Brycetech: Painting a DXF File with Your Own Image in Bryce Part 1

Download the PDF of this tutorial.

There are several nice tutorials that explore how to paint a dxf file in Bryce already available on the internet.  However, I feel that they missed a few things that will help add realism and more excitement to your downloaded dxf models.  This page will guide you through acquiring, placing, painting, and scaling techniques that will aid in your finished image.  Also, this tutorial is designed to introduce you to practical uses of the Bryce interface, so that the next scene you set up will be easier.  This is the first part in the second (impact) explosion tutorial being prepared for this site.

To perform this tutorial you will need a photo editor.   Either Adobe PhotoShop or Corel PhotoPaint are excellent.

Set up the Working Window

First select the ground plane and delete it.
Next you will also want to be sure that you can see all of the object so set the right options palette to allow for visibility below the ground plane.
Pull the sun control down until it is placed as shown.   Remember that you want the sun to be shown, not the moon.
Next click the shadow control and drag it until the reading is 0.

Get Your File Into Bryce

Import Object into Bryce

Import your dxf file into Bryce.  This is an easy thing to do.  Just go to the file menu. Select Import Object Find your object file and select OK.

Tada now we have an unpainted dxf object to work with.

Smooth the Imported Object

Smooth DXF

If you don't smooth your imported object, it will appear faceted.  So select the object then select the "E" to edit the object.   Drag the slider to the top and click the "Smooth" button.  Bryce will soften the facets of the dxf. Don't just click OK, be sure to click "Smooth".

Place Your DXF Object

DXF Placement

For easier editing your object should be at world center.  In other words all its attributes for position are set to zero in all three planes.  I suggest you make sure that this is the case now.  This will aid later in placement of other objects in the scene. (Remember this is later to be used in the impact explosion tutorial)
So select the object.
Select the "A" for the object's attributes
and (1) be sure it says "zero" in all the position planes. While you are here, name the object (2).  This is a good time to do this.   Realizing that you should have done this later is way too late.

Scale Your Object

Scale

Click on the attributes of your object again.  Look at its size.  Lets assume that we have one Bryce unit equal to 1 inch. Unless you are building a ship for ants, that just isn't going to cut it.     Actually, Bryce performs much better in its material functions if the object is large!  This gives its powerful rendering engine a chance to use what it has!
You can make up a size for your model.  I want mine to be about 40 feet long (around 480 Bryce units for the z plane).  We can either change all the numbers mathematically (boring and too hard) or we can simply drag the resize tool's center until we get somewhere close to the right size we want.
So just drag and check the attributes a couple times and there you go. Close enough.

Go to Part 2 of Painting the DXF with your own Picture.

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