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Download the PDF of this tutorial.
...that is the question.
In this tutorial you will learn what the 2d picture lab is and how to use it. We will also investigate the file size impact when using 2D pictures as textures. And last, an alternative way to saving your picture textures (instead of adding them to the material presets) will be introduced.
| What is the 2d picture lab? This area of Bryce is used to apply images as textures to objects. |  |
| For instance, if you wanted to hang a picture of your
Aunt Bell on the wall, you would obtain a picture of her, scan it, then import it into
Bryce.
OK...OK, so my Aunt Bell isn't very attractive J |
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| You can get into this lab a couple of ways. 1. You can click good ole Leo and the picture lab will launch. When you use Leo, the image is applied to a flat 2d cube. |
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| 2. You can also get to the lab if you select
the object you want to apply the object to and click the "M".
(There are also additional ways to get to the Picture Lab) |
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| This will launch the Material Lab. Once in the Material Lab, put a dot in the channel you want to apply the material to by clicking. | |
| Then click the "P" (1) and last click the pink button (2). |  |
| You will then be in the Picture Lab. | |
| Now that you are here, what do all of these little
things mean? Let's start with what the 3 windows at the top are. Window #1 is the image itself. Put whatever image you want to have used as the texture in this window. |
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| Window #2 is referred to as the "alpha channel" for the image and is a grayscale that can be used to drive transparency, bump, specularity, and several other material attributes. What ever portion of this window is Black will be transparent (not used in the material) and whatever is white is opaque (will be used in the material: more about this later). |  |
| Window #3 is a visual representation of the image after the alpha channel is applied. The "checkered" area indicates the area that can be changed by using the alpha channel (more about this later). |  |
| There are several ways to get images into the the windows. You can click one of the "Load" indicators and a menu will appear which will allow you to choose a file from your hard drive. |  |
| or you can "Paste" an image from temporary memory (RAM) into the window. |  |
| Quickie reminder on copying an
image into RAM for Windows.
Right Click an image and select copy from the popup menu. |
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| You can then paste the image
directly into whichever window you want. I pasted the image in to the 3rd window here. Bryce filled windows #1 and #2 as necessary to make the material behave as expected. |
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| If you wanted to copy the image from any window into
RAM from here, simply click "copy". TIP: If you wanted you could then paste this copied image into another window or even into another program (such as a photo editor like Adobe PhotoShop or Corel Photopaint). |
 You can copy and paste from within the editor. |
| You can also click a vacant gray square below the three windows and you will be prompted to load an image from disk. |  |
| This image texture will then fill the square you selected. |  |
Go to part 2 of the Picture Lab Tutorial.
