashes, but the anti-aliasing seemed to grind to a halt at times. And multi-core support didn’t work on our test PC. Supposedly it’s been included, but in tests, processor use stayed pegged at 50 per cent.

Overall Bryce remains more of a toy than a serious 3D tool. It’s a good choice if you want to dabble without a huge investment, but skills are minimally transferable. The app has so little in common with the bigger packages that if you move up you’ll be starting almost from scratch.

If fantasy and sci-fiart are your interests, it’s possible to create professional images with Bryce, but high quality output needs high quality skills – point and click won’t get you more than a few rocks and a fluffy-looking planet from Central Casting. Long render times make detailed scene design tricky. As a character modelling tool, Poser produces more natural results.

More positively, Bryce is easier to get to grips with than more fully-featured 3D tools. And with current exchange rates it’s very affordable, especially as an upgrade.